July 31
This War is so great and terrible that hyperbole is impossible. And yet my gorge rises at those fatuous journalists continually prating about this “Greatest War of all time,” this “Great Drama,” this “world catastrophe unparalleled in human history,” because it is easy to see that they are really more thrilled than shocked by the immensity of the War. They indulge in a vulgar Yankee admiration for the Big Thing. Why call this shameful Filth by high sounding phrases—as if it were a tragedy from Euripides? We ought to hush it up, not brag about it, to mention it with a blush instead of spurting it out brazen-faced.
Mr. Garvin, for example, positively gloats over the War each week in the Observer: “Last week was one of those pivotal occasions on which destiny seems to swing”—and so on every week, you can hear him, historical glutton smacking his lips with an offensive relish.
For my part, I never seem to be in the same mind about the War twice following. Sometimes I am wonderstruck and make out a list of all the amazing events I have lived to see since August, 1914, and sometimes and more often I am swollen with contempt for its colossal imbecility. And sometimes I am swept away with admiration for all the heroism of the War, or by some particularly noble self-sacrifice, and think it is really all worth while. Then—and more frequently—I remember that this War has let loose on the world not only barbarities, butcheries and crimes, but lies, lies, lies—hypocrisies, deceits, ignoble desires for self-aggrandizement, self-preservation such as no one before ever dreamed existed in embryo in the heart of human beings.
The War rings the changes on all the emotions. It twangs all my strings in turn and occasionally all at once, so that I scarcely know how to react or what to think. You see, here am I, a compulsory spectator, and all I can do is to reflect. A Zeppelin brought down in flames that lit up all London—now that makes me want to write like Mr. Garvin. But a Foreign Correspondent’s eager discussion of “Italy’s aspirations in the Trentino,” how Russia insists on a large slice of Turkey, and so forth, makes me splutter. How insufferably childish to be slicing up the earth’s surface! How immeasurably “above the battle” I am at times. What a prig you will say I am when I sneer at such contemptible little devilries as the Bodies’ trick of sending over a little note, “Warsaw is fallen,” into our trenches, or as ours in reply: “Gorizia!”
“There is no difference in principle between the case of a man who loses a limb in the service of his country and that of the man who loses his reason, both have an obvious claim to the grateful recognition of the State.”
—A morning paper.
A jejune comment like this makes me grin like a gargoyle! Hark to the fellow—this leader-writer over his cup of tea. But it is a lesson to show how easily and quickly we have all adapted ourselves to the War. The War is everything; it is noble, filthy, great, petty, degrading, inspiring, ridiculous, glorious, mad, bad, hopeless yet full of hope. I don’t know what to think about it.