Blasting and Bomardiering Read online

The function of Karl Marx—this has never been properly understood—is that of the Marx Brothers; to disrupt—but comically, of course, since human life could not be serious if it tried. Mussolini is a most resourceful entertainer, who was obviously born to make a fool of John Bull. And obviously Haile Selassie was born for the same purpose. Mr. Eden is Trilby. What he sings when diplomatically entranced enrages Herr Hitler; and as to Stalin he unquestionably was thought up to cover with ridicule my Highbrow colleagues. Trotsky manifestly was especially created to be a thorn in the side of Stalin. And Mexico was tacked on to the bottom of the United States to be an asylum for Trotsky.

  All these cosmic diversions of ours represent ideas, that's the great thing. They are first-class comedy, because they are forces of nature dressed up in exciting national costume, and all talking different languages, which makes it more amusing. They are calculated, all upon the stage at the same time, to deflate, baffle, trip up, put out of countenance, scandalize, hustle, and generally bedevil the sort of people who will be all the better for a bit of that. I doubt if there's ever been a livelier troupe upon the world-stage. The lot we've got at present can stand comparison with the best the Ancients ever had. And there's not one of them that, in his way, is not a force, like a powerful gas. What they will all do with each other and with us is a fascinating speculation. The world needed badly a bit of fresh air and it's got it. All the windows have been blown out. We're nearer to nature than we've been for a long time.

  But have you ever reflected how in isolation none of these figures mattered so much as they do all together ? Take Mussolini. He went on for over ten years 'dictating' away to his heart's content in the south of Europe without anyone caring tuppence, till Hitler popped up in Germany. And these two together seem to have a very odd effect on old Stalin—who'd been a pretty sleepy old dictator up till then, polishing off masses of moujiks but nothing more serious than that.

  As to our statesmen, they seem to have become completely lightheaded : our bishops are the brightest set of bishops we've ever had. There won't be much of 'the opium of the People' left by the time they're through with us. Look how they throw a fit if you so much as mention a priest, whereas two or three years ago priests, rabbis and ministers were in and out of each other's synagogues and presbyteries as if every schism had been healed. Satan must regard them as a godsend.

  Everyone has been set by the ears. This is quite new. It is the true Harpo technique. Everyone at everyone else's throat, just the way things happen in a Marx Brothers film, with Harpo at the heart of the mischief. No one knows if they're standing on their heads or their heels any longer.

  But this is not post-war. Post-war means something quite definite and it is not this at all. This is gay. It is almost real. You have heard the expression 'living in a fool's paradise' haven't you. Now there's such a thing as 'a smart Alick's paradise', the composition of which is mostly bluff. (Sometimes they're the same thing.) That's what we've been living in, and that's what has started to rattle gaily about our ears.

  The War bled the world white. It had to recover. While it was in that exhausted state a sort of weed-world sprang up and flourished. All that was real was in eclipse, so all that was unreal came into its own and ran riot for a season. But now the real is recovering its strength. Beneath the pressure of this convalescent vitality our cardboard make-believe is beginning to crack and to tumble down. You see how damned interesting all that is going to be?

  As we are in this superb and novel time, able to look a fact in the face, at last, because the war-sickness (the 'Post-war') is over—as no one any longer can pretend to be shell-shocked because he'd have been dead long ago if he had been—we can look back at the first War with fresh eyes. If we don't learn a thing or two from this scrutiny it will be our fault entirely. For it was a particularly silly war, and it is most important if England is to indulge in another war it should not be completely senseless. For that would be the third.

  The South African war was a foolish war, many good judges of these things thought at the time. Many even regarded it as criminal, as well as ill-advised. From the English standpoint, the Great War was a great mistake—far greater of course than the Boer War.

  This is a private history. You will look in vain for any propagandist lesson in it. It is as an artist I am writing, and if deductions are to be drawn from what I truthfully recount, I shall not be the one to draw them. In this opening chapter I have provided you with a little sketch of how things are shaping—with myself and the rest of us—in 1937. Now I can start my story of the Great War, which has made possible, nay, inevitable, all the odd things we see going on to-day.

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  Bombardiering

  'In the life-order advances are made to me from all sides in order to free me from the claims to selfhood or self-expression.'

  K. Jaspers

  As a bombardier, at Menstham Camp, I was instructing a squad in one corner of the enormous field, while other bombardiers were instructing other squads in other corners. Our martial voices rang out. Rifles rattled down to the right foot, hands smote the reverberant body of the rifle. The camp adjutant, placid little peace-time major, with South African War ribbons, entered the field, accompanied by a sergeant-major. He looked about him, the sergeant pointed in my direction, and both of them advanced towards me.

  For some time the adjutant stood behind me, first of all having said 'Carry on, Bombardier.' I shouted myself hoarse in attempting to get the rifles smartly off the lubbardly shoulders and down onto terra firma with something like one splendid bang, and then up again to something like respectable present! For I wished this adjutant to recommend me for a commission at the Artillery Cadet School at Exeter (to which I subsequently was sent) and my impeccable parade-ground manner was imperfectly seconded by the massive but slow-moving miners I had to drill. The presence of the adjutant alarmed them, and one or two lost control of their rifles, which whirled about in an uncanny way, or even flew out of their hands and dropped with a disgraceful and unmartial clatter upon the ground.

  'Or—der UMMS!' I bellowed.

  Down rattled the butts with a discouraging haphazard one-after-the-otherness, anything but trim and all together. Arid anyone who could have snapshotted me at that moment, my right eye somewhat more open than my left, and flashing with

  indignation, would have put me down as a deep-dyed martinet.

  'Bombardier!' called out the sergeant-major who accompanied the adjutant—rudely I thought. I instantly Wheeled with the precision of a well-constructed top; and with the tread of an irresistible automaton I bore down swiftly and steadily upon the adjutant; I brought my heels together with a resounding spank, gave my rifle a well-deserved slap, and stood looking over the adjutant's head: it was impossible for me to do otherwise; as he was the best part of a foot shorter than myself. I knew what was coming, or I thought I knew. My squad and its instructor were to be held up to obloquy.

  'Bombardier,' said the adjutant, 'what is all this Futurism about?'

  I blinked, but did not move.

  'Are you serious when you call your picture Break of Day— Marengo? Or are you pulling the Public's leg?'

  I did not move a muscle. I lowered my eye, as he was speaking, and fixed it sternly upon the guncarriage wheel upon his cap. He seemed a little nervous, I thought. I was deeply surprised at the subject-matter of his remarks and could not decide off-hand if this boded ill for me or the reverse, in the military context. And it was at the moment the military context, decidedly, that mattered. I knew that a photograph had appeared in the Daily Sketch that morning, showing an abstract oil-painting named Break of Day—Marengo from my hand. So I saw what had happened, at least.

  'No, sir,' I said. 'Not the Public's leg.'

  I glanced out of the corner of one eye at the sergeant-major— whom I had to carry into the camp the night before through a hole in the hedge, having picked him out of a ditch full of stertorous Anzacs, who had succumbed in a welter of
alcohol.

  'They say—these newspaper-wallahs that is write—that— er—one has to look at these things you do as if one was inside them instead of outside them.'

  The sergeant-major permitted himself a discreet chuckle.

  'Am I mad, Bombardier, or are these fellahs mad, that's what I want to know? It must be one or the other.'

  'It is the other, sir,' I reassured him. 'I will answer for that.'

  'Then what they say is all poppycock?' he said, with evident relief.

  'Undoubtedly, sir. They have no understanding of the art they are reporting. You must pay no attention to them.' 'I am glad to know that, very glad, Bombardier.' Standing in this hieratic attitude, rifle on shoulder and heels together, I hoped that I might not have to pursue this absurd dialogue for too long. This Jack-in-office had no right really to catch me in that attitude—seeing it was an attitude I could not abandon and that it was wholly unsuited for expounding the mysteries of an esoteric technique. It was as brutal as surprising a Court Chamberlain in his socks and pants: my private life should have been respected—the parade-ground was a place of arms, not a forum for civic discussion. That was how I felt about it. I stood there stock-still before this officer, my calves bulging beneath my puttees. I understood what it must feel like to be a butler, and to be inopinely cross-questioned about his sexual life or the conditions of his bowels by a snobbish master.

  'Very well. Carry on, Bombardier,' said the adjutant apparently satisfied that he was not irretrievably batty. I stamped angrily, about-turned, and marched back to my lines of drooping coal-miners, shouting fiercely as I reached them— 'Squ—a—ad! Ab—out turnl Quick—March V I was far more professional than when I had left them. And I marched them off as far away from the adjutant as possible, and roared and blustered at them for full ten minutes till their arms ached from heaving their firearms about from side to side and up and down.

  I have said my 'private life'. But of course in the last two years I had become a public figure. I had shot into fame as the editor of Blast, the first number of which appeared in the six months preceding the declaration of war. I was the arch-futurist. It was generally called 'futurism', what I did, though this was a misnomer. My anonymity was gone for ever at all events. This I had not thoroughly grasped. For no sooner had I become famous, or rather notorious, than the War came with a crash, and with it, when I joined the army, I was in a sense plunged back into anonymity once more. This I by no means objected to. I quite easily felt anonymous. I like the sensation: 'bombardier' was after all a romantic incognito. And since I had been in the army the brief spell of sudden celebrity became a dream I had dreamt, of no particular moment.

  My career as an artist and writer was a private matter, something not public but private as I saw it. Not of course ashamed of it, nevertheless I did not relish its being unearthed, since it was irrelevant. I preferred to forget it. I had said 'good-bye to all that', when I first put the uniform on. My mind was, in fact, so constructed that I must resume what I had been before I was a 'lion', and regain my anonymity, in order to confront death. There was no point in meeting death on the battlefield, if that was what was in store for me, as Mr. Wyndham Lewis. In a word, this existence—that of a soldier—was another existence: not the same one, continued, in a change of scene and circumstances merely.

  The adjutant seems to have been grateful for having his confidence in his reason restored to him. We had no more talks, on or off the parade, about futurist pictures. But when my battery paraded shortly after that for service in France, I was called out of the ranks and told by the adjutant to go to my hut. From a window looking on to the parade-ground I watched it march away and was attached to its successor. In this way I saw two more batteries depart. This was somewhat depressing. I was not dying to fly at the throat of the Hun or to massacre the Boche, and so make the world safe for Democracy. But I did find that I readily developed esprit de corps of sorts. I experienced a healthy affection for my rough, pathetic, shambling companions.

  As a non-commissioned officer it was one of my duties to stand beside the medical officer when the men queued-up for vaccination. As the biggest and most bull-like of these new recruits exposed their arms above the elbow, as often as not the blood fled from their foreheads and they swayed a little. As the knife touched their skin they were apt to just roll up their eyes and sink to the ground, and the bigger they were the more likely was this to happen. It was one of my duties to catch these big babies as they fell and to remove them after they had fallen. And I reflected as I did so that as regards mind and matter, mind was as it were matter's heart, and that when a small feeble, and immature mind was put to function in such a disproportionately large body, it had uphill work all right.

  These casualties of the vaccination parade seemed in some way symbolical. Why did these big fellows collapse? I thought of Bombardier Wells, I was reminded of Joe Beckett; our 'horizontal champions'. The latter I had seen (or was to see) put to sleep inside a minute by Carpentier. I wondered what all this meant.

  England was of course much like any other country, sound as a bell. But England had always fought its wars with pressed men, 'crimps', criminals and such like. Wellington indignantly enquired when it was proposed to abolish flogging in the British Army, how he was expected to win battles with such material if he could not flog it into shape.

  England was not 'militarist', even it had always disliked its military. 'It's thank you Mr. Atkins, when the band begins to play,' croaked that bitter 'militarist', Kipling, but at other times Tommy was not much appreciated. A desperado personnel of 'Foreign Legion' type, plus a martial aristocracy, accounted for Waterloo and Blenheim. Slave armies, in the first feudal days, and then 'crimp' armies had built up the great military reputation of an island of free-men enjoying 'a degree of liberty which approached to licentiousness', one of whose dearest boasts had become the right not to bear arms.

  Kings had had to tussle with stiff-necked Parliament for even small accretions to a miniature standing army. Are we not informed by de Lolme that 'another very great advantage attending the remarkable stability of the English government, is, that the same is affected without the assistance of an armed standing force: the constant expedient this of all other governments'. And 'all the monarchs who ever existed, in any part of the world, were never able to maintain their ground without the assistance of regular forces at their constant command', whereas the English kings had not 'a guard of more than a few scores of men', although their power was equal to that of

  b 'the most absolute Roman emperors'. But they naturally often desired to have a 'regular' force, like other non-English kings, so as to go abroad and enjoy the Sport of Kings.

  So here was the first citizen army of unmilitary Englishmen : and though a fair proportion of Bulldog Drummonds were to be found amongst them, they were anything but lovers of martial exercises. Britain had unexpectedly gone continental, to carry out the dictates of the deadly Entente Cordiale, and of secret military pacts, entered into behind its back by its Government. A new epoch in the history of England had begun.

  Meanwhile I dashed water in the faces of this highly-strung cannon-fodder of ours, quiet chaps mostly, like large inoffensive cattle, so helpless in the hands of all these doctors, drill-sergeants, padres and 'Officers'. It is for that reason that I referred to them as 'pathetic'.

  The pathos got worse as one watched them month after month at the Front—telling themselves that this was a war-to-end-war, and that was why the free Britisher was in it: otherwise it would have been unthinkable. Just this once all the heirs of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights were behaving like the conscript herds of less favoured nations, and dying too in unheard-of numbers. They wrote to their missus 'Keep Smiling', or 'Are we downhearted!' As an officer at the Front I took my turn at censoring their correspondence, a melancholy occupation.

  These free-men had certainly been properly entrapped and were cowed and worried, though they shed their historic 'rights' overnight like phi
losophers. Sophists of the school of Bairns-father ! Of course that was a wretched hypocritical philosophy, but in this sudden emergency it was all they had.

  I knew that the anonymity I have spoken of would have best served their turn. That was the true solution of all the troubles that infested their old kit-bags. Actually discipline was the secret, if they only knew it. But it was a solution that all their traditions would have repudiated.

  The faultless bravery of the Japanese is the child of Shinto, of an iron racial culture directed to the confusion of the ego; and of the Barrack Square, at last. But how on earth should these spoilt children of Anglo-Saxon Democracy, who had turned their back upon the disciplines of the Church into the bargain, acquire the notion of a saving discipline ? Discipline, of all things!— that was the last thing they could be taught: almost the only thing that reconciled them to military rigours was the thought that they were banded together to destroy for ever all discipline in Western Europe.

  Yet unquestionably the A.B.C. of their difficulties, of those of any man similarly placed, was to be found in the extinction of self—of the self in order to retain which they were dying in this ridiculous shambles! Naturally there was no one to tell them anything of this, since Democracy with a capital D was ostensibly the threatened principle, and whatever else Democracy may be, it is not a philosophy of the extinction of self or the merging of it in a greater organism. The training of the Mensur, or of its proletarian opposite number, was not for these democratic volunteers: no one had ever dreamed of suggesting to such men that they should take a stern and pessimistic view of their destiny and stand and allow the blood to course down their cheeks from a slash received in a sham-fight, to harden themselves against inevitable haemorrhage. Theirs were not Samurai backgrounds: they had inherited as great a 'respect for human life' as others had cultivated a disrespect for it.