LITERATURE AND SOLDIERS.
THERE is an irrational belief, which is much too common, that the soldier as a type is without interest in letters or in the arts. It may be that the connexion between a profession of violence and the quietude of study seems to many people too paradoxical to be likely. But the belief is more probably due to the familiar feeling that a man who is an expert in what is in effect physical prowess has excluded from his mind -other interests. If one were told that a man was a great boxer, or rode very hard to hounds, or was an incomparable big-game shot, one somehow would not expect him to have a passionate love for poetry or painting. And the same feeling applies itself to the soldier. Yet it ie certainly irrational. For a man who lives a life of action, and thus has every opportunity of keeping a sound mind in a sound body, should be the very man to find relaxation in arts which commend themselves, by their dissimilarity, in his hours of quiet, None the lees, the old instinctive belief goes on. We are surprised when we are told that a distinguished General is a learned collector of prints, or a numismatist, or a poet, or a master of Italian literature. The information may bring us an access of admiration for the General, or at all events a fresh interest in his personality, but that is largely because wo feel (irrationally but definitely) that his hobby is a kind of attractive irregularity. We should not be so surprised to learn that a doctor or a barrister was a master of Italian literature. There is no rational cause for this difference of feeling. The belief that soldier° are far removed from the arts is, we think, quite mistaken. Classifiable occupations and interests are not confined in water-tight compartments so commonly as is supposed; and the military compartment has many relations with the compartments of the arts and letters, and particularly with letters.
We are thinking of typical soldiers—not of the Julius Caesars, the Xenophons, the Napiers, and so on, nor of such a paragon as Ophelia lamented when she said
"0, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould of form."
When soldiers write they write better, we fancy, than the average of men, and the number of officers who can describe military experiences with point and humour is high. This may be seen from magazines any month in the year. If it were ever the truth, it is now an obsolete notion that the profession of arms does not associate itself with letters. The Army may have been a stupid profession once. It is not so now, nor is there any foundation for the idea that a few men at the head of the Army and the Staff College may have brains and learning, but that they do the thinking for every one else. The typical regimental officer is nowadays a man
of affairs, of good judgment, and of very wide tastes and interests. It is true that a soldier is often timid of revealing the extent of his reading, rather in the spirit in which the Australian poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon, used to pretend that be was nothing but a gentleman jockey, though poetry was the real passion of his life. But we venture to say that any one who takes the trouble to ascertain the character of the reading in any regiment will be rather impressed by its variety and seriousness. It is quite possible that the soldier who seeks the safety of conventional appearances hides his reading because he does not care to set up as a person who might be thought eccentric, or affected. To take an analogy. Some preachers and teachers appar- ently think that there is in practice a natural divorce between religion and burly young men of well-developed muscles and healthy, sportsmanlike habits. They are there- fore fond of praising the muscular Christian in order to glorify and commend his example. But they a little overdo the praise. To sensitive minds it appears that after all, there is nothing unnatural or uncommon in a combination of devoutness and physical strength, and they become a little weary of the strident figure of the muscular Christian who always seems to be slapping himself on the breast and main- taining that he is not ashamed to be a Christian. " Why should he be P" we ask. "If Christianity does not commend itself to a happy, healthy man like him, there must indeed be something wrong with it. He does not interest us overmuch. We should be more interested to hear a hunchback in poverty express his views on Christianity." So the average soldier may fancy that his combination of the military profession with humane learning, though very natural in itself, may seem unnatural enough to be an affectation. Being a simple, straightforward person, not given to advertising or posturing, he fears to be tiresome.
Thinking and observing men have not suffered, however, from any unfortunate delusions about the intellectual standard of soldiers. F. D. Maurice in a letter to his son told him how he had been brought up to believe that the soldier's calling could not be an admirable one. But experienoe had shown him otherwise. "I find," he wrote," that the leaders of armies, and that armies themselves, have done nobly works which I recognize as God's works. I find a spirit of order and obedience in them which I scarcely find elsewhere, and which I wish civilians could imitate. I find justice, gentleness, tenderness, not merely mixing with such qualities in military men, but eminently characteristic of some among them." It does not require the penetration of F. D. Maurice to see that what is so commonly taught about soldiers' indifference to letters is similarly wrong. In this war some of the most moving poetry has been written by young soldiers. The most vivid accounts of fighting have been extracted from soldiers' letters. These were certainly not written with- out a close companionship with letters. We wonder how many torn and thumbed copies of Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, or Virgil are in trenches and dug-outs at this moment. We wonder how many officers have added an entirely non-military zest to their movements by studying domestic Gothic architecture, or the buildings bearing the more grandiose imprint of Louis XIV.'s days, as they passed through the interesting towns of Flanders. We wonder how many among the naturalists have recorded in diaries the comings and goings and the neat-building of birds on the battlefields. We undertake to say that a great many have. When after Wolfe's death at Quebec, in one of his pockets was found a copy, in Wolfe's handwriting, of Sarpedon's speech to Glaucus (Iliad XII.) the fact was ever afterwards remembered. Bat, there was nothing remark- able in the fact itself that Wolfe should have loved Homer, and have found help and inspiration in writing down his lines. Thousands of soldiers might do so to-day, and would have the learning to do it. When Sir Philip Sidney wrote verses about his fatal wound he only did what might—if we knew all —be matched a hundred times over to-day in the military hospitals at the front.
Previous page
