The Secrets of a Kuttite Part 10

One might imagine that the Indian Government would by this have become awake to this aspect of the crisis, have taken prompt action and sent out three or four divisions at once.

Even admitting the difficulties of river transport, six weeks from the date of Ctesiphon, _i.e._ January 9th, would have allowed ample time for arrival at Basra. But the first reinforcements did not arrive in the country until considerably later, and then only depleted divisions. British divisions, which are really required, were only sent for recently and have hardly started. And now difficulties of transport will delay their transit up river. One cannot help recording these facts in black and white. Every day lost now is piling up tremendous difficulty for the future and swelling the list of lives downstream that, please G.o.d, will one day retrieve a disaster that might easily have been avoided. The world knows nothing of the siege of Kut, and the authorities are not being goaded by public opinion. In other words, the Indian Government has played with a serious situation. The price will be disaster. I am not setting this down as my own opinion merely. It is the point of view of every one in Kut. As a soldier one must refuse to believe that the position has been mishandled or that Kut will fall. But if I were a politician, which I am not, then would I add a lot of things here which I will not.

As I write it rains, and with every drop of rain the time within which the garrison, and, more important still, the strategic position at Kut, can be relieved, shortens. Soon come the annual floods, and when the whole country is under water reinforcements will be of no avail. And the time is short. It is the eleventh hour, and unless considerable forces are already on the way it is even now too late. But that is an affair between the authorities and the floods. Our problem is one of food.

The position here is much as it was in the Dardanelles.

Excepting for floods and natural conditions we can outgun and outfight the Turk every time here. Moreover, we are tremendously relieving Aylmer of pressure, as the Turkish river communications must stop at Shamrun above us, and then his transport has to go overland. This is the marvellous thing about our enemy. He is daily carrying on a colossal bandobast of transport away from the water.

_5 p.m._--Reuter reports the Verdun battle is going satisfactorily.

One imagines that the German Kultur Geist must be bilious by this time, according to the numbers they are offering at his shrine. I am wondering how Nietzsche's Zarathusa would speak now if he saw the Verdun shambles.

And what his blonde-haired, pink-limbed uber Mensch would say about it too. Somehow I can see old Rudolf Eucken at Jena with outspread hands invoking "Schicksal" (destiny) as once he used to "Die Unendigkeit, Die Ewigkeit." Deep down in the German nature is a connative impulse towards the dramatic, and this is fed by a presentiment coloured with all the hues of harmony sweetest to them. It is not unknown for students at Jena and Heidelberg to extract such exquisite juice out of the word "Unendigkeit" (Immortality) or "Ewigkeit"

(Eternity) as to become intoxicated therewith and commit suicide shortly after in the pine forest, or near a ruined "Schloss" (castle) what time the sun sets.

He loves the experience of the actor, likes to feel his gamut of emotions considerably tw.a.n.ged. This dramatic tendency showed itself on the occasion of that delicious utterance of the Kaiser on the eve of the Great War: "Now let my ministers put their hands through mine in token of fidelity, and let the nation follow me through Need and Death." Now, the Roman did this sort of thing rather well, but the German makes an a.s.s of himself. One feels the Kaiser said it to see how it felt to say it.

The Germans tell us they are doing well, but I believe there is a sight becoming more familiar to their eyes, a phenomenon it is their daily delight and wish to behold, and that is the altar of this "Schicksal"--Fate. The Germans think in battalions.

They have yet once again to go mad as a nation, as they did on the outbreak of war--absolutely "verruckt,"--and to bolt with compet.i.tive haste towards the national funeral pyre.

They are not fanatics. They are temperamentalists--and from the spleen of a German musician it is said that in a successful operation you can cut a piece of temperament nine inches long and twenty-five ounces in weight. Apropos of this general digression one may consider their "New Year's Picture" of "Tod" (Death), of which a copy reached us in the autumn of 1914 in France, and cheered us up considerably.

"Tod" (please p.r.o.nounce "toad"), an awfully unpleasant looking "Death," a sn.o.bbish skeleton with a bad seat, rode a heavy horse through a smitten land, a tremendous scythe over his shoulder and his metacarpal bones holding his reins incorrectly.

The scythe flung a gigantic shadow, and as for Tod, his shadow reached almost to the horizon over black, burned villages, sacked cities, and many corpses. The horse had reached a double signpost which showed the way to St. Petersburg and the way to Paris. But, more interesting still, the skeleton had the lantern jaws of a Prussian. Fancy turning such a fellow loose! Truly the "G.o.d of Want and Rapine and Death!" and a most excellent subject for the Germans'

accepted New Year's Picture.

I remember my limber gunners having the same picture, months afterwards, at Aldershot. And Chopin composing the "Marche Funebre" with a skeleton between his legs while he played wasn't in it with them. They had stuck the picture on the muzzle of the gun while they cleaned it. I hope every one of them goes untouched through the whole war.

Poor Germany! I have had some happy days there, but when I compare the Kaiser's words to his nation on the eve of war with those of our own dear King, how I thank G.o.d I am an Englishman. And who would not mind being a Pharisee at the price of being an Englishman? I ask you.

It may be suggested that when Germany falls, the same cement that holds that extraordinary nation together will a.s.sist it in falling together. In the meantime it will be an interesting spectacle for history to observe--the German nation sprinting on hot foot towards the registered funeral pyre, with all the dramatics of the bolting horse that gathers speed and insanity from its own flight.

Talking of horses, I hear that to-day is the slaughtering day for numbers of them. This is good-bye to any possibility of debouch, for there will be insufficient horses to move the guns. It will eke out our corn and barley that can be made into bread; but what is wanted is sugar or jam for the body, and tea for the spirit.

"You are," says Townshend, "making a page of history."

"I would rather," thinks Tommy, "make some stew."

_March 11th._--We have all been made acquainted with Sir Percy Lake's condolences on our misfortune, but also promising us relief; but the floods are gradually increasing, and we fear it will be a case of Lake _v._ Lake, and there will be no appeal.

Sir Percy Lake is the Army Commander in place of Sir John Nixon, and General Aylmer is Army Corps Commander.

Before going to bed last night we told fortunes by cards. The results in short were these: Firstly, a climax is to be reached shortly. (I quite agree.) Secondly, March 27th, my birthday, will seal my matrimonial affairs, the marriage to take place before the following March 27th. (Doubtful, unless I marry an Arab or Turk, or get freed for the event.) Thirdly, the star of the Fortune-G.o.d is in the ascendant, and his horoscope is wreathed with smiles. Which we two subalterns, and c.o.c.kie (a junior married captain), devoutly pray may come true.

Personally, I hold with that excellent fellow Horace that "the G.o.ds only laugh if they behold mortals showing an unseemly interest in their destiny." It is essentially a plebeian instinct, a relic from barbaric days when the world was brimful of curiosities for the twilight intelligence of recently-born man.

But many decades taught him that unbridled curiosity ended in burnt fingers. Then he avoided with a fearful dread all that he did not know, and not the least of his tortures was occasioned by the Inexplicable straying upon him across the border from the Great Unknown. Later on he gets more nerve and he pioneers--still later he becomes scientific and investigates. And when the facts are more or less all in, his curiosity instead of his investigativity once again gets the better of him, and he fortune-tells and goes table-rapping, and tries to la.s.soo his astral body and to open up direct communication with those "not lost but gone before." It is, one might say with some truth, a mark of spiritual breeding to know how to acquiesce. Somehow one cannot picture the greatest of the G.o.ds tremendously excited. Equanimity is at least more dignified and always useful.

Nor should prophecy be confused with fortune-telling, for it is to the latter what investigation is to inquisitiveness.

And inquisitiveness was always bad form. The personal factor looms too large.

Ah! how infinitely colossal and strangely beautiful is that great thing the Future, that ever bears down upon us from across the seas of Time. That dark tidal wave bearing great histories in its bosom and pregnant with joys and sorrows for us all. The gymnastics of living philosophers teach us that Time does not exist--but to me here in Kut it is almost the only real thing. O Futura Divina Ignota! thou mighty engulfing wave advancing from horizon to horizon upon us, with Change and Hope lightly treading thy combing crest--how pricelessly excellent a thing art thou, and what could we do without thee? Whence art thou? From what distant regions of Eternity art thou sped, on what strange sh.o.r.es do thy billows break! We know not. It is beautiful not to know. And thus is Faith born. Thou art a beautiful stranger. We dread thee not. We trust thee--for thou art G.o.d.

Truly it is a great and wonderful world, and considerably reflected upon before patented. Some day a great man will write a book on "Some Att.i.tudes to the Future"--wherefrom it will be gathered that the happiest is he who trusts but does not seek to know. "If," writes the prospective Plato, "it were permitted me of G.o.d to be the only mortal in the history of the human race to discover the lever that raises the curtain between us and the next world, and even if by so doing we might at once behold the flight of angels, the life of the spirit world, the procedure of heaven, yet would I certainly refuse to reveal the secret or to use it. Because to behold that Ultramontane would be to remove from life the two essential factors of discipline and hope. Moreover, if likewise I only were accorded the power of turning the searchlight on that land of mists we know as the Future so that all might see what is ahead of each, yet again would I not do so." And on second thoughts, who would? It would indeed be a dreadful ordeal to have to live. And if you don't believe this, then go and ask a certain gunner subaltern in Kut.

_9 p.m._--My hospital acquaintance, Square-Peg of the Oxfords, came along this afternoon for a game of chess, and asked if he might join our mess, as he is convalescent. Square-Peg and we talked 'Varsity gossip by the pipe-dozen. He is at present doing light duty on patrol of the gardens, technically known as "C.O. Cabbages."

I managed to best Edmonds later. He conceded me a knight, but then he is a very good player.

I made another acquaintance at the hospital, one Father Tim, the Catholic padre, who called to see me to-day.

A few rounds fell into the town. We did not reply.

We are informed that the English division of which we have heard so much is coming up-river now.

Rations have been still further cut down. We get bread and meat, nothing else, and of the former merely four ounces per diem. The garrison is in a bad way. Men go staggering about, resting every now and then up against a wall. I hear that the number succ.u.mbing in the trenches is daily increasing.

As for the native hospital, the sight is too appalling for words.

Skin-covered skeletons crawl about or turn over to receive their scanty nourishment, but nothing else, not even sh.e.l.l fire, engages their attention. One sees a coma stealing over them, a coma not less relentless than the Arctic Sleep of Death in the snow. The poor devils cover up their faces with blankets or tattered turbans, and dream of Home. One told me the other day that he heard the steps of Kismet.

It is roughly estimated that this further reduction of rations will give us two to three weeks--not more.

There is every confidence in our army below. One thing, however, we dread: that is the floods, which may or may not leave sufficient time.

_March 12th._--Rain fell last night and again early this morning. Then we heard the sound of distant artillery, which increased to the subdued throb of gun-fire far away. But this was drowned in the grander music of a thunderstorm. How splendid is the artillery of the G.o.ds! How majestic their salvos billowing across the heavens!

Last night we felt what we believed to be an earthquake, but which proved to be the sappers trying to dynamite fish in the river, which experiment was completely unproductive.

_5 p.m._--It is still raining, which is bad for the river. I did my rounds and straightened up pay books, etc., in the office, and then played chess. I am a little better, and Amir Bux is an excellent ma.s.seur, a distinct improvement on Graoul, who used to treat my shoulders like a punch ball.

The soldiers have re-named this place Scuttle-Amara!

_March 13th._--More rain has fallen! The Tigris is almost bank high, and still rising.

I have been around the horses. Every tail is bare, and the _jhuls_ and head ropes disappear as fast as they are put on.

They all remain perpetually on the _qui vive_ to prevent their stall-mates from biting them. Some are scarcely horses, but rather half-inflated horse skins.

Father Tim, the worthy Irish padre, who divides his attention between wistful ultramontane meditations and an excellent appet.i.te, played chess with me to-day. He rooked me beautifully once.

_March 14th._--Heavy gun-fire has been heard downstream.

The irrepressible humours of Tommy inform us that it is our own guns covering Aylmer's retirement to Basra.

_5 p.m._--The rain has stopped. I have been writing to King's College, Auckland, of many memories, and also to my acquaintance, "the delicious Conservative," at Corpus--Cambridge.

I find in the latter's epistle this sentence: "To-night I shall think of you in that delightful room with chairs so easy and cheroots so persuasive, soliloquizing on the eternal destiny of the American Conservative candidate."

He does not regard all Americans favourably, and I remember well how once when a Southern son of that enterprising nation averred that in the Northern States there were no aristocrats or conservatives, still the South was full of both, that he replied he had always understood it to be merely this way, that the Northern States had neither, and the Southern believed they had both. Which was very severe. But then he had a delightful, disarming smile. Oh, for a disarming smile! ! !

_March 15th._--The Ides of March! Moreover they are come and gone, for I am making this entry, I find, on the 16th.

The river rose eighteen inches, and for some hours lapped over the banks. Then it subsided a little. I had a walk through the palm grove and back via the Gurkha communication trench.

_March 16th._--It is a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and the only blur on the silvery brightness is the muddied Tigris winding like a yellow ribbon over this flat desert land. I felt so weak during my walk yesterday that to-day I merely strolled about the "gardens."

It was a fine sunset. Away over the muddy plain the Western skies were dragon-red, and clouds stirred by the evening breeze sailed in and out of the luminous belt which reflected a soft pink on the face of the rising moon climbing over the Eastern horizon.

I stale-mated a game of chess. Also received a gift of three brace of starlings that are the veriest G.o.d-send for the seedy.