Hirgen at 04:18, 19 September 2008

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Hirgen at 20:24, 7 September 2008

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<CENTER>IX 

AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES</CENTER>

 OF course one cannot mention his name. He always disliked publicity.
It was a source of pride with him that his name had never appeared
in the papers. Unless it appears in the "Roll of Honor,"
it probably never will. Let us call him "the Average Englishman."
It is what he used to aim at being, and if such a being can be
said to exist, surely he was it.

 As regards philosophizing---well, he simply didn't. He had
not read philosophy at a University, and he never would think
things out. He disapproved of men in his position attempting anything
of the sort. He considered it a waste of time and rather unwholesome.
To talk about one's innermost convictions he regarded as indecent.
The young curate from Oxford, who talks best about God after a
bottle of champagne, shocked him badly. He said that it was blasphemous.
His own point of view was a modest one. Where the learned differed
so widely, he argued, it was hardly likely that his inadequate
mental equipment would help him to a sound conclusion. The nearest
approach to a philosophy that he possessed was wholly practical,
empirical, even opportunist. It was not a philosophy at all, but
a code of honor and morals, based partly on tradition and partly
on his own shrewd observation of the law of cause and effect as
illustrated in the lives of his neighbors. As a philosophy it
remained unformulated. He refused even to discuss its philosophical
and theological implications. In fact, his was "the religion
of all sensible men," and "sensible men don't tell"
what that is.

 It suited him to be outwardly orthodox. His mother liked him
to take her to church on Sunday. To see him doing so increased
the confidence of his professional clientèle. Also,
the vicar was a friend of his, and played a capital game of golf.
So he was orthodox; but abstract truth was not his job. He left
that to the parsons and professors.

 That this was the standpoint which he adopted is not altogether
surprising. It worked. It enabled him to meet quite adequately
all the mild exigencies of his uneventful life and unexciting
personality. For his life was dull and his personality far too
habitually restrained to offer any sensations. If hidden fires
had ever burned beneath his somewhat conventional exterior, they
had received no encouragement, and had soon died out for want
of air.

 Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, he found himself lifted out of
his office chair, and after a short interval deposited "somewhere
in France." Here he found himself leading a ridiculously
uncivilized and uncomfortable life, and standing in constant danger
of being blown to pieces. Naturally the transition was a little
bewildering. Outwardly he remained calm; but below the surface
strange things were happening ---nothing less than a complete
readjustment of his mental perspective. Somehow his code, hitherto
so satisfactory, failed to suffice for the new situation in which
he found himself. The vaguely good-natured selfishness which had
earned for him the title of "good fellow" in the quiet
days of peace did not quite fit in with the new demands made on
his personality. Much against his will, he had to try to think
things out.

 It was an unmitigated nuisance. His equipment was so poor.
He had read so little that was of any use to him. All that he
could remember were some phrases from the Bible, some verses from
Omar Khayyám, and a sentence or two from the Latin Syntax.
And then his brain was so unaccustomed to this sort of effort.
It made him quite tired; but it had to be done. A man couldn't
sit in a trench hour after hour and day after day with shells
whizzing through the air over his head, or bursting thunderously
ten yards from him, without trying to get some grip of his mental
attitude towards them. He could not see his comrades killed and
maimed and mutilated without in some way defining his views on
life and death and duty and fate. He could not shoot and bayonet
his fellow men without trying to formulate some justification
for such an unprecedented course of action. His mind was compelled
to react to the new and extraordinary situations with which it
was confronted. And, oddly enough, in the course of these successive
reactions he passed, without knowing it, very close to the path
trodden before him by some of the greatest teachers of the world.

 To begin with, it came as something of a shock to discover
that the Rubáiyát, hitherto his most fruitful
source of quotations., was quite useless to him. It was futile
to talk about the cup when one had nothing to put in it, and as
for refusing to take life seriously---well, Omar lived before
the days of high explosives. The Latin Syntax was a little better.
It at any rate provided him with Dulce et decorum est pro patria
mori, but even that seemed to be framed more for the comfort
of his sorrowing relatives in the event of his "stopping
a bullet" than for himself. As for the Bible---well, there
were some jolly things in that, but he was rather shy about the
Bible. It didn't seem quite playing the game to go to it now when
he had neglected it so long; besides, these higher critics---well,
he hadn't gone into the matter, but he had a pretty shrewd idea
that the Bible was a bit discredited. No, he would just go by
facts and their effect on himself, and do his best out of his
own head.

 One afternoon he was in a support trench, and the Germans had
got the direction pretty right, and were enfilading it at a long
range with their heavy guns. The shells began by dropping at the
far end of the trench, which they blew to pieces most successfully.
They then began to creep up in his direction, the range lengthening
about twenty-five yards after each half-dozen shells. Would they
reach him? Would he be at the end or in the middle of this beastly
interval of twenty-five yards? In short, would the shells drop
on top of him or about ten yards short or ten yards over? It was
an agonizing half-hour, and in the course of it he very nearly
became a Mohammedan. He didn't call it that. But he tried to read
a comic paper, and told himself that it was simply a question
of fate. "I can't do anything about it, " he said to
himself. "If the damned thing drops, it drops; I can't stop
it by worrying." Fate, that was the solution. "Kismet!"
he repeated to himself, thinking, in a moment of inspiration,
of Oscar Asche. As a matter of fact, the enfilade was not perfect,
and as the shells crept up the exact direction was lost, and they
burst harmlessly about fifteen yards behind the trench instead
of in it. The Average Englishman murmured. "Praise be to
Allah!" and relit his pipe, which had gone out.

 Then a day or two later his company was moved up to the firing
trench. Somehow the "Kismet" formula did not seem so
effective there. The Germans were only about twenty-five yards
away, the barbed wire had been badly knocked about, and the beasts
had an unpleasant habit of creeping up at night through the long
grass and throwing bombs into the trench. It was no longer a question
of sitting tight and waiting; one had to watch very carefully,
and the element of retaliation came in, too. He found himself
sitting up half the night with a pile of bombs on the sandbags
in front of him, watching the grass with straining eyes. It was
nervous work. He had never thrown a bomb. Of course it was quite
simple. You just pulled a pin out, counted four, and let fly.
But supposing you dropped the beastly thing! Though it was a cold
night, he sweated at the thought. Self-confidence was what he
wanted now---self-confidence and the will to conquer. Where that
last phrase came from he was not sure. He luckily did not realize
how near he was to becoming a disciple of the Hunnish Nietzsche!
"The will to prevail," that was the phrase which pleased
him; and he thought to himself that it would suit a charge, too,
if one came his way.

 But the next morning it rained. The trench being a brand-new
one, there were no dug-outs, and he had to stand in water and
get wet. It was horrible. "Kismet" irritated him; "the
will to prevail" did not help. Yet it was no use grousing.
It only made matters worse for himself and the other fellows.
Then he remembered a phrase from a boys' club in poorer London;
"Keep smiling" was the legend written over the door,
and he remembered that the motto on the club button was "Fratres."
By God, those kids had a pretty thin time of it! But yet, somehow,
when all the "Fratres" had made a determined effort
to keep smiling, the result was rather wonderful. Yes, "Keep
smiling" was the best motto he could find for a wet day,
and he tried hard to live up to it.

 At last the battalion went into reserve, and was unutterably
bored for a week. By night they acted as ration carriers, and
improved communication trenches. By day they endured endless inspections,
slept a little, and grumbled much. Our Average Englishman tried
hard to keep smiling, but failed miserably. This made him wonder
whether, on his return to the trenches, his other formulæ
would also fail him. But on the day before they went back into
support one of the corporals fell sick, and much to his surprise
he was hurriedly given one stripe and put in command of a section.

 This promotion pleased him. He took the responsibility with
extreme seriousness, and became quite fatherly in his attitude
towards his "command." This was all the easier because
that particular section had lost heavily during the preceding
spell in the trenches, and its ranks had been largely made up
from the members of a draft fresh from home.

 We do not propose to describe his experiences minutely. Much
the same thing happened as happened before. They were shelled
while in support, and he walked up and down his section encouraging
them and calming them down. In the firing trench the same bombs
were in readiness, and he spent most of the night with the sentry
to give him confidence. A bomb from a trench mortar actually fell
into his part of the trench, killing one lad and wounding two
more, and for the moment his hands were full steadying the others,
applying field dressings to the wounded, and seeing to their removal
from the trench.

 At length the battalion was relieved, and marched back to a
rest camp, where it spent three weeks of comparative peace. In
the intervals of presenting arms and acting as orderly corporal
the Average Englishman thought over his experiences, and it suddenly
struck him that during his fortnight as a section commander he
had actually forgotten to be afraid, or even nervous! It was really
astounding.

 Moreover, his mind rose to the occasion, and pointed out the
reason. He had been so anxious for his section that he had never
once thought of himself! With a feeling of utter astonishment,
he realized that he had stumbled upon the very roots of courage
---unselfishness. He, the Average Englishman, had made an epoch-making
philosophical discovery!

 Of course he did not know that the Buddha had discovered this
great truth some thousands of years before him. Still less did
he guess that the solution of all these problems with which war
had confronted him was contained in the religion in which he was
supposed to have been educated: that trust in the all-knowing
Father was Christ's loftier substitute for submission to fate;
that faith was the higher form of self-confidence; and that the
love that Christ taught was the Buddha's selflessness without
the incubus of his artificial philosophy. Nevertheless, he had
made great strides, and war has still fresh experiences in store
for him, and no doubt experience will continue to instruct. And
after all, how seldom does a "Christian education" teach
one anything worth knowing about Christianity!

IX AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES - Revision history

Hirgen at 04:18, 19 September 2008

Hirgen at 20:24, 7 September 2008