psychology (as the author points out), especially in these days of trench
warfare! The soldier sings to hide his real feelings, perhaps to give
vent to them. I am reminded of all this in connection with my trip to
the British front. I left London after lunch on one of those dreary,
grey days to which I have referred; the rain had begun to splash angrily
against the panes of the car windows before we reached the coast. At
five o'clock the boat pushed off into a black channel, whipped by a gale
that drove the rain across the decks and into every passage and gangway.
The steamer was literally loaded with human beings, officers and men
returning from a brief glimpse of home. There was nothing of the glory
of war in the embarkation, and, to add to the sad and sinister effect of
it, each man as he came aboard mounted the ladder and chose, from a pile
on the hatch combing, a sodden life-preserver, which he flung around his
shoulders as he went in search of a shelter. The saloon below, where we
had our tea, was lighted indeed, but sealed so tight as to be
insupportable; and the cabin above, stifling too, was dark as a pocket.
One stumbled over unseen passengers on the lounges, or sitting on kits on
the floor. Even the steps up which I groped my way to the deck above
were filled, while on the deck there was standing-room only and not much
of that. Mal de mer added to the discomforts of many. At length I found
an uncertain refuge in a gangway amidships, hedged in between unseen
companions; but even here the rain stung our faces and the spray of an
occasional comber drenched our feet, while through the gloom of the night
only a few yards of white water were to be discerned. For three hours I
stood there, trying to imagine what was in the minds of these men with
whose bodies I was in such intimate contact. They were going to a
foreign land to fight, many of them to die, not in one of those
adventurous campaigns of times gone by, but in the wet trenches or the
hideous No Man's Land between. What were the images they summoned up in
the darkness? Visions of long-familiar homes and long-familiar friends?