A CAUSE OF FAILURE

In spite of all my inquiries that night, I could discover nothing of a satisfactory nature. The reports I obtained were conflicting. One man had it that he was wounded badly, and left dying on No Man’s Land; another told me he had seen him taken prisoner by two Germans; another, still, that he was seen to break away from them. But everything was confused and contradictory. The truth was, that there was a great deal of hand-to-hand fighting, and when that is the case it is ofttimes difficult to tell what becomes of a single individual. The fact remained, however, that he was missing, and no one knew anything definite about him.

As a battalion officer, moreover, I had many duties to perform, and in spite of my desires, I had to give up my inquiries about him, and attend to my work.

The following day I was sitting in my quarters, and was on the point of writing a letter to Lorna Bolivick, telling her what had taken place, when my orderly informed me that a soldier wished to see me.

‘He gave me this, sir,’ added Jenkins, handing me a slip of paper.

No sooner did I see it than, starting to my feet, I rushed to the door, and saw Paul Edgecumbe, pale and wan, but standing erect nevertheless.

I quickly got him into the room of the cottage where I was billeted, and then took a second look at him.

‘You are ill wounded, man! You ought not to be here,’ I said, scarcely realizing what I was saying.

’The wound’s nothing, sir. I lost a little blood, that’s all; and I got the M.O.’s consent to come and see you. I shall be right as ever in two or three days.’

‘You are sure of that?’ I asked eagerly.

‘Certain, sir.’

I laughed aloud, I was so much relieved. I need not send my letter to Lorna Bolivick after-all.

‘I’ve wasted a lot of good sentiment over you, Edgecumbe,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard all sorts of things about you.’

‘I did have a curious experience,’ he replied, ’and at one time I thought my number was up; still I got out of it.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

’It’s very difficult, sir. As I told you, my memory has been specially good since the time whenbut you know. In these skirmishes, however, it’s difficult to carry anything definite in your mind, things get mixed up so. You are fighting for your life, and that’s all you know. Two German chaps did get hold of me, and then, I don’t know how it was, but we found ourselves in No Man’s Land. The Huns were two big, strong chaps, too, but I managed to get away from them.’

‘How did you do it?’

‘You see they were drugged,’ he replied.

‘Drugged?’

’Yes, drugged with ether, or something of that sort, and although they fought as though they were possessed with devils, their minds were not clear, they acted like men dazed. So I watched for my opportunity, and got it. I spent the whole day in a shell hole, it wasn’t pleasant, I can tell you. Still, it offered very good cover, and if my arm hadn’t been bleeding, and if I wasn’t so beastly faint and hungry, I shouldn’t have minded. However, I tied up my arm as well as I could, and made up my mind to stay there. I got back under the cover of night, and here I am.’

‘I saw nothing of the affair,’ I said. ’I had a job to do farther back, and so was out of it. I wish I had been in it.’

‘I wish you had, sir.’ There was a change in his voice, and he looked at me almost pathetically.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Of course I have no right to say anything,’ he said. ’Discipline is discipline, and I am only a private soldier. Are you busy, sir? If you are, I will go away. But, owing to this scratch, I am at a loose end, and and I’d like a chat with you, sir, if you don’t mind.’

‘Say what you want to say.’

He was silent for a little while, and seemed to be in doubt how to express what he had in his mind. I saw the old, yearning, wistful look in his eyes, too, the look I had noticed when we were walking on The Hoe at Plymouth.

‘Has your memory come back?’ I asked eagerly. ’Has it anything to do with that?’

‘No,’ he replied, ’my memory has not come back. The old black wall stands still, and yet I think it has something to do with it. I am afraid I forget myself sometimes, sir, forget that you are an officer, and I am a private.’

‘Never mind about that now. Tell me what you have to say.’

’This war has shaken me up a bit, it has made me think. I don’t know what kind of a man I was before I lost my memory; but I have an idea that I look at things without prejudice. You see, I have no preconceived notions. I am a full-grown man starting life with a clean page, that’s why I can’t understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘I don’t think I am a religious man,’ he went on, without seeming to heed me. ’When we were in England I went to Church parade and all that sort of thing, but it had no effect upon me; it seemed to mean nothing. Perhaps it will some day, I don’t know. At present I look at things from the outside; I judge by face values. Forgive me if I am talking a great deal about myself, sir, and pardon me if I seem egotistical, I don’t mean to be. But you are the only officer with whom I am friendly, and I was led to look upon you as a man of influence in England. The truth is, I am mystified, confused, bewildered. Either I am wrong, mad; or else we are waging this war in a wrong way.’

‘Yes, how?’

’While I was in the training camps, I was so much influenced by that speech which you gave in Plymouth, that I determined to study the causes of this war carefully. I did so. I gave months to it. I read the whole German case from their own standpoint. I thought out the whole thing as clearly as I was able, and certainly I had no prejudices.’

‘Well?’ I asked.

’If ever a country ought to have gone to war, we ought. If ever a country had a righteous cause, we had, and have; if ever a Power needed crushing, it was German power. Prussianism is the devil. I tell you, I have been physically sick as I have read the story of what they did in Belgium and France. I have gone, as far as I have been able, to the tap-roots of the whole business. I have got at the philosophy of the German position. I have studied the resources of our country; I have tried to realize what we stand for. I fancy I must have been a fairly intelligent man before I lost my memory. Perhaps I was tolerably well educated, too. Anyhow, I think I have got a grasp of the whole position.’

I did not speak, but waited for him to proceed.

’I am saying this, sir, that you may see that I am not talking wildly, and my conviction is that Germany ought to have been beaten before now; but it’s nowhere like beaten, the devil stalks about undaunted.’

‘You forget that Germany is a great country,’ I answered, ’and that she is supported by Austria, and Turkey, and Bulgaria. You forget, too, that she had all the advantages at the start, and that she had been preparing for this for forty years. You forget that she had the finest trained fighting machine in the world, the biggest and best-equipped army ever known. You forget, too, that she took the world practically unawares, and that all her successes, especially in the West, were gained at the beginning.’

‘No, I do not forget,’ he replied, and there was passion in his voice; ’I have gone through all that; I made allowance for it. All the same, they ought to have been beaten before now. Anyhow, their backs ought to have been broken, and we ought to be within sight of the end.’

’I am afraid I don’t understand. The whole resources of the country have been strained to the utmost. Besides, see what we have done; see the army we have made; think of all the preparations in big guns and munitions!’

‘Yes, yes,’ he cried, ’but man-power is the final court of appeal, and we have been wasting our man-power, wasting it, wasting it!’

’What do you mean by that? A finer lot of men never put on uniform than we had.’

’In a way you are right. No one could admire the heroism of our fellows more than I do. You have to get farther back.’

‘How can we get farther back?’

‘You have to get back to the Government. Look here, Luscombe,’ and evidently he had forgotten the difference in our ranks, ’let me put the case into a nutshell. I was sent over here, to France, in a hurry. Never mind how I found out what I am going to tell you, it is a fact. Two battalions of ours were urgently ordered here; our men here were hardly pressed, the Germans outnumbered us. Our chaps hadn’t enough rest, and the slaughter was ghastly. So we were ordered over to relieve them, and the command was that we were to travel night and day, so urgent was the necessity.

’What happened? The boat by which I came was held up in the harbour for twenty-four hours. Why? I am not talking without my book, I know, I have made investigations, and I will tell you why. The firemen were in public-houses, and would not come away. And the Government allowed those public-houses to be open; the Government allowed those firemen to drink until they were in an unfit condition to take us across. The Government allowed the stuff that robbed them of their manhood, and of their sense of responsibility, to be manufactured. The Government allowed private individuals to make fortunes out of that stuff! Just think of it! There we were, all waiting, but we could not go. Why could not we go? Why were we held up, when the lives of thousands of others depended upon us? when the success of the war probably depended upon it? Drink! there is your answer in one word.

’Here’s this affair of the last two or three days; it didn’t come off. Ammunition was wasted, men’s lives were wasted, hearts were broken; but it didn’t come off. Why was it?

’What are we fighting? We are fighting devilry, inhumanity, Prussian barbarism. Search your dictionary, and you can’t find names too bad to describe what we are fighting. But in order to do it, we use one of the devil’s chief weapons, which is robbing us of victory.

There was a strange intensity in his voice, and I think he forgot all about himself in what he said.

‘Look here,’ he went on, ’you remember how some time ago we were crying out for munitions. “Let us have more guns, more munitions,” we said. The Germans, who had been preparing for war for so many years, had mountains of it, and as some one has said, thousands of our men were blown into bloody rags each day. And we could not answer back. We had neither guns nor shells. Why?’

‘Because we were not properly organized. You see

’Yes, it was partly that, but more because our power was wasted, in the gun factories and the munition factories. You know as well as I do that it was on the continual and persistent work of the people in those factories that our supplies depended. What happened? Hundreds, thousands of them left work at noon on Saturdays, and then started drinking, and did not appear at their work until the Tuesday or Wednesday following, and when they came they were inefficient, muddled. Work that required skilled hands and clear brains had to be done by trembling hands and muddled brains. The War Minister told us that there was a wastage of 10 per cent. of our munition-making power. He told us, too, that between thirty and forty days of the whole working force of the country were lost every year, what by? Drink.

’And meanwhile our chaps out here were killed by the thousand, because of shortage of munitions. Is it any wonder that the war drags on? Is it any wonder that we are not gaining ground? We were told months ago that we should shorten the war by blockading Germany, by keeping food from the nation. Now I hear rumours that there is going to be a shortage of food in our own country. Whether that will be the case or not, I don’t know. If there is a shortage, it will be our own fault. I see by the English newspapers that bread is becoming dearer every day, and people say that there’ll soon be a scarcity, and all the time millions upon millions of bushels of grain intended for man’s food is being wasted in breweries and distilleries. Hundreds of thousands of tons of sugar, which are almost essential to human life, are utilized for man’s damnation; and all by the consent of the Government.

’When the war broke out, the King signed the pledge, so did Lord Kitchener, so did the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Did the people follow? They only laughed. I tell you, Luscombe, every distillery and every brewery is lengthening the war, and I sometimes doubt whether we shall ever win it, until the nation is purged of this crime! Yes, we are making vast preparations, and we have raised a fine Army. But all the time, we are like a man trying to put out a fire by pouring water on it with one hand, and oil with the other.’

‘But, my dear chap,’ I said, ’these brewers and distillers have put their fortunes into their business, and they employ thousands of hands. Would you rob them of their properties, and would you throw all these people out of work?’

‘Great God! man,’ was his reply, ’but the country’s at stake, the Empire’s at stake! Truth, righteousness, liberty are at stake! If we don’t win in this war, German devilry will rule the world, and shall the country allow the Trade, as it calls itself, to batten upon the vitals of the nation? That’s why I am bewildered. I told you just now that perhaps I look at things differently from what I ought to look at them. I have lost all memory of my past life, and I judge these things by their face value, without any preconceived notions or prejudices. I have to begin de novo, and perhaps can’t take into account all the forces which have been growing up through the ages. But, Heavens! man, this is a crisis! and if we are going to win this war, not only must every one do his bit, but all that weakens and all that destroys the resources of the nation must be annihilated!’

Our conversation came abruptly to an end at that moment, caused by the entrance of my orderly, who told me that a gentleman wished to see me.

‘Who is it, Jenkins?’ I asked.

‘Major St. Mabyn, sir.’

He had scarcely spoken when, with a lack of ceremony common at the front, George St. Mabyn entered.

’Ah, there you are, Luscombe! Did you know that both Springfield and I have had a remove? We got here last night. I fancy there are going to be busy times. I was awfully glad when I heard you were here too.’

‘No, I never heard of your coming,’ I replied, ’but this is really a great piece of luck.’

I had scarcely uttered the words, when I turned towards Paul Edgecumbe, who was looking steadily at St. Mabyn. There was no suggestion of recognition in his eyes, but I noticed that far-away wistful look, as though he were trying to remember something.

Instinctively I turned towards George St. Mabyn, who at that moment first gave a glance at Edgecumbe. Then I felt sure that although Edgecumbe knew nothing of St. Mabyn, his presence startled the other very considerably. There was a look in George St. Mabyn’s eyes difficult to describe; doubt, wonder, fear, astonishment, were all there. His ruddy cheeks became pale, too, and I was sure his lips quivered.

‘Who who have you got here?’ he asked.

‘It’s a chap who has got knocked about in a scrap,’ I replied.

St. Mabyn gave Edgecumbe a second look, and then I thought his face somewhat cleared. His colour came back; his lips ceased twitching.

‘What did you say your name was, my man?’

‘Edgecumbe, sir.’

‘D.C.L.I., I see.’

‘Yes, sir.’ He saluted as he spoke, and left the room, while George St. Mabyn stood looking after him.