Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [122]
It was probably impolitic to fake--to overstate!--a case against enemy nations. The chickens would come home to roost in one way or another, probably. Perhaps they wouldn't. That was a matter for one's superiors. Obviously! And the first gang had been simple, honest fellows. Stupid, but relatively disinterested. But now!...What was one to do?...He went on, almost mumbling...
She had suddenly a clear view of him as a man extraordinarily clear-sighted in the affairs of others, in great affairs, but in his own so simple as to be almost a baby. And gentle! And extraordinarily unselfish. He didn't betray one thought of self-interest...not one!
He was saying:
'But now!...with this crowd of boodlers!...Supposing one's asked to manipulate the figures of millions of pairs of boots in order to force someone else to send some miserable general and his troops to, say, Salonika--when they and you and common sense and everyone and everything else, know it's disastrous?...And from that to monkeying with our own forces...Starving particular units for political...' He was talking to himself, not to her. And indeed he said:
'I can't, you see, talk really before you. For all I know your sympathies, perhaps your activities, are with the enemy nations.'
She said passionately.
'They're not! They're not! How dare you say such a thing?' He answered:
'It doesn't matter...No! I'm sure you're not...But, anyhow, these things are official. One can't, if one's scrupulous, even talk about them...And then...You see it means such infinite deaths of men, such an infinite prolongation...all this interference for side-ends!...I seem to see these fellows with clouds of blood over their heads...And then...I'm to carry out their orders because they're my superiors...But helping them means unnumbered deaths...'
He looked at her with a faint, almost humorous smile:
'You see!' he said, 'we're perhaps not so very far apart! You mustn't think you're the only one that sees all the deaths and all the sufferings. All, you see: I, too, am a conscientious objector. My conscience won't let me continue any longer with these fellows...'
She said:
'But isn't there any other...'
He interrupted:
'No! There's no other course. One is either a body or a brain in these affairs. I suppose I'm more brain than body. I suppose so. Perhaps I'm not. But my conscience won't let me use my brain in this service. So I've a great, hulking body! I'll admit I'm probably not much good. But I've nothing to live for: what I stand for isn't any more in this world. What I want, as you know, I can't have. So...
She exclaimed bitterly:
'Oh, say it! Say it! Say that your large hulking body will stop two bullets in front of two small anaemic fellows. And how can you say you'll have nothing to live for? You'll come back. You'll do your good work again. You know you did good work...'
He said:
'Yes I believe I did. I used to despise it, but I've come to believe I did...But no! They'll never let me back. They've got me out, with all sorts of bad marks against me. They'll pursue me systematically...You see, in such a world as this, an idealist--or perhaps it's only a sentimentalist--must be stoned to death. He makes the others so uncomfortable. He haunts them at their golf...No; they'll get me, one way or the other. And some fellow--Macmaster here--will do my jobs. He won't do them so well, but he'll do them more dishonestly. Or no. I oughtn't to say dishonestly. He'll do them with enthusiasm and righteousness. He'll fulfil the orders of his superiors with an immense docility and unction. He'll fake figures against our allies with the black enthusiasm of a Calvin and, when that war comes, he'll do the requisite faking with the righteous wrath of Jehovah smiting the priests of Baal. And he'll be right. It's all we're fitted for. We ought never to have come into this war. We ought to have snaffled other peoples' colonies as the price of neutrality...
'Oh!' Valentine Wannop said, 'how can you so hate your country?'
He said with great earnestness:
'Don't say it! Don't believe it! Don't even for a moment think it! I love every inch of its fields and every plant in the hedgerows: comfrey, mullein, paigles, long red purples, that liberal shepherds give a grosser name...and all the rest of the rubbish--you remember the field between the Duchemins' and your mother's--and we have always been boodlers and robbers and reivers and pirates and cattle thieves, and so we've built up the great tradition that we love...But, for the moment, it's painful. Our present crowd is not more corrupt than Walpole's. But one's too near them. One sees of Walpole that he consolidated the nation by building up the National Debt: one doesn't see his methods...My son, or his son, will only see the glory of the boodle we make out of this show. Or rather out of the next. He won't know about the methods. They'll teach him at school that across the counties went the sound of bugles that his father knew...Though that was another discreditable affair...'