: The Human Boy and the War by Phillpotts Eden - War stories English; Boys Fiction; World War 1914-1918 England Fiction; England Social life and customs 20th century Fiction

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The Battle of the Sand-Pit The Mystery of Fortescue The Countryman of Kant Travers Minor, Scout The Hutchings Testimonial The Fight Percy Minimus and His Tommy The Prize Poem The Revenge The "Turbot's" Aunt Cornwallis and Me and Fate For the Red Cross The Last of Mitchell

THE HUMAN BOY AND THE WAR

THE BATTLE OF THE SAND-PIT

After the war had fairly got going, naturally we thought a good deal about it, and it was explained to us by Fortescue that, behind the theory of Germany licking us, or us licking Germany, as the case might be, there were two great psychical ideas. As I was going to be a soldier myself, the actual fighting interested me most, but the psychical ideas were also interesting, because Fortescue said that often the cause won the battle. Therefore it was better to have a good psychical idea behind you, like us, than a rotten one, like Germany. I always thought the best men and the best ships and the best brains and the most money were simply bound to come out top in the long run; but Fortescue said that a bad psychical idea behind these things often wrecks the whole show. And so I asked him if we had got a good psychical idea behind us, and he said we had a champion one, whereas the Germans were trusting to a perfectly deadly psychical idea, which was bound to have wrecked them in any case--even if they'd had twenty million men instead of ten.

So that was all right, though, no doubt, the Germans think their idea of being top dog of the whole world is really finer than ours, which is "Live and let live." And, as I pointed out to Fortescue, no doubt if we had such a fearfully fine opinion of ourselves as the Germans have, then we also should want to be top dog of the world.

And Fortescue said:--

"That's just it, Travers major. Thanks to our sane policy of respecting the rights of all men, and never setting ourselves up as the only nation that counts, we do count--first and foremost; but if we'd gone out into the whole earth and bawled that we were going to make it Anglo-Saxon, then we should have been laughed at, as the Germans are now; and we should dismally have failed as colonists, just as they have."

So, of course, I saw all he meant by his psychical idea, and no doubt it was a jolly fine thought; and most, though not all, of the Sixth saw it also. But the Fifth saw it less, and the Fourth didn't see it at all. The Fourth were, in fact, rather an earthy lot about this time, and they seemed to have a foggy sort of notion that might is right; or, if it isn't, it generally comes out right, which to the minds of the Fourth amounted to the same thing.

The war naturally had a large effect upon us, and according as we looked at the war, so you could judge of our opinions in general. I and my brother, Travers minor, and Briggs and Saunders--though Briggs and Travers minor were themselves in the Lower Fourth--were interested in the strategy and higher command. We foretold what was going to happen next, and were sometimes quite right; whereas chaps like Abbott and Blades and Mitchell and Pegram and Rice were only interested in the brutal part, and the bloodshed and the grim particulars about the enemy's trenches after a sortie, and so on.

In time, curiously enough, there got to be two war parties in the school. Of course they both wanted England to win, but we took a higher line about it, and looked on to the end, and argued about the division of the spoil, and the general improvement of Europe, and the new map, and the advancement of better ideas, and so on; while Rice and Pegram and such-like took the "horrible slaughter" line, and rejoiced to hear of parties surrounded, and Uhlans who had been eating hay for a week before they were captured, and the decks of battleships just before they sank, and such-like necessary but very unfortunate things.

I said to Mitchell--

"It may interest you to know that real soldiers never talk about the hideous side of war; and it would be a good deal more classy if you chaps tried to understand the meaning of it all, instead of wallowing in the dreadful details."

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