MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
WHEN I was a little boy battles always happened in places to which nobody had ever been. The -word " Omdurman " meant nothing more to us than the name of Kitchener's victory ; it was only many years later that some of us actually saw the pink outlines of the Kerere hurl. The South African war, again, was for us a large map propped upon an easel in Great .School, upon which members of the sixth form were allowed, after the morning papers had arrived, to pin small flags. Magersfontein and Spion Kop were names of misery ; Ladysmith and Mafeking were names of glory. It was our habit in those days to identify. the fortunes of war with the personalities of the several. generals ; photographs of these soldiers were printed upon buttons, and it was customary to wear in the lapel of one's coat the particular hero whom one affected. Redvers Buller was my hero, since his daughter had been at school with my favourite cousin. After the battle of Colenso the Buller stock slumped badly. I continued defiantly to wear my Buller button with what I now recognise to have been a precocious passion for lost causes. When Buller returned to England I sub- stituted another button bearing the self-assertive semblance of Baden Powell. My father reproved me for this ; for some curious reason he held the view that Baden Powell did not represent the tradition of selfless silent service which has for so long rendered the British Army inarticulate. So I thereafter donned the un- controversial button of Sir George White, the hero of Ladysmith. Yet throughout that trying period (to ourselves exciting, to our elders almost intolerable) the names and places of the war were no more than symbols. They possessed no hinterland whatsoever in our own experience.
* * * * I remember that I used to resent this gap between my own knowledge and the dramatic events which were happening overseas. From the north window of the schoolroom one looked out over the playing-field, the cricket pavilion and the London, Chatham and Dover Railway to the line of the Downs. Caesar's Camp became for me Majuba and the Sugar Loaf became Spion Kop. I was only slightly disconcerted when informed lay a master that Majuba belonged, not to the current war, but to a previous war of 1881. "It was the place," he said, "where Colley fell." And on Sundays, when we were taken out to walk upon the downs, I would climb the steep ascent of Caesar's Camp, conscious that I was under direct fire from the neighbouring height of Spion Kop, but conscious also thit I must acquit myself with heroism not inferior to that which Sir George Pomeroy Colley had displayed. I remember also that when in later years I came to study other wars I was filled with a half-incredulous envy that they should have happened in places and over hills and forests which I knew myself. How difficult it was to imagine, in the sleepy scholarly town of Jena, that the guns had belched fire from the little ridge above the river ; how strange it was to think that within living memory the Prussians had stabled their horses in the Orangery of St. Cloud. It seemed impossible that European armies, although they might well don their topees and fight amongst the sands of Africa, should with infinite deliberation smash and batter the monuments which Europe herself had raised. The First German War destroyed this illusion. Louvain went up in flames and the Cloth Hall at Ypres became no more than a jagged stump. Yet, after all, the last war affected mainly the ancient battle-grounds of Europe ; it is her pleasure-grounds which in this war are being assailed.
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The Germans in their great withdrawal evacuate Smolensk, 'and I think of Vereshchagin's pictures. of the 1812 campaign and see gold cupolas and crosses against an autumn sky. We creep- into Samos, and the mind flicks back to Polycrates or C,anaris and the bowl of Samian wine which Byron relished so much in 181o. Cos is captured, and we think of lettuces, Theocritus and the beautiful
Apelles. Leros becomes qurs, and we delight at the liberation o the mihappy Greeks and at the thought of possessing an excellen, harbour in a very suitable place. All these associations and memories are quite appropriate, and we respond to them witi normal feelings of interest or delight. But how incongruous an the thoughts aroused when we hear that we have captured Capri! How difficult it is to combine thoughts of Kesselring and Norman Douglas, of San Michele and Amgot, of Tiberius and some brigade. major from Dayton, Ohio, chewing the eternal cud of home-sickness, We know that around Amalfi and Raven° the chinks and crevasses, from, which in peace time pink geraniumi flowed, are choked with blood and rubble. We know that beyond these sun-drenched, blood-drenched terraces there hangs a pall of smoke from burning Naples. We know that the tomb of Virgil looks out today upon sunk ships and battered harbour works. We know that Baiae is not today the happiest angle in the world. But we do not know as yet whether anything at all remains of Pompeii. We do not know how far the Germans, in their long and bitter retreat to the valley of the Po, will wish to brand upon the face of Italy the cruel marks of their displeasure.
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We live in a democratic age, and it is regarded as reactionary by the worshippers, of mass-feeling to protest against the destruction of beautiful places which were in the past the' pleasure-grounds of the rich. I confess that I was distressed recently to observe that the clamour for the bombing of Rome arose, not only from a curious residue of anti-Catholic prejudice, but also from a quite recognisable admixture of class feeling. I should indeed despair of Socialis were it to deny those virtues which the aristocracy practised, to reject those excellent pleasures, intellectual and aesthetic, whit it 'enjoyed. The Socialist is justified in claiming that it is unfai that people in the higher income-groups, should alone have enjoye the benefits of foreign travel; but to rejoice at the destruction objects of eternal and universal merit is to deny the humaniti I do not blame the worker in a factory if he is indifferent to th destruction of the Greek temples at Paestum but I do cond those who know the value of those temples and who, throu fear of popular criticism, hesitate to sound the alirm. The peop of this country, although they possess a shy and delicate sen of natural beauty, have but small appreciation of the arts. Th• battle which may rage between Assisi and Perugia will mean littl more to them than the battle which, raged between Medjez an Hamman Lif. That they should have so vague a sense of valu is a criticism of our State education. It may -well be necess that we should pursue the Germans to the Po and beyond wi relentless obduracy; but we should remind our people that it a far more dreadful thing to bombard Assisi than it is to bombar Bizerta, and that the destruction of Messina or even Naples is no way comparable with the destruction of Siena. The brain Europe today is stunned by four years of horror ; the conscien of Europe has been atrophied ; but if Italy is to be reduced t rubble then neither the conscience nor the brain of Europe w ever be the same again.
* * * * Many years have passed since the days when I would gaze o of the school-room window and wish that battles would sometim take place in places which I knew myself. In those days def only brought sadness and victory always unmitigated delight. it reactionary or sentimental to dread 'the battles which will no take place from Naples to Garda? The Germans know that, wi Foggia and Corsica in our hands, they, will be bound before lo to withdraw from central Italy. Is it beyond human intelligen to hope that this withdrawal takes place without destruction? wisdom so bankrupt that we cannot contrive some neutral zo between Avernus and the Appenines? Is there no course open us other than the destruction of the irreplaceable?
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