vading." The soldiers uncouthly rigged out in
skins, rolls of blanket, ... cardigans, and more cardigans, squares of
oilcloth, fur caps, ... hoods of tarpaulin, rubber, weatherproof cloth
... look like cave men, gorillas, troglodytes. One of them, while
digging, has turned up an axe made by quaternary man, a piece of pointed
stone with a bone handle, and he is using it. Others, like savages, are
making rough ornaments. Three generations side by side; all the races,
but not all the classes. Sons of the soil and artisans for the most
part. Small farmers, agricultural labourers, carters, porters and
messengers, factory foremen, saloon keepers, newspaper sellers,
ironmongers' assistants, miners--very few liberal professions are
represented. This amalgam has a common speech, "made up of workshop and
barrack slang and of rural dialects seasoned with a few neologisms."
Each one is shown to us as a silhouette, a sharp and admirable likeness;
once we have seen them we shall always know them apart. But the method
of depiction is very different from that of Tolstoi. The Russian cannot
meet with a soul without plumbing it to the depths. Here we look and
pass on. The individual soul hardly exists; it is a mere shell. Beneath
that shell, the collective soul, suffering, overwhelmed with fatigue,
brutalised by the noise, poisoned by the smoke, endures infinite
boredom, drowses, waits, waits unendingly. It is a "waiting-machine." It
no longer tries to think; "it has given up the attempt to understand, it
has renounced being itself." These are not soldiers, they don't wish to
be soldiers, they are men. "They are men, good fellows of all kinds,
rudely torn away from life; they are ignorant, not easily carried away,
men of narrow outlook, but full of common sense which sometimes gets out
of gear. They are inclined to go where they are led and to do as they
are bid. They are tough, and able to bear a great deal. Simple men who
have been artificially simplified yet more, and in whom, by the force of
circumstances, the primitive instincts have become accentuated: the
instinct of self-preservation, egoism, the dogged hope of living
through, the lust of eating, drinking, and sleeping." Even amid the
dangers of an artillery attack, within a few hours they get bored, yawn,
play cards, talk nonsense, "snatch forty winks"--in a word, they are
bored. "The overwhelming vastness of these great bombardments wearies
the mind." They pass through a hell of