Chapter 11

"What did you do before the war?" He asks. The Poilu replies that he was a farmer in a very small way; he worked on the land, and he had some stock--two oxen, a horse, a cow, a wife, some fowls, "and, saving your presence, a pig." "Ah!" exclaims St. Anthony, "a pig! That reminds me! Pigs! Sois béni, mon frère." But the Good God frowns, and St. Anthony makes himself very small.

And then, the Poilu continues, he became a soldier, which leads to the awkward question, had he always behaved himself as such? Alas! it appears that he had not. For one thing, he has not always been sober, he is confessing, when Noah interrupts with the comment that insobriety is not such a very serious affair. In fact, he himself once ... and by this time the reader begins to get the drift of this joyous humane fantasy, the point being that the hierarchy of Heaven are all on the side of the brave simple soldier who has died that France might live. As how could they not be? Another time, the Poilu continues, he was sent to prison for cutting a piece from his coat in order to mend the seat of his trousers--in other words, for injuring Government property; and here St. Martin breaks in with indignation at the punishment. "Why, when I did very much the same," he says, "and cut my cloak to cover a paralytic, I was canonized for it!" And so on.

Then comes a graver note. The Poilu, feeling an effort to be necessary, for the Good God has never relaxed His sternness throughout, becomes eloquent. Not only was he killed, but before that, he says, he suffered much. The hardships of war on the Western front are terrible. He had been famished, he had been frozen, he had been burned by the sun. He had been sleepless, he had been footsore, and the sweat had poured from him under his heavy burdens, for often he had carried not only his own haversack but those of his comrades. In short.... But here St. Simon, speaking softly to Christ, says, "Like you, Lord, at Golgotha." In my prose this is, of course, too crude; but I assure you that in the poem it is a great moment. And another follows it, for as the Good God still says nothing, the Poilu points to the blue robe of the Blessed Virgin, and to the great white beard of the Good God himself, and to the red cloak of our Lord, and exclaims, "Voilà mes trois couleurs. The three colours of France. It was for them that I have lost my life; fighting for them has brought me to this Judgment Hall!"

That is fine, is it not? Only the French genius is capable of just such a splendid blend of naïveté, emotion, and the best kind of theatricalism. And at these words at last the Good God smiles, and behind Him Heaven opens for the Poilu to enter.

There is a little more--for it seems that Heaven is full of Poilus with blue caps, and golden helmets, and wings that remove the possibility of getting wet feet or weary feet any more for ever and ever. And our Poilu joins these others, who look happy and are happy, and sings with them "Glory to God in the highest," while the angels, not perhaps wholly without irony, answer, "Peace on earth and goodwill to men."

Note

With the exception of a few pages, the longest essay in this book--that which gives it its title--is now published for the first time. The papers grouped under the headings "Diversions" and "On Bellona's Hem" which follow have already appeared in print, in _Punch_ and _The Sphere_, but in their present form have been always revised and often extended.

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