Mr. Blunden's War Scenes
Undertones of War. By Edmund Blunden. (Cobden. Sanderson. 10s. 6d.) IT is one of the most difficult things in the world, as all those who have been in wars will acknowledge, to recaptUre the feelings of the fighting-man. Nature is kind in at least this respect, that she provides mankind with a high power of un- conscious adaptability. Some writers in the attempt at recapture have interpreted their sensations as though they had been a fine, careless rapture, and others as though their sensations had been the high road to demoralization. Neither extreme is typically true. The normal man, though intui- tively avoiding extremes, nevertheless knows that his memory is searching back for the truth rather blindly. War insensibly changes the whole standard of emotions. A man waits on death ; he beholds a dead friend without surprise ; and in the presence of death -he condeinns himself- for not feeling more strongly. If war has made him less sensitive it has mercifully made him also more able to endure: Mr. Blunden says that he tried to write down his impres- sions while the War was still going on, and he himself hap- pened to be temporarily in a backwater. His writing was " noisy with a forced gaiety then very much the rage." This self-criticism has the touch of unmistakable truth. Everyone who has braced himself for a great physical test, whether in a serious emergency or in a game, has had the inclination to throw out signals of confidence and calm, and may afterwards have reflected with humiliation upon the holloviness and feeble jocularity of the expressions which had seemed suitable at the great moment. But lapse of time has been dimming Mr. Blunden's distortions, and he has tried again. We are very grateful to him for having done-so: He writes, as he tells us, in undertones, but the image and horror of war are presented here as no other writer about the Great War has quite pre- sented them. The thing is done by an accumulation of inci- dents and thotights, each bearing a strong resemblance to the rest, but each having a character and quality of its own. Mr. Blunden looks at the War first through the eyes of prose and then through the eyes of poetry, and in both forms the under- tones are able to shake the reader with vibrations which would hardly have reached him from a full diapason.
- One might gather from Mr. Blunden's writing that his attitude towards war was professionally indifferent, and that fear clutched his body whenever he was called upon fora new venture. This is a confession not usually made, but one which can fairly be supplied by the reader in most cases. For how, after all, could there be heroism without fear ? The, more a man makes his actions override fear, the greater is his credit. Prowess without fear would be valuable materially, but spiritually meaningless. It is only a careful reading of
Mr. Blunden that enables one to see how far he carried the process of mastery. On one occasion he invented a method of wiring whiPh enabled a belt of wire to be completed so quickly that a passing General was astonished 'at the performance. Mr. Blunden does not emphasize this to get our good opinion ; it comes out incidentally—in an undertone. And he was re- commended for a coMpany when the higher powers thought he was too young for this promotion: - - We should like to know more about Worley, Mr, Blunden's Corporal, who seems to be hovering over the narrative as a familiar_ spirit. We first make acquaintanee with Corporal Worley in these words •
" Taking my meditative way along to the other extremity of our trench, I was genially desired by Corporal Worley to take cocoa with him ; he was just bringing it to the boil over some shreds of sand- bag and -tallow. candle.. Scarcely_ had I grasped the friendly mug, when a rifle-grenade burst fining on the parapet behind me and another onthe parados behind him ; and we were unhit, Worley's courtesy and warm feeling went on, undiverted as though a butterfly or two had settled on a flower. -A kinder heart there never was ; a gentler spirit never. With his blue eyes a little doubtfully fixed on me, his red cheeks a little redder than usual, he would speak in terms of regret for what he thought his roughness, saying dolefully that he had been in the butchering trade all his time. Where now, Frank Worley ? I should like an answer. He was for ever comforting those youngsters who were so numerous among us ; even as the shrapnel burst over the fire-bay he-would be saying without altered tone, don't fret, lay still,' and such-like things:"
Mr. Blunden's query fills our mind like Browning's " What's become of Waring ? " We really want to know. The appeal to Worley to reveal himself is repeated more than once in the book. Surely he will do it. The companionship of these two affects us like that wonderful eighteenth-century companionship between master and servant—between Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim.
It is always interesting to note what books are read by an intelligent man who can carry very few with him. Mr. Bltmderi mentions the poems of John Clare, Young's Night ThoUghts, and a magazine containing poems by .Mr. Siegfried Sessoo lie puts his gratitude to Young on record " During this period my indebtedness to an eighteenth century poet became enormous. At every spare moment I read in Young's Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality, and I felt the benefit of this grave and intellectual voice, speaking out of a profound eighteenth century calm, often in metaphor which came home to one even in a pillbox. The mere amusement of discovering lines applicable to our crisis kept me from despair."
Most of the poems at the end of the book have not been seen before, though " Third Ypres " _ is well . known. This varied book has its own brilliant unity, for through it all runs the paradox of the man who hates war being fascinated into a real, if reluctant, aptitude for it.
Previous page
