Part 4 (1/2)

The same mood, the same rhythm, are repeated in a poem in _The Four Men_:

”The trees that grow in my own country Are the beech-tree and the yew; Many stand together, And some stand few.

In the month of May in my own country All the woods are new.”

But the summit of these poems is reached in another composition in the same book. He has set it cunningly in a description of the way in which it was written, so as to be able to strew the approaches to it with single lines and fragments which he could not use, but which were too good to be lost. The poem itself runs like this:

”He does not die that can bequeath Some influence to the land he knows, Or dares, persistent, interwreath Love permanent with the wild hedgerows; He does not die but still remains Substantiate with his darling plains.

The spring's superb adventure calls His dust athwart the woods to flame; His boundary river's secret falls Perpetuate and repeat his name.

He rides his loud October sky: He does not die. He does not die.

The beeches know the accustomed head Which loved them, and a peopled air Beneath their benediction spread Comforts the silence everywhere; For native ghosts return and these Perfect the mystery in the trees.

So, therefore, though myself be crosst The shuddering of that dreadful day When friend and fire and home are lost And even children drawn away-- The pa.s.ser-by shall hear me still, A boy that sings on Duncton Hill.”

It is of a robuster sort than the other poems and in a way their climax for it expresses the same emotion. It is indeed the final movement of the book which treats in particular of the love of Suss.e.x, but also of the general emotion of the love of one's own country. There is melancholy mixed with this feeling, as with all strong affections: with it are a.s.sociated the love of friends and the dread of parting from them and regret for the accomplishment of such a thing.

In these few poems, his best, Mr. Belloc seems to have expressed this mood completely and so to have shown--we have said as it were by accident--an abiding and fundamental mood. We have been constrained to criticize his poetry much as he has criticized the poetry of others, that is to say, sporadically and without continuity. But we have touched here perhaps on a thing, the obscure existence of which also we indicated, the secret root that shows his poetry to be a true and native growth of the soil from which his other writings have sprung.

CHAPTER V

THE STUDENT OF MILITARY AFFAIRS

Mr Belloc's most important writings on the war are to be found in _Land and Water_, the _Ill.u.s.trated Sunday Herald_, and _Pearson's Magazine_.

To these must be added his series of books of which only one has so far appeared--_A General Sketch of the European War_. His series of articles in _Pearson's Magazine_ has also been reprinted in book-form under the t.i.tle _The Two Maps_.

Of these his writings in _Land and Water_ are, at the present time, the most important. Since the earliest stages of the war Mr. Belloc has contributed to _Land and Water_ a weekly article. What is the nature of this article? In the first place, it is a commentary on the current events of the campaign. Mr. Belloc himself, when challenged recently to defend his work, said very modestly (as we think)--”My work ... is no more than an attempt to give week by week, at what I am proud to say is a very great expense of time and of energy, an explanation of what is taking place. There are many men who could do the same thing. I happen to have specialized upon military history and problems, and profess now, with a complete set of maps, to be doing for others what their own occupations forbid them the time and opportunity to do.”

With part of this description we may heartily agree; with the rest we must disagree. We agree with Mr. Belloc when he refers to his work as being accomplished ”at a very great expense of time and of energy.”

There may be some who doubt the truth of this statement. There is undoubtedly a large section of the public which, led astray by that cynicism and that distrust of newspapers and journalists which a certain section of our Press has engendered in the public, has come to regard all newspaper reports on the war as unreliable and the writings of so-called ”experts” as mere vapourings, undertaken in the hope of a.s.sisting the circulation of the paper in which they appear rather than the circulation of the truth. If, then, any reader be inclined to include Mr. Belloc in such a denunciation and to doubt that his weekly commentary in _Land and Water_ is written as he says, ”at a very great expense of time and of energy,” let him turn to one of Mr. Belloc's articles, reprinted in _The Two Maps_, on ”What to Believe in War News.”

In this article Mr. Belloc asks the question--”How is the plain man to distinguish in the news of the war what is true from what is false, and so arrive at a sound opinion?” His answer to this question is that ”in the first place, the basis of all sound opinion are the official _communiques_ read with the aid of a map.” And to this he adds the following explanation:

When I say ”the official communiques” I do not mean those of the British Government alone, nor even of the Allies alone, but of _all_ the belligerents. You just read impartially the communiques of the Austro-Hungarian and of the German Governments together with those of the British Government and its Allies, or you will certainly miss the truth. By which statement I do not mean that each Government is equally accurate, still less equally full in its relation; but that, unless you compare all the statements of this sort, you will have most imperfect evidence; just as you would have very imperfect evidence in a court of law if you only listened to the prosecution and refused to listen to the defence.

Mr. Belloc then proceeds to show what characteristics all official _communiques_ have in common, and then to outline the peculiar characteristics of the _communiques_ of each belligerent. Although not one unnecessary sentence is included, this short summary of his own discoveries covers seven pages. The final sentence of the article is as follows: ”Nevertheless, unless you do follow fairly regularly the Press of all the belligerent nations, you will obtain but an imperfect view of the war as a whole.”

This comparison of the _communiques_ of the belligerents, which is seen in these pages to be no light task, naturally forms but a small part of Mr. Belloc's work; so that further proof of his own statement, that his work necessitates the expenditure of much time and energy, need hardly be adduced.

This slight insight into the nature of Mr. Belloc's work will also serve to emphasize the point in which we disagree with Mr. Belloc's own description of his work. If, let us say, a bank manager, who may be regarded as a type of citizen of considerable intelligence and leisure, were to adopt and faithfully to pursue the methods described in this article, the methods which Mr. Belloc himself has found it necessary to adopt, he would certainly find his leisure time swallowed up. In so far as this alone were the case, we might agree with Mr. Belloc when he says of himself--”I ... profess now ... to be doing for others what their own occupations forbid them the time and opportunity to do.” But our bank manager, when he had accomplished the long process of sifting out the only war news that is reliable (and he would be only able to accomplish this much, be it noted, with the aid of Mr. Belloc) would still be unable, in all probability, to grasp the full meaning and importance of that news. To do that he would need what, in common with the majority of Englishmen, he does not possess, and what it would take him years to acquire, namely, a knowledge of military history and military science.

We see then that Mr. Belloc, in his weekly commentary in _Land and Water_, is doing for others not merely ”what their own occupations forbid them the time and opportunity to do,” but _what they could not do for themselves_, even had they the time and opportunity.

To undertake this task he is peculiarly qualified. In his writings on the war, indeed, Mr. Belloc appears as an expert, in the true sense of that much abused word. He says of himself, in the paragraph already quoted--”I happen to have specialized on military history and problems.”

That is again too modest an estimation of the facts. He has done far more than merely to specialize on military history; he has given military history its true place in relation to other branches of history. The study of history at the present time is specialized. We subdivide its various aspects, cla.s.sify facts and speak of const.i.tutional history, economic history, ecclesiastical history, military history, and so forth. Now Mr. Belloc, in addition to his study of all the branches of history, has not merely made a special study of military history, but has realized and proved, more fully than any other historian, of what tremendous importance is the study of military history in its relation to those other branches of the study of history, such as the const.i.tutional and economic. ”In writing of the military aspect of any movement,” he says, ”it is impossible to deal with that aspect save as a living part of the whole; so knit into national life is the business of war.”

In those words, ”so knit into national life is the business of war,” Mr.

Belloc has finely expressed his conception of war as one of the weightiest factors in human events. In accordance with this att.i.tude Mr.