A Man Could Stand Up—

My dear Duckworth,

Permit me to address to you this Epistle Dedicatory, for without you the series of books of which this is the third and penultimate, could not have existed. We have been working together for a great number of years now and always without a cloud on our relationships. At any rate there has never been a cloud on my half of the landscape.

I fancy that you at least know how much I dislike not letting a book go merely as a book; but it appears that if one has the misfortune to be impelled to treat of public matters that is impossible. So let me here repeat: As far as I am privately concerned these books, like all my others, constitute an attempt simply to reflect—not in the least to reflect on—our own times.

Nevertheless as far as this particular book is concerned I find myself ready to admit to certain public aims. That is to say that, in it, I have been trying to say to as much of humanity as I can reach, and, in particular to such members of the public as, because of age or for other reasons did not experience the shocks and anxieties of the late struggle:

“This is what the late war was like: this is how modern fighting of the organised, scientific type affects the mind. If, for reasons of gain or, as is still more likely out of dislike for collective types other than your own, you choose to permit your rulers to embark on another war, this—or something very accentuated along similar lines—is what you will have to put up with!”

I hope, in fact, that this series of books, for what it is worth, may make war seem undesirable. But in spite of that hope I have not exaggerated either the physical horrors or the mental distresses of that period. On the contrary I have selected for treatment less horrible episodes than I might well have rendered and I have rendered them with more equanimity than might well have been displayed. You see here the end of the war of attrition through the eyes of a fairly stolid, fairly well-instructed man. I should like to add that, like all of us, he is neither unprejudiced nor infallible. And you have here his mental reactions and his reflections—which are not, not, not presented as those of the author.

The hostilities in which he takes part are those of a period of relative calm. For it should be remembered that great battles, taking months and months to prepare and to recover from, were of relatively rare occurence. The heavy strain of the trenches came from the waiting for long periods of inaction, in great—in mortal—danger every minute of the day and night.

The fighting here projected is just fighting, as you might say at any old time: it is not specifically, say, the battle of the 21st of March, 1918, or any particular one of the series of combats after the 9th of April, of that year.

Finally I have to repeat that, with the exception of the central figure—as to whose Toryism I had my say in the preface to the last-published book of this series!—I have most carefully avoided so much as adumbrating the characteristics—and certainly the vicissitudes—of any human being known to myself.

And, in the meantime, my dear Duckworth, let me say that I shall always describe and subscribe, myself as

Part I

I

Slowly, amidst intolerable noises from, on the one hand the street and, on the other, from the large and voluminously echoing playground, the depths of the telephone began, for Valentine, to assume an aspect that, years ago it had used to have—of being a part of the supernatural paraphernalia of inscrutable Destiny.

The telephone, for some ingeniously torturing reason, was in a corner of the great schoolroom without any protection and, called imperatively, at a moment of considerable suspense, out of the asphalte playground where, under her command ranks of girls had stood electrically only just within the margin of control, Valentine with the receiver at her ear was plunged immediately into incomprehensible news uttered by a voice that she seemed half to remember. Right in the middle of a sentence it hit her:

“… that he ought presumably to be under control, which you mightn’t like!”; after that the noise burst out again and rendered the voice inaudible.

It occurred to her that probably at that minute the whole population of the world needed to be under control; she knew she herself did. But she had no male relative that the verdict could apply to in especial. Her brother? But he was on a minesweeper. In dock at the moment. And now … safe for good! There was also an aged great uncle that she had never seen. Dean of somewhere … Hereford? Exeter? … Somewhere. … Had she just said safe? She was shaken with joy!

She said into the mouthpiece:

“Valentine Wannop speaking. … Physical Instructress at this school, you know!”

She had to present an appearance of sanity … a sane voice at the very least!

The tantalisingly half-remembered voice in the telephone now got in some more incomprehensibilities. It came as if from caverns and as if with exasperated rapidity it exaggerated its s’s with an effect of spitting vehemence.

“His brothers.s.s got pneumonia, so his mistress.ss.ss even is unavailable to look after. …”

The voice disappeared; then it emerged again with:

“They’re said to be friends now!”

It was drowned then, for a long period in a sea of shrill girl’s voices from the playground, in an ocean of factory-hooters’ ululations, amongst innumerable explosions that trod upon one another’s heels. From where on earth did they get explosives, the population of squalid suburban streets amidst which the school lay? For the matter of that where did they get the spirits to make such an appalling row? Pretty drab people! Inhabiting liver-coloured boxes. Not on the face of it an imperial race.

The sibilating voice in the telephone went on spitting out spitefully that the porter said he had no furniture at all; that he did not appear to recognise the porter. … Improbable sounding pieces of information half-extinguished by the external sounds but uttered in a voice that seemed to mean to give pain by what it said.

Nevertheless it was impossible not to take it gaily. The thing, out there, miles and miles away must have been signed—a few minutes ago. She imagined along an immense line sullen and disgruntled cannon sounding for a last time.

“I haven’t,” Valentine Wannop shouted into the mouthpiece, “the least idea of what you want or who you are.”

She got back a title. … Lady someone or other. … It might have been Blastus. She imagined that one of the lady governoresses of the school must be wanting to order something in the way of school sports organised to celebrate the auspicious day. A lady governoress or other was always wanting something done by the School to celebrate something. No doubt the Head who was not wanting in a sense of humour—not absolutely wanting!—had turned this lady of title on to Valentine Wannop after having listened with patience to her for half an hour. The Head had certainly sent out to where in the playground they all had stood breathless, to tell Valentine Wannop that there was someone on the telephone that she—Miss Wanostrocht, the said Head—thought that she, Miss Wannop, ought to listen to. … Then: Miss Wanostrocht must have been able to distinguish what had been said by the now indistinguishable lady of title. But of course that had been ten minutes ago … Before the maroons or the sirens, whichever it had been, had sounded. … “The porter said he had no furniture at all. … He did not appear to recognise the porter. … Ought presumably to be under control!” … Valentine’s mind thus recapitulated the information that she had from Lady (provisionally) Blastus. She imagined now that the Lady must be concerned for the superannuated drill-sergeant the school had had before it had acquired her, Valentine, as physical instructor. She figured to herself the venerable, mumbling gentleman, with several ribbons on a black commissionaire’s tunic. In an almshouse, probably. Placed there by the Governors of the school. Had pawned his furniture no doubt. …

Intense heat possessed Valentine Wannop. She imagined indeed her eyes flashing. Was this the moment?

She didn’t even know whether what they had let off had been maroons or aircraft guns or sirens. It had happened—the noise, whatever it was—whilst she had been coming through the underground passage from the playground to the schoolroom to answer this wicked telephone. So she had not heard the sound. She had missed the sound for which the ears of a world had waited for years, for a generation. For an eternity. No sound. When she had left the playground there had been dead silence. All waiting: girls rubbing one ankle with the other rubber sole. …

Then. … For the rest of her life she was never to be able to remember the greatest stab of joy that had ever been known by waiting millions. There would be no one but she who would not be able to remember that. … Probably a stirring of the heart that was like a stab; probably a catching of the breath that was like an inhalation of flame! … It was over now; they were by now in a situation; a condition, something that would affect certain things in certain ways. …