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272 war prose From ‘Appry la Gair’, Piccadilly Review (23 October 1919), 5. [This anonymous letter from a ‘distinguished man of letters’ to a review which Ford was writing for at the time, sounds very Fordian: not just for its ironic Tory feudalism, but its allusions to the Welch Regiment.] There are two classes in the State that should be respected – those who produce and those who administer. All others are parasitic. Begin with the Working Man. I do not say with the Labour Party. Let us stop cheap gibes at men wanting high wages. I want all I can get. So do you. Our side has far too long occupied itself with the woes of the suburban shopkeeper. Whistle him down the wind. Let us then stop cheap gibes at Working Men who desire a good time – for it is our sacred duty to give them a good time. We have no other duty. Let me tell you. My regiment was called the Suicide Club during the late war. It issued in August, 1914, posters saying that the — Bn. — Regiment was the shortest road to France. We recruited, in a mining district, sixty per cent of the mining population by December, 1914. Then the Government forbade us to recruit any more. My regiment raised twenty-eight battalions of miners, and there were other regiments recruiting in the same area. And you will not tell me that I – as a Conservative, or Unionist, or Coalitionist – am to subscribe to cheap gibes at these men because they want a good time. I would rather cut off my right hand. I promised them a good time ‘appry la gair finny’. I trained them in this country to confront death. I used, in France, all my personal prestige as an officer to induce them to confront death and bear anguish with composure. I would rather starve than take a profit on their labour. From Provence, pp. 304-06. You cannot, however, have vast organizations without faith – and Christianity as a faith died a few days after the 4th of August 1914 ... the only sign of protest against that reign of crime and assassination having been the death, as soon as the effects of war manifested themselves, of Benedict X... Of a broken heart on August 19, 1914

miscellany 273 .... I like to think that the poor old Church, thus before our common faith died, should, alone of all its derivatives, have achieved that tribute to the Saviour .... And so the whole Western world once the war was finished plunged into a sort of Albigensism .... What else could it do, the parallel being so very exact? ... For the appalled soldiery saw all the churches of the world plunge into that hellish struggle with the enthusiasm of schoolboys at a rat hunt. Not a pulpit thundered that if you slay your fellow man your forehead will bear the brand of Cain. Great lights of the churches plunged into the whirlpool itself – and not armed only with maces, either .... I saw, in 1917, an Anglican dignitary emerging in Rouen from the street in which was the house presided over by Mlle Suzanne. With a revolver at his belt and the full insignia of an infantry field officer – not of a chaplain! At dawn! I was marching a number of men in a garrison fatigue .... I said to him in mess afterwards that he had been very matútinal .... He said: ‘You mean, ah, matutaïnal .... All Latinderived words with the termination inal are pronounced aïnal,’ in his best Balliol voice. I said: As for instance uraïnal! ... which even deans pronounce otherwise, and he cursed me up and down, using language that would have shocked the regimental sergeant-major .... I don’t of course blame him .... Why shouldn’t the clergy of a national church be Englishmen too? ... But I had been marching over a hundred men – most of them Nonconformists of his battalion to whom he was well known. And there is worse than that. I mean the performance of their sacred duties by the clergy on the battlefield .... Before the great attack on Wytschaete in the Salient I was given, along with such Catholics as there were in my battalion, the holy communion by Father Butler, our admirable, cultured and heroic chaplain. It was a touching and primitive ceremony, we kneeling in the straw of a barn whilst the pigs moved among our feet, the shells went overhead and Father Butler preached a sermon on the more abstruse aspects of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. He did that very properly and humanely so that our minds should be taken off our surroundings .... Or there is the story, that in those days the French found touching, of the Jewish Rabbi who was killed in No Man’s Land whilst holding a crucifix before the eyes of dying men – incurring no doubt damnation for himself .... The Christian dead, however, were credited with having died duly fortified by the

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272

war prose

From ‘Appry la Gair’, Piccadilly Review (23 October 1919), 5. [This anonymous letter from a ‘distinguished man of letters’ to a review which Ford was writing for at the time, sounds very Fordian: not just for its ironic Tory feudalism, but its allusions to the Welch Regiment.]

There are two classes in the State that should be respected – those who produce and those who administer. All others are parasitic.

Begin with the Working Man. I do not say with the Labour Party. Let us stop cheap gibes at men wanting high wages. I want all I can get. So do you. Our side has far too long occupied itself with the woes of the suburban shopkeeper. Whistle him down the wind.

Let us then stop cheap gibes at Working Men who desire a good time – for it is our sacred duty to give them a good time. We have no other duty. Let me tell you.

My regiment was called the Suicide Club during the late war. It issued in August, 1914, posters saying that the — Bn. — Regiment was the shortest road to France. We recruited, in a mining district, sixty per cent of the mining population by December, 1914. Then the Government forbade us to recruit any more. My regiment raised twenty-eight battalions of miners, and there were other regiments recruiting in the same area.

And you will not tell me that I – as a Conservative, or Unionist, or Coalitionist – am to subscribe to cheap gibes at these men because they want a good time. I would rather cut off my right hand. I promised them a good time ‘appry la gair finny’. I trained them in this country to confront death. I used, in France, all my personal prestige as an officer to induce them to confront death and bear anguish with composure. I would rather starve than take a profit on their labour.

From Provence, pp. 304-06.

You cannot, however, have vast organizations without faith – and Christianity as a faith died a few days after the 4th of August 1914 ... the only sign of protest against that reign of crime and assassination having been the death, as soon as the effects of war manifested themselves, of Benedict X... Of a broken heart on August 19, 1914

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