Authors: Christopher Serpell
Shoeburyness slipped past, and the morning grew cloudy. I noticed a large oil painting, which—no doubt as a tribute from the new Australian owners to the comrades in arms of the original Anzacs—gave a vivid portrayal of the Lancashire Landing. I thought about that desperate enterprise, and many since, and what after all they had led to. I thought of Stephen Mallory, and of the sons of Gallipoli heroes shouting defiance in Oldham market-place; I thought of the Affair of the Cenotaph, in which, the communique had said coldly, “216 mutinous members of the British Army Service Corps and eleven civilians unfortunately lost their lives”. These were all failures, with a quality of gallant absurdity; and England was now in chains.
Then I recalled an epitaph which someone, I forget who, had written for the men who had died in that Gallipoli campaign. It went, as far as I could remember, like this:
We failed. If, when another sacrifice is needed,
You fail as gloriously, we shall have succeeded.
I rejoiced to think that ahead lay New Zealand and the war and that the country we were leaving behind was still capable of glorious failures, here and there.
The S.S.
Anzac
entered the Narrows Seas, between the white cliffs and the dunes. Then England disappeared, and I knew that the only way back to her was the long, stern way round by the New World.
I
WROTE
what I thought were the last words of this book a fortnight ago, and went out into the garden of my father’s house sick and heavy with the tragedy I had tried to record. I looked across the valley at the steadfast slopes of New Zealand’s Southern Alps, and tried to calm my weary and
bewildered brain with the thought of the eternal in nature—the slow life of the rocks and of the earth and the deep silence in which it is lived. In a month I would be leaving with the New Zealand Division for America, and would plunge once more into the travails of humanity. But for that month, I said, I would breathe the mountain air and forget all that lay beyond the hills.
Now, after only two weeks, I have had a reminder, and yet it is not one which I resent, for it has reminded me of something not less eternal than the universe—the
unconquerable
soul of man. It is a letter forwarded to me from the office of my newspaper. The envelope addressed to me at the
Wellington Courier
itself bore a Wellington postmark and had been posted within the week. But the letter itself has only one line of address at the top, “De Profundis”, and it is dated three months back—two months, that is, after my departure from England. There is no signature, but the personality of the writer is as clear to me as if I heard his low, musical voice, and felt again the keen glance of his blue eyes. I cannot do better than conclude my book by quoting it:
“Dear Mr. Fenton,
“You will remember the night when three honest men sat about the fire and took pleasure in a conversation without fear. I bade you then tell your countrymen of the fate that had befallen their motherland, and, if I read you then aright, by now you will be doing so. But I told you then that your message should not be without hope, and I have since thought that I should have given you more ground for such hope than I did at the time. I accepted my young friend’s guarantee of your honesty, and indeed liked and trusted you myself, but too much depended on my silence for me to be entirely open with you. Even now I shall not be able to tell you a great deal, for I, and many others with me, stand as guardians over a life which was born in silence and suffering and which must be nursed in secrecy and watchfulness. It is the infant life of freedom that we guard—a freedom not only of the body but of the spirit—and, if this child can be reared
unharmed
to man’s estate, it may be that a Britain shall arise again, greater and nobler for the sufferings she had endured. Remember, Mr. Fenton, that our former freedom died long before the German tyrant set his foot on our necks. It grew sick when we put the safety of ourselves before the freedom of others, and, though there was a time when it looked as though it might recover, its life was finally extinguished
when we made peace with the powers of darkness.
“I have said that I cannot tell you many secrets. What I will tell you is of things done and endured—things that our oppressors have kept hidden from the world—and you
reading
them may learn something of what is being prepared. Every day men meet in desert places—in darkened rooms, in forests, and in lonely valleys—and the gospel of freedom is passed from mouth to mouth and the light of hope dawns again on forlorn faces. These are some of the stories that are told:
“There was an engine-driver, called Angus Maclean. He learnt one night at Euston that he was to drive a train-load of German troops—the 29th Regiment—to Scotland. Before the train pulled out of London he had communicated his
knowledge
to a friend, and it was straightway known in Scotland at what hour Angus Maclean would drive his train across the Forth Bridge. All through the night Angus Maclean drove his train northwards, and his only fear was that he should fail to reach the bridge at the appointed hour. He was not late. As his train began to roll across the bridge there was as explosion which shattered the central span, and Angus Maclean and his engine, and the trainload of troops behind it, were plunged into the Forth.
“There was an aeronautical engineer, called Philip Parsons. The Germans demanded that he should help them to build their warplanes. At first he refused to work, but his wife and young child were taken from him as hostages for his
obedience
, and he was forced to consent. Then a workmate told the Germans that before they had taken over the rule of the country Parsons had discovered a secret that would make it possible to produce faster aeroplanes than the world had yet seen. His German masters summoned him, and told him that if the secret was not in their hands by the next morning his son would be shot and his wife sent to the troops in Poland. Philip Parsons went out and told a friend what had befallen him. The friend gave him a promise, and the next morning Parsons went to his masters as he had been bidden. But instead of his secret plans he produced a pistol and shot three of those in authority dead before he took his own life. And while those shots were fired certain men came to the place where his wife and child were confined and delivered them, and the Germans have not seen them again. But they are alive and well cared for, for this was the promise that Parsons had received from his friend, and his young son shall grow to be a credit to his father.
“There was an office-cleaner called Mrs. Ambleside. She
was poor and elderly, and, after they had got tired of making the Jews do it, she was employed by the Germans to wash the floors and sweep the dust at Bush House. When she came there she knew no German, and she had only the dimmest idea of the vast organization which had its headquarters there. But the Germans had not troubled to discover that Louisa Ambleside had had a nephew who had been beaten to death as a Socialist in Stoke Poges camp. Even if they had known I doubt if they would have been disturbed, for she was a tired-looking, elderly woman, and there were many who had greater cause for grievance. But Mrs. Ambleside had the imagination to see that she might some day use her
employment
as a means towards vengeance for her nephew, so she learnt German. This is a duty enjoined upon all of us, but the workers have neither the time nor the energy for it, and on the whole their ignorance is overlooked provided that they send their children to the official schools of instruction. But Mrs. Ambleside learnt German at the age of fifty-three, and learnt it so well that she could understand what her employers were talking about. No doubt she had a neglected capacity for languages, for she learnt it in an extraordinarily short time. Meanwhile she kept her eyes and ears open at Bush House, and discovered a good deal about the work which was going on there.
“In due course Mrs. Ambleside met one of those who work with me, for we have learnt not to neglect the humble and obscure. To him she told what she had discovered, and, when she understood the cause for which he was working, she offered him her services. They were accepted, and Mrs. Ambleside became one of our outposts. A few weeks ago she found at Bush House the secret file containing a list of the informers stationed in the towns and villages up and down the country. It was a bulky document, but every night she succeeded in abstracting a page or two, and brought it home where there was one ready to copy it. Every morning she restored the copied page so that it should not be missed. When there were only three pages left uncopied she was caught tampering with the file. She died after only two days of interrogation, for mercifully she had a weak heart. But the inquisitors never learnt from her that she understood German; they never learnt for whom she had been working; and they still do not know how much of their secret is in our hands.
“I could tell you many of these stories, and indeed one of my purposes in writing was to ensure that these names should not be forgotten. But I am reminded that the document must
not be too bulky, and indeed there are too many names to be recorded. I could tell you of working men, mechanics and unskilled labourers, who have run the risk of death and torture in order to hamper the running of just that tiny section of the German machine in which they are involved. I could tell you of others who live a hunted life, of those who have died or are ready to die to keep the secret of their comrades. Among them indeed is that long-legged,
red-headed
rebel of an Irishman who once led a great number of his fellow Greyshirts towards destruction. Now, in
contrition
, he has taken for himself the name of another red-head, Judas, and yet he wears his penance with an air, and the name is one to conjure with in the waste places of his native land, where arms are hidden beneath the peat stack. What is more, he has made the cause of his fiery-hearted countrymen one with that which inspires the quiet English and the stubborn Scots. There is more unity in these islands to-day than there has ever been before in all their history. It is the task of my fellowship to make that unity a positive and constructive force, and not just a negative reaction to oppression.
“It is not so difficult a task as you might think. A great soberness and patience has been born out of our subjection, and yet the spirit of the people is not dead. For a while it slept, stunned into resignation, but all the time it was being kept alive, not by the intellectuals or the thinkers, still less by the politicians and talkers, but by the greatest and most inarticulate section of the population, the working-class. For the workers were acquainted with suffering, and to them
hardship
was nothing new. The young men might be led away after this catchword or that, but as they married and had children and laboured to support those children they learnt deeper truths. Now the fellowship of the poor has been
extended
to embrace all classes in Britain, and we are all learning the same lessons together. We have learnt to refrain from rhetoric and to mistrust meaningless catchwords, for it was by such means that this country was enticed towards anarchy and ruin. Now our captors have taught us the value of silence, unless there is a true thing to be said and a true man to hear it spoken. We have learnt, too, by bitter experience, that romantic gestures and demonstrations are of no avail against the strength of tyranny. The Armistice Day massacre, of which I am told you were a witness, was one such lesson. We have learnt that, in the cause for which we are fighting, every word must be weighed, and every action judged by the fruit which it is likely to bear. We have learnt
to husband our strength and to control our energy, and yet when the right moment comes to expend it all without stint in the service of the cause.
“Yet all this knowledge, hard-won and precious though it is, is only contributory to the two great principles which our poverty and subjection have taught us. The first is the need for freedom—an equal freedom for every man and every people upon the earth. The second is that the road to such freedom lies only in the denial of self and the sacrifice of personal ends. It is only by sacrifice and the brotherhood of sacrifice that the people of Britain will grow strong enough to regain their freedom, and it is only by still further sacrifice that freedom shall put an end to all further chance of tyranny upon the earth.
“Before the war, we in this country had the foundation of such freedom in the laws and constitution under which we lived. The very cause for which we went to war was a belated recognition of the principles of freedom. The world, too, had the foundation of brotherhood in the League of Nations. But national self-seeking destroyed the brotherhood of the League, and private greed and selfish fear at last put an end to freedom in Great Britain. It has taken all this suffering and slaughter to teach us the value of what we threw away.
“Already our new-found strength is beginning to tell. Our oppressors look at us strangely, angry and fearful at
something
they do not understand. They are like the Egyptians walking in darkness, of whom the Wise Man wrote: ‘For the whole world shined with clear light and none were hindered in their labour: over them only was spread a heavy night, an image of the darkness which should afterwards receive them: but yet were they unto themselves more grievous than the darkness.’ And again: ‘For wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous, and being pressed with conscience, always forecasteth fearful things.’
“This fear has come upon the Germans in Britain and elsewhere, but they do not know what they fear. Sometimes a blind panic comes upon them, and they commit new
outrages
on the bodies of their victims. Sometimes they even make overtures to us, and seek comfort and justification from those they have wronged. Meanwhile the great machine of conquest and empire which they built runs slower and less smoothly, in spite of all the urgency of an impending conflict. It is as though it was impeded by its own magnitude. There is a feeling that, instead of a weapon for further conquests, it is becoming a trap for its constructors. Even the enforced migrations which they devised to break our spirit have turned
against them. For by this means the germ of freedom was spread among the captive peoples, and it is now not one nation or another but a whole continent that waits and watches for the light.
“I greet you, Fenton, as one who may have a hand in the rebuilding of this world when the night is departed. Whether I shall meet you in that new day I do not know, but that it is on its way I cannot doubt. We have watched for the dawn, and already the darkness grows pale.”