A SCHOLAR'S LETTERS FROM THE FRONT. • and that to
that extent their death is the better worth while. If the scholar-soldier has written letters telling us of his thoughts and , motives in the time of great atlases, he leaves something truly precious. He' helps others to see that death is, after all, a poor and impotent
assailant of man's spirit. The ordinary man was just as great a hero, but he had not the lyric note to ,touch the hearts and nerve the bodies of the others who follow. A boy fresh from Oxford or . Cambridge who has not thought of soldiering as a career, but suddenly - finds himself amid the clash of arms in this war, has a better chance than the professional soldier of seeing with the oyes of enthusiasm. Not, of course, that the professional. soldier is not an enthusiast ; , for no professiol to-day is more industrious and more conscientious , than that of the Army. But the amateur, temporarily introduced , into the profession, comes with a freahness of perception that is denied to most men who are viewing familiar things.
The letters of Mr. A. D. Gillespie, who was killed in Flanders last year (Smith, Elder, and Co., 5s. not), are the letters of a scholar, and, moreover, of a man of imagination, as he proved by his brilliant suggestion that "No Man's Land" between the trenches should be turned into a great memorial road--a Via Sacra.. But they are more than that ; they give us a picture of bravery and loyalty noticeably derived from and supported by the affections of his home life. These are not the only letters we have reed from the front which have made us feel that bravery is generally associated with the tenderness that is not ashamed to express itself. We undertake to say that the shirkez, the disloyal man, is not typically the man who owes most to his family training.. He is callous except of his own feelings. He regards gentle thoughts and words as a weakness. He is not bravo enough to profess an emotion. The gallant lad who gives most readily is he who has most to lose. So it was with Douglas Gillespie. The confidence and affection between him and his family were the foundation of his nobility, though this was also graced with learning. The book is a memorial to two brothers, for T. C. Gillespie was also killed in Flanders last year. But the letters all come from the scholar brother. ' A. D. Gillespie won the most important classical prizes at Winchester, and was one of the most distinguished men of his generation at New College. Even before war was declared , he applied for a commission. His manner of doing this was charac- teristic both in its fine impulsiveness and its complete understanding of his parents. " There was no time to consult you and Mother first," he writes to his father, " but I felt sure that, if the want comes, you would wish me to do anything that lay in my power. . to help." Similarly.when he received orders to go to the front the understanding was perfect. He writes from the train to his mother,
not having icon his family before starting :-
" I only heard the news at 10 o'clock, and I thought I would not wire to you, for you would not have had time to me me hero ; and neither you nor I would have liked to say good-bye on Newcastle or Darlington platform, or even to-night in London. For no one likes saying good-bye, and you and Daddy know how much I think, and shall always think, of • you without my Laying it: As I told you when I was home, it somehow does not seam-to matter much whether you' are actually in the room with . me or not, for .I feel thatwe are neverNery far away from one another." Several times he writes of his happiness at the front, and if he . refers to unhappiness it .is only to say that he is unhappy at „the thought that others should be unhappy about him. An army with a moral like his would be unconquerable. Are not the follow- ing words a splendid sentiment Y " When a man is fighting for his country in a war like this, the news is always good if his spirit does not fail, and that I hope will never happen to your son." Ho saw with vivid clearness from the first what seems to be hidden from some distinguished neutral observers. " We are just at the beginning of the struggle," he wrote in October, 1914, t` and every hour we should remind ourselves that it is a great privilege to save the traditions of all the centuries behind us. It's a grand oppor- tunity, and if we fail_ we shall curse ourselves in bitterness every • year that we live, and our children will despise our memory." But a " too vast orb" of Fate did not weigh him down to a state of lifeless preoccupation. He enjoyed every moment that can reasonably be said to have been capable of yielding enjoyment. " This life does interest me," ho says ; " I could just stand all day watching the different faces come and go." In monotonous hours of waiting in the trenches he road Dante, Walter Scott, Tolstoy, Dostoievaky, and 'we suppose a good deal of English poetry, which he frequently quotes. He praised, in particular, the sustaining power of Clough. His taste was wide. Once he mentions that he has read a novel by H. S. Merriman. The texture was thin, but still it was.a rattling good story, and there was a great deal to be said for a good story on any terms. But he could always turn from literature to his letters from home and re-read them again and again. For some time he was acting as censor of soldiers' letters,
• and he delighted in the conventional phrases which occurred in • them. all in an identical. form. The most affectionate thoughts about friends at home were conveyed in the unsentimental shape of requesting that So-and-so should be told that tho writer of the letter had been " asking " for him.
One might continue to illustrate the character of the writer of
these letters from chance incidents and informing phrases. It is no great exaggeration to say that you can see tho character of the man pretty- clearly if you do no snore than take account of the two following remarks. First, of a pe.cificist " He tolls you that man should not add unnecessarily to the suffering of man' ; when ho has learnt not to do it in his daily life, he may be able to refrain from doing it in war, but not till then.". Then of irony : " Read Mr. Balfour's letters whenever you see them in the papers ; they are very good and full of the most delightful irony, which is refresh- ing among so much bluster and indignation." But on the whole we shall do the writer bettor justice by quoting some passages fully. Take the following, for instance, in which he proceeds from the description of a familiar humdrum scene to express the meaning of it all in words which combine beauty with simplicity: " I get so used to the landscape that it's difficult to describe it ; wo look across a mile of ploughed fields to the spires and tall chimneys of the town. There are ditches and pollard willows and tall poplars. and the telephone wires to Brigade Headquarters and the different batteries run everywhere, on their black and white poles, and strung from tree to tree. For the guns are ell round about, planted in orchards, or hedges, or behind sheds, where no one will see the flashes. It's very difficult to ece them even as you pass, and must be twenty times harder from the air. No one knows how many there are, for they come and depart like woodcocks in the night. But there is always some firing going on the smaller shells make a noise like a loose stone sliding down a scree as they go through the sir, but the bigger ones aro more like a train in the distance. The men call every German shell a Jack Johnsen, but as yet I have had no experience of the real Jack Johnson, the heavy howitzer shell of sixty pounds or more which Tom had every day on the Aisne. In fact, none of us who come out now in the spring will ever know what those autumn and winter months were like, when we were always fighting against heavy odds, both in men and guns ; and there are few enough loft to tell ; but it is those mon and their traditions who have really won at Neuve Chapelle, and will win again in these coming months. When I see these long lists of names, I like to think that they are more recruits for the greatest army of all, which is worth far more to the men still fighting hero, than any reinforcements in flesh and blood ; an army which is above all the chances of war, and never comes up too late."
The following account of listening to a nightingale from the trenches seems to us very moving as well as beautiful and simple—the thoughts of Keats in prose with the terrible personal applicatioa of the recent loss of a brother :—
" Presently a misty moon came up, and a nightingale began to sing. I have only heard him once before in the day-time, near Farly Mount, at Winchester ; but, of course, I knew him at once, and it was strange to stand there and listen, for the song seemed to come all the more sweetly and clearly in the quiet intervals between the bursts of firing. There was something infinitely sweet and sad about it, as if the country- side were singing gently to itself, in the midst of all our noise and con- fusion and muddy work; so that you felt the nightingale's song wa I the only reat thing which would remain when all the rest was long past and forgotten. It is such an old song too, handed on from nightingale to nightingale through the summer nights of so many innumerable years. . . . So I stood there, and thought of all the mon and women who had listened to that song, just as for the first few weeks after Tom was killed I found myself thinking perpetually of all the men who had been killed in battle—Hector and Achilles and all the heroes of long ago, who were once so strong and active, and now are so quiet. Gradually -the night wore on, until day began to break, and I could see clearly the daisies and buttercups in the long grass about my feet."
Finally, we must quote from the noble letter which the lad wrote before. his last battle. He died leading his men :-
". Before long I think we shall be in the thick of it, for if we do attack,
my company will be one of those in front, and I am likely to load it; not because I have been specially chosen for that, but because someone must lead, and I have been with the company longest. I have no forebodings, for I feel that so many of my friends will charge by my side, and if a man's spirit may wander back at all, especially to the p:azea where he is needed most, then Tom himself will be here to help me, and give me courage and resource and that cool head which will be needed most of all to make the attack a success. For I know it is just as bad to run into danger uselessly as to hang back when we should be pushing on. It will be a groat fight, and even when I think of you, I would not wish to be out of this. You remember Wordsworth's Happy Warrior' : Who if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad, for human kind, Is happy as a lover, and attired With sudden brightness like a man inspired.'
Well, I never could be all that a happy warrior should be, but it will please you to know that I am very happy, and whatever happens, you will remember that. Well, anything one writes at a time like this seems futile, because tho tongue of man can't say all that ho feels-- tit I thought I would send this scribble with my love to you and Mother."
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