MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
Fr is generally assumed that in wax-time there must exist a certain tension between the soldier and the civilian, between the com- batant and the non-combatant. It would seem natural to suppose that those who after long encounters with death and suffering are accorded a few days at home should look upon our comforts, or our small discomforts, with enmity or contempt. It would seem inevitable that the boy who returns from some trans-Alpine flight, or from the cold darkness of a Murmansk convoy, should view with displeasure his soft-skinned uncle mumbling about the black- out from a warmed armchair. Certain it is that we, the elderly, are acutely sensitive to this difference, and feel embarrass- ment and shame when we catch in young, once restless, eyes the taut look of experience. Yet in fact, the warrior on leave is so anxious to remember peace that he is almost grateful to those who ignore war. The crusader must have been pleased rather than irritated on his return from those years of salt-marshes and scurvy to find his women folk still weaving the tapestry which they had begun the day he sailed. It was not with resentment or envy that on the eve of Agincourt King Henry referred to the civilians ; it was in terms of regretful sympathy. Nor can I recall that in the last war any displeasure was expressed by those who returned from Flanders to the music-hall gaiety with which the lights of London were then lit. The civilian should remember that the young warrior who has fought m Crete or at Alamein is not in the very least impressed by the tiny inconveniences which his parents may endure ; the wise parent shauld avoid all semblance of a common sacrifice, knowing it to be grotesquely disproportionate, and should seek only to create for those few days the sweet illusion that home at least is much the same.
This truth, I fear, is not always appreciated by my fellow- civilians. The young warrior is not in the least incensed when his grandfather bursts into invective because the club can no longer provide him with bottles of Haut Brion claret ; but he becomes bored and resentful when the same grandfather claims some share in military prowess, and tells boastful stories how, last Sunday, he was up till 2 a.m. with his company of the Home Guard. The elderly should remember that all they can give to the young is a sense of continuity ; they cannot convey any sense of common effort or experience ; let them hide their war-work and bring out the cakes and ale. I question even whether it be wise for the elderly to caricature their own absurd efforts, and to recount gay and vivid anecdotes of their own incompetence. The boy who has crept through the mine-fields of Libya is not amused in the least to hear that his father also, in Surrey, became entangled in a quick- set hedge. The boy on leave does not want, in any way, to be reminded of the unusual ; he wants to be assured that the familiar continues ; and the unselfish parent will not seek to divert him with tales of comic conduct in war-time, but to suggest to him that there will be more daffodils, this spring, under the apple-tree, or that they must plant together more willow-cuttings by the pond.
I do not wish to seem a traitor to my own age-group, or to deride the efforts which we make. I wish only to persuade my coevals to keep their public spirit and their incompetence hidden from those who fight. Among ourselves, however, we can discuss with interest and profit the amazing incompetence in all manual matters of those who have devoted their lives to intellectual pur- suits. My own ineptitude at war-work has been so exceptional, so immensely original, that it has left me with a sense, not so much of humiliation, as of blank astonishment. There was a time when I tried (and I really did try) to make munitions in my spare moments. I went to a training-centre. I have met with much kindness in my life, but never have I seen human love and pity so beautifully expressed as in the patience lavished upon me by my instructors. There were two of them, and they each discovered that in me they had found a whole-time job. While one of them would repair the tool that I had damaged, the other, with sweet forgivingness, would readjust the belt that I had displaced. The objects, which with great care and much exhaustion I would manu- facture, were at the end of the evening's class placed by themselves in a cardboard box, marked "N.G.," signifying (I have little doubt) "No good." I would leave the shop with my muscles twisting in pain, with my feet throbbing with flat-footedness, with my arms thick in oil, and in my hair large pools or splashes of that viscous liquid with which machine-tools are cooled. Fifty years of study and action had been taken from me ; I was back at school soiled and humiliated by physical incompetence. Grimly I reflected that I had missed my true vocation in life ; my true vocation was that of saboteur.
It may be, it must be, that to manufacture munitions is a task requiring quite exceptional skill and power. Yet nobody could pretend that to engage in fire-watching can entail, except at moments of actual crisis, any exceptional ability. Yet I have the impression that, even when there is no fire to watch, I do it badly. It is my proud function to watch the Palace of Westminster. In an illustrated paper some weeks ago I was glad to see several pages of photo- graphs devoted to the prowess and self-sacrifice of those of us who, at night time, guard the mother of Parliaments. My colleagues in those photographs were represented in tin helmets creeping through Mr. Pugin's machicolations, striding boldly across vast roofs, resting after these self-sacrificing labours in little military beds. It all seemed so competent, so adventurous, so alert, so com- munal, so young. It is true that when the sirens sing I patrol my area with lamp and whistle. Along the corridors I stalk, through the great galleries, up the heraldic staircases. I know exactly what I must do when a bomb or an incendiary descends. I must blow my whistle very hard indeed, and then take cover. I know even how to use a stirrup-pump, and how, while doing so, neatly to avert my face and head. I pace the premises repeating these detailed, but on the whole simple, instructions to myself, longing (for I confess that my boredom on such occasions is more than I can bear) for the show to begin. But the siren seldom these days sings for long.
* * * *
The process of fire-watching is lonely, uncomfortable, tiresome, but not exacting. It is not an activity of which any skilful uncle would boast to a nephew recently returned from Murmansk. Yet a curious mood of depression is aroused by fire-watching in the Palace of Westminster. Those Gothic vaults, those wide tesselated pavements, are associated in our minds with garish lights, with the full pulse and throb of history, with the shuffling feet of a thousand supplicants. When empty, the Palace is sad as a deserted iailway-station. For an hour or two a few belated Members remain in the building. One dreads to see them leave. There in the Library, under the light of a lonely green lamp, some legislator will be writing letters to his constituents. He rises, switches off his lamp, and makes away, holding the envelopes of assiduity in his hand. One longs to detain him :—verweile doch, du bist so schon. For when full night descends, the Houses of Parliament echo to one's lonely footstep like a series of abandoned cathedrals. The beam of one's torch flashes, now upon the Woolsack and now upon the Speaker's chair—only the tape-machine humming and ticking in the corridor recalls the fact that life goes on. Sadly one repairs to the little truckle bed in the dormitory, sadly one unfolds the army blanket, and lays one's helmet, torch and whistle on the floor beside one. The chiming of Big Ben entangles itself with the chimes of the Abbey as the hours drag by. One listens with affectionate regard to the slumbers of one's fellow-watchers. But when dawn creeps up the river one rises gladly, folds one's blankets with dexterout relief, delivers up the accoutrements, and walks out under the arches to where the air is clean and cold and sweet.
Previous page
