THE IRISH GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR.*
Mn. Krpurio's record of the labours, the sorrows and the humours of the two battalions of the Irish Guards in the War is rather unlike anything else he has written. In the ordinary way, we imagine, he would have liked to read and be told all that there was to know about the two battalions and then throw away his notes and trust to the general conflagration in his mind for the production of the glowing picture. But here he has followed closely the material placed before him— the diaries, the Orders, the private letters and the spoken reminiscences. In doing so he has, of course, laid a restraint upon himself and we like and admire him for it.
He evidently felt that the written and spoken materials of history which the two battalions had created were things to preserve in as exact a form as might be ; that there would be disrespect in treating them in any other way: His method, then, is an essential. part of his tribute to a regiment which has superlative deeds and an unflagging spirit to its credit. Also, it is perhaps permissible to say, in offering this tribute Mr. Kipling has written incidentally a tribute to his own son, a gallant boy, a lieutenant in the second battalion, who was killed at Loos. We say " incidentally " because a stranger to the fact reading this book might not become aware how deeply Mr. Kipling's personal feelings were engaged. He has made no more mention of his own son than of any other offices, and we think even less. This well-bred self-suppression and modesty are also part of the noble monument which he has set up to the whole regiment.
Our account of how Mr. Kipling has preferred to write is
• The Insist °u binthe Great War. By liudyard litpliug. 2 vols. Loudon:
justified by his own words in the introduction. " It seemed to me best," he says, " to abandon all idea of such broad and balanced narratives as will be put forward by experts and to limit myself to matters which directly touched the men's lives and fortunes." A battalion's field is bounded by its own vision ; and Mr. Kipling has set down in a wonderfully well joined-up narrative what the two battalions did and felt and said while they had less sense of their connexion with the War as a whole than anyone had who looked on from England. Some day, a hundred years hence perhaps, the history of the War will be reduced to an ultimate form which only unorthodox historians will dispute. But it is certain, whatever shape that history may take, that these two volumes will be indispensable to the making of it. Even then it may be that if there be memory beyond the grave the ghosts, in Mr. Kipling's words, may laugh at " the neatly groomed history."
To say all this about Mr. Kipling's self-repression is not to say that he has not found innumerable opportunities to make situations memorable by the choice of the final or faultless word. The author of Soldiers Three was naturally entranced by some of the sayings of the Irishmen. A great many remarks have been remembered and will always be cherished as " price- less "—to use no other word than that which was probably applied to them at the time by the officers who made note of them. After mentioning the notably high standard of dis- cipline in the Guards, and the tradition required of the officers of unresting care of their men under all conditions, Mr. Kipling goes on to explain the difficulty of dealing with the Irish private soldier. The difficulty, fortunately, does not go too far because there is something in the character of the men which simultaneously creates the difficulty and helps to conquer it.
" But there is an elasticity in Celtic psychology that does not often let things reach breaking-point either way ; and their sense of humour and social duty—it is a race more careful to regard each other's feelings than each other's lives—held them as easily as they were strictly associated. A jest ; the grave hearing out of absurd complaints that might turn to tragedy were the hearing not accorded ; a prompt soothing down of gloomy, injured pride ; a piece of flagrant buffoonery sanctioned, even shared, but never taken advantage of, went far in dark days to build up that under- standing and understood inner life of the two Battalions to which, now, men look back lovingly across their civilian years."
Mr. Kipling sees that there is no need to apologize for what might seem on a superficial judgment to be trivialities. " In a life where Death ruled every hour, nothing was trivial, and bald references to villages, billets, camps, fatigues and
sports all carry their separate significance for each survivor as intimate and incommunicable as family jests." Thus everything is recorded in full. The book is easily the best regimental record of the War yet written.
As for the appeal of the book to a largerInumber of readers, Mr. Kipling hopes that it may interest those who at present are " putting away from themselves odious memories " because it tells of " those very details and flatnesses which make up the unlovely yet superb life enjoyed for their sakes." What may have been flat in the happening, however, is the very reverse in the telling, and Mr. Kipling makes every little incident or odd saying show up in what always turns out to be an appropriate context. Yet, although Mulvaney has in a way come to life again after many years, how different is his new setting ! In a generation which knew not war on a serious scale Irish light-heartedness, brilliantly described, helped to make war seem a thing of romance. Now the jolly romance is gone never to be recalled—at least let us hope so—but the fact that Mulvaney can still speak in his old accents may be taken as the greater proof of his invincible spirit.
Our last quotation must be from Mr. Kipling's account— how true it rings l—of the sense of unreality steeped with incredulity with which men received the announcement that an armistice had been signed and that the War was over.
" Men took the news according to their natures. Indurated pessimists, after proving that it was a lie, said it would be but an interlude. Others retired into themselves as though they had been shot, or went stiffly off about the meticulous execution of some trumpery detail of kit-cleaning. Some turned round and fell asleep then and there ; and a few lost all holds- for a while. It was the appalling new silence of things that soothed and unsettled them in turn. They did not realize till all sounds of their trade ceased, and the stillness stung in their- ears as soda-water stings on the palate, how entirely these had been part of their strained bodies and souls. (` It felt like falling through into nothing, ye'll understand. Listening for what wasn't there, and tryin' not; to shout when you remembered for why.') Men coming up from Details Camp, across old ' unwholesome' areas, heard nothing but the roar of the lorries on which they had stolen their lift, and rejoiced with a childish mixture of fear as they topped every unscreened rise that was now mere scenery such as tounsts would use later. To raise the head, without thought or precaution against what might be in front or on either flank, into free, still air was the first pleasure of that great release."
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