Of course, the League would not attack a writer or
any other public man from sheer wilfulness, but it
would probably have no difficulty in bringing down
over-praised mediocrity to its proper level or in giving
a helping hand to unrecognized talent. But unless
its president were a man of unerring judgment and
remarkable restraint, its sense of power would probably
be too much for it, and it would lose its head altogether.
Looking round for a suitable president, I can think
of nobody but myself. And I am too busy just
now.
We were resting after the first battle of the Somme.
Naturally all the talk in the Mess was of after-the-war.
Ours was the H.Q. Mess, and I was the only subaltern;
the youngest of us was well over thirty. With
a gravity befitting our years and (except for myself)
our rank, we discussed not only restaurants and revues,
but also Reconstruction.
The Colonel’s idea of Reconstruction included
a large army of conscripts. He did not call them
conscripts. The fact that he had chosen to be
a soldier himself, out of all the professions open
to him, made it difficult for him to understand why
a million others should not do the same without compulsion.
At any rate, we must have the men. The one thing
the war had taught us was that we must have a real
Continental army.
I asked why. “Theirs not to reason why”
on parade, but in the H.Q. Mess on active service
the Colonel is a fellow human being. So I asked
him why we wanted a large army after the war.
For the moment he was at a loss. Of course, he
might have said “Germany,” had it not
been decided already that there would be no Germany
after the war. He did not like to say “France,”
seeing that we were even then enjoying the hospitality
of the most delightful French villages. So, after
a little hesitation, he said “Spain.”
At least he put it like this:—
“Of course, we must have an army, a large army.”
“But why?” I said again.
“How else can you—can you defend
the honour of your country?”
“The Navy.”
“The Navy! Pooh! The Navy isn’t
a weapon of attack; it’s a weapon of defence.”
“But you said `defend’.”
“Attack,” put in the Major oracularly,
“is the best defence.”
“Exactly.”
I hinted at the possibilities of blockade. The
Colonel was scornful. “Sitting down under
an insult for months and months,” he called it,
until you starved the enemy into surrender. He
wanted something much more picturesque, more immediately
effective than that. (Something, presumably, more
like the Somme.)
“But give me an example,” I said, “of
what you mean by `insults’ and `honour’.”
Whereupon he gave me this extraordinary example of
the need for a large army.
“Well, supposing,” he said, “that
fifty English women in Madrid were suddenly murdered,
what would you do?”
