Part 10 (1/2)

One might imagine that the Indian Government would by this have become awake to this aspect of the crisis, have taken prompt action and sent out three or four divisions at once.

Even admitting the difficulties of river transport, six weeks from the date of Ctesiphon, _i.e._ January 9th, would have allowed ample time for arrival at Basra. But the first reinforcements did not arrive in the country until considerably later, and then only depleted divisions. British divisions, which are really required, were only sent for recently and have hardly started. And now difficulties of transport will delay their transit up river. One cannot help recording these facts in black and white. Every day lost now is piling up tremendous difficulty for the future and swelling the list of lives downstream that, please G.o.d, will one day retrieve a disaster that might easily have been avoided. The world knows nothing of the siege of Kut, and the authorities are not being goaded by public opinion. In other words, the Indian Government has played with a serious situation. The price will be disaster. I am not setting this down as my own opinion merely. It is the point of view of every one in Kut. As a soldier one must refuse to believe that the position has been mishandled or that Kut will fall. But if I were a politician, which I am not, then would I add a lot of things here which I will not.

As I write it rains, and with every drop of rain the time within which the garrison, and, more important still, the strategic position at Kut, can be relieved, shortens. Soon come the annual floods, and when the whole country is under water reinforcements will be of no avail. And the time is short. It is the eleventh hour, and unless considerable forces are already on the way it is even now too late. But that is an affair between the authorities and the floods. Our problem is one of food.

The position here is much as it was in the Dardanelles.

Excepting for floods and natural conditions we can outgun and outfight the Turk every time here. Moreover, we are tremendously relieving Aylmer of pressure, as the Turkish river communications must stop at Shamrun above us, and then his transport has to go overland. This is the marvellous thing about our enemy. He is daily carrying on a colossal bandobast of transport away from the water.

_5 p.m._--Reuter reports the Verdun battle is going satisfactorily.

One imagines that the German Kultur Geist must be bilious by this time, according to the numbers they are offering at his shrine. I am wondering how Nietzsche's Zarathusa would speak now if he saw the Verdun shambles.

And what his blonde-haired, pink-limbed uber Mensch would say about it too. Somehow I can see old Rudolf Eucken at Jena with outspread hands invoking ”Schicksal” (destiny) as once he used to ”Die Unendigkeit, Die Ewigkeit.” Deep down in the German nature is a connative impulse towards the dramatic, and this is fed by a presentiment coloured with all the hues of harmony sweetest to them. It is not unknown for students at Jena and Heidelberg to extract such exquisite juice out of the word ”Unendigkeit” (Immortality) or ”Ewigkeit”

(Eternity) as to become intoxicated therewith and commit suicide shortly after in the pine forest, or near a ruined ”Schloss” (castle) what time the sun sets.

He loves the experience of the actor, likes to feel his gamut of emotions considerably tw.a.n.ged. This dramatic tendency showed itself on the occasion of that delicious utterance of the Kaiser on the eve of the Great War: ”Now let my ministers put their hands through mine in token of fidelity, and let the nation follow me through Need and Death.” Now, the Roman did this sort of thing rather well, but the German makes an a.s.s of himself. One feels the Kaiser said it to see how it felt to say it.

The Germans tell us they are doing well, but I believe there is a sight becoming more familiar to their eyes, a phenomenon it is their daily delight and wish to behold, and that is the altar of this ”Schicksal”--Fate. The Germans think in battalions.

They have yet once again to go mad as a nation, as they did on the outbreak of war--absolutely ”verruckt,”--and to bolt with compet.i.tive haste towards the national funeral pyre.

They are not fanatics. They are temperamentalists--and from the spleen of a German musician it is said that in a successful operation you can cut a piece of temperament nine inches long and twenty-five ounces in weight. Apropos of this general digression one may consider their ”New Year's Picture” of ”Tod” (Death), of which a copy reached us in the autumn of 1914 in France, and cheered us up considerably.

”Tod” (please p.r.o.nounce ”toad”), an awfully unpleasant looking ”Death,” a sn.o.bbish skeleton with a bad seat, rode a heavy horse through a smitten land, a tremendous scythe over his shoulder and his metacarpal bones holding his reins incorrectly.

The scythe flung a gigantic shadow, and as for Tod, his shadow reached almost to the horizon over black, burned villages, sacked cities, and many corpses. The horse had reached a double signpost which showed the way to St. Petersburg and the way to Paris. But, more interesting still, the skeleton had the lantern jaws of a Prussian. Fancy turning such a fellow loose! Truly the ”G.o.d of Want and Rapine and Death!” and a most excellent subject for the Germans'

accepted New Year's Picture.

I remember my limber gunners having the same picture, months afterwards, at Aldershot. And Chopin composing the ”Marche Funebre” with a skeleton between his legs while he played wasn't in it with them. They had stuck the picture on the muzzle of the gun while they cleaned it. I hope every one of them goes untouched through the whole war.

Poor Germany! I have had some happy days there, but when I compare the Kaiser's words to his nation on the eve of war with those of our own dear King, how I thank G.o.d I am an Englishman. And who would not mind being a Pharisee at the price of being an Englishman? I ask you.

It may be suggested that when Germany falls, the same cement that holds that extraordinary nation together will a.s.sist it in falling together. In the meantime it will be an interesting spectacle for history to observe--the German nation sprinting on hot foot towards the registered funeral pyre, with all the dramatics of the bolting horse that gathers speed and insanity from its own flight.

Talking of horses, I hear that to-day is the slaughtering day for numbers of them. This is good-bye to any possibility of debouch, for there will be insufficient horses to move the guns. It will eke out our corn and barley that can be made into bread; but what is wanted is sugar or jam for the body, and tea for the spirit.

”You are,” says Townshend, ”making a page of history.”

”I would rather,” thinks Tommy, ”make some stew.”

_March 11th._--We have all been made acquainted with Sir Percy Lake's condolences on our misfortune, but also promising us relief; but the floods are gradually increasing, and we fear it will be a case of Lake _v._ Lake, and there will be no appeal.

Sir Percy Lake is the Army Commander in place of Sir John Nixon, and General Aylmer is Army Corps Commander.

Before going to bed last night we told fortunes by cards. The results in short were these: Firstly, a climax is to be reached shortly. (I quite agree.) Secondly, March 27th, my birthday, will seal my matrimonial affairs, the marriage to take place before the following March 27th. (Doubtful, unless I marry an Arab or Turk, or get freed for the event.) Thirdly, the star of the Fortune-G.o.d is in the ascendant, and his horoscope is wreathed with smiles. Which we two subalterns, and c.o.c.kie (a junior married captain), devoutly pray may come true.

Personally, I hold with that excellent fellow Horace that ”the G.o.ds only laugh if they behold mortals showing an unseemly interest in their destiny.” It is essentially a plebeian instinct, a relic from barbaric days when the world was brimful of curiosities for the twilight intelligence of recently-born man.

But many decades taught him that unbridled curiosity ended in burnt fingers. Then he avoided with a fearful dread all that he did not know, and not the least of his tortures was occasioned by the Inexplicable straying upon him across the border from the Great Unknown. Later on he gets more nerve and he pioneers--still later he becomes scientific and investigates. And when the facts are more or less all in, his curiosity instead of his investigativity once again gets the better of him, and he fortune-tells and goes table-rapping, and tries to la.s.soo his astral body and to open up direct communication with those ”not lost but gone before.” It is, one might say with some truth, a mark of spiritual breeding to know how to acquiesce. Somehow one cannot picture the greatest of the G.o.ds tremendously excited. Equanimity is at least more dignified and always useful.

Nor should prophecy be confused with fortune-telling, for it is to the latter what investigation is to inquisitiveness.

And inquisitiveness was always bad form. The personal factor looms too large.

Ah! how infinitely colossal and strangely beautiful is that great thing the Future, that ever bears down upon us from across the seas of Time. That dark tidal wave bearing great histories in its bosom and pregnant with joys and sorrows for us all. The gymnastics of living philosophers teach us that Time does not exist--but to me here in Kut it is almost the only real thing. O Futura Divina Ignota! thou mighty engulfing wave advancing from horizon to horizon upon us, with Change and Hope lightly treading thy combing crest--how pricelessly excellent a thing art thou, and what could we do without thee? Whence art thou? From what distant regions of Eternity art thou sped, on what strange sh.o.r.es do thy billows break! We know not. It is beautiful not to know. And thus is Faith born. Thou art a beautiful stranger. We dread thee not. We trust thee--for thou art G.o.d.