No More Parades - Ford Madox Ford (the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT) 📗

men in Poperinghe. It was reasonable to shell a town where men were being assembled⁠ ⁠… Or we might have been shelling one of their towns with an Army H.Q. in it. So they shelled Poperinghe in the silent grey day⁠ ⁠… That was according to the rules of the service⁠ ⁠… General Campion, accepting with equanimity what German airplanes did to the hospitals, camps, stables, brothels, theatres, boulevards, chocolate stalls and hotels of his town, would have been vastly outraged if Hun planes had dropped bombs on his private lodgings⁠ ⁠… The rules of war!⁠ ⁠… You spare, mutually, each other’s headquarters and blow to pieces girls that are desired by six thousand men apiece⁠ ⁠…

That had been nineteen months before!⁠ ⁠… Now, having lost so much emotion, he saw the embattled world as a map⁠ ⁠… An embossed map of greenish papier-mâché. The blood of O Nine Morgan was blurring luminously over it. At the extreme horizon was territory labelled White Ruthenians! Who the devil were those poor wretches?

He exclaimed to himself: “By heavens! Is this epilepsy?” He prayed: “Blessed saints, get me spared that!” He exclaimed: “No, it isn’t!⁠ ⁠… I’ve complete control of my mind. My uppermost mind.” He said to the general:

“I can’t divorce, sir. I’ve no grounds.”

The general said:

“Don’t lie. You know what Thurston knows. Do you mean that you have been guilty of contributory misconduct?⁠ ⁠… Whatever it is? And can’t divorce! I don’t believe it.”

Tietjens said to himself:

“Why the devil am I so anxious to shield the whore? It’s not reasonable. It is an obsession!”

White Ruthenians are miserable people to the south of Lithuania. You don’t know whether they incline to the Germans or to the Poles. The Germans don’t even know⁠ ⁠… The Germans were beginning to take their people out of the line where we were weak: they were going to give them proper infantry training. That gave him, Tietjens, a chance. They would not come over strong for at least two months. It meant, though, a great offensive in the spring. Those fellows had sense. In the poor, beastly trenches the Tommies knew nothing but how to chuck bombs. Both sides did that. But the Germans were going to cure it! Stood chucking bombs at each other from forty yards. The rifle was obsolete! Ha! ha! Obsolete!⁠ ⁠… The civilian psychology!

The general said:

“No, I don’t believe it. I knew you did not keep any girl in any tobacco-shop. I remember every word you said at Rye in 1912. I wasn’t sure then. I am now. You tried to let me think it. You had shut up your house because of your wife’s misbehaviour. You let me believe you had been sold up. You weren’t sold up at all.”

… Why should it be the civilian psychology to chuckle with delight, uproariously, when the imbecile idea was promulgated that the rifle was obsolete? Why should public opinion force on the War Office a training-camp course that completely cut out any thorough instruction in the rifle and communication drill? It was queer⁠ ⁠… It was of course disastrous. Queer. Not altogether mean. Pathetic, too⁠ ⁠…

“Love of truth!” the general said. “Doesn’t that include a hatred for white lies? No; I suppose it doesn’t, or your servants could not say you were not at home⁠ ⁠…”

… Pathetic! Tietjens said to himself. Naturally the civilian population wanted soldiers to be made to look like fools: and to be done in. They wanted the war won by men who would at the end be either humiliated or dead. Or both. Except, naturally, their own cousins or fiancées’ relatives. That was what it came to. That was what it meant when important gentlemen said that they had rather the war were lost than that cavalry should gain any distinction in it!⁠ ⁠… But it was partly the simple, pathetic illusion of the day that great things could only be done by new inventions. You extinguished the Horse, invented something very simple and became God! That is the real pathetic fallacy. You fill a flowerpot with gunpowder and chuck it in the other fellow’s face, and hey presto! the war is won. All the soldiers fall down dead! And You: you who forced the idea on the reluctant military, are the Man that Won the War. You deserve all the women in the world. And⁠ ⁠… you get them! Once the cavalry are out of the way!⁠ ⁠…

The general was using the words:

“Head master!” It brought Tietjens completely back. He said collectedly:

“Really, sir, why this strafe of yours is so terribly long is that it embraces the whole of life.”

The general said:

“You’re not going to drag a red herring across the trail⁠ ⁠… I say you regarded me as a head master in 1912. Now I am your commanding officer⁠—which is the same thing. You must not peach to me. That’s what you call the Arnold of Rugby touch⁠ ⁠… But who was it said: Magna est veritas et prev⁠ ⁠… Prev something!”

Tietjens said:

“I don’t remember, sir.”

The general said:

“What was the secret grief your mother had? In 1912? She died of it. She wrote to me just before her death and said she had great troubles. And begged me to look after you, very specially! Why did she do that?” He paused and meditated. He asked: “How do you define Anglican sainthood? The other fellows have canonizations, all shipshape like Sandhurst examinations. But us Anglicans⁠ ⁠… I’ve heard fifty persons say your mother was a saint. She was. But why?”

Tietjens said:

“It’s the quality of harmony, sir. The quality of being in harmony with your own soul. God having given you your own soul you are then in harmony with heaven.”

The general said:

“Ah, that’s beyond me⁠ ⁠… I suppose you will refuse any money I leave you in my will?”

Tietjens said:

“Why, no, sir.”

The general said:

“But you refused your father’s money. Because he believed things against you. What’s the difference?”

Tietjens said:

“One’s friends ought to believe that one is a gentleman. Automatically. That is what makes one and them in harmony. Probably your friends are your friends because they look