A Great Little Soldier

I

I MET him, you might say, by accident — through causes in a way very remote from the war. It was about the time that Marshal Joffre was over here, and the English Mission.

His coming was heralded by a quaint little note, such as people who write get now and then: —

DEAR SIR,—
Being interested in Oriental books, and knowing that you have been in India, I would like to talk to you. May I?
Truly yours,
EUGENE LEE.

I asked him to come. He arrived at breakfast-time.

‘I came early,’ he said, ‘because I was afraid I might miss you. ’

It transpired, indeed, that, in his zeal, he had come without breakfasting — an omission which I was, happily, able to supply.

He was short and slight and a bit bent in the shoulders; not, at first sight, the figure of a student of high philosophy. You would have expected, rather, to find him working in a drug-store, or something of that sort. And this was about the fact with him. But I got a shock of happy surprise when I caught the fire in his eyes and the fierce flame of enthusiasm that blazed through his small frame.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think this is like the war in the Bhagavad Gita, a war of spiritual forces, a war of principalities and powers — like Michael fighting against Satan! That is why I wanted to talk to you about it. What do you think?’

But, without waiting for my answer, he went on with his own idea.

‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘that the Germans have given themselves up to the powers of evil — what the Bhagavad Gita calls the forces of Darkness and Passion, Tamas and Rajas — is that the way you pronounce them? Listen, and I’ll show you what I mean!’

He pulled out of his coat-pocket a little edition of the great Indian book, which had evidently seen pretty hard and continuous service. He did not comment at all on the book, or the oddity of his carrying it about with him, but began to dive among the pages, hunting for his passage. Then he paused and looked at the book, his head set contemplatively a little on one side.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how did the Bhagavad Gita happen?’

‘When I was out in India,’ I told him, ‘under the palm trees and the blaze of the opal sky, I found the Brahmans everywhere in power — men white as we are, under the sunburn; some of them with heads and faces like ancient Romans; men full of intellect, but full also of priest-craft and guile; spiritual tyrants over the lesser castes, the brown folk and yellow and black, that make India’s hundreds of millions. But I found, too, that the Brahmans were not the true spiritual lords of India, creators of her deathless splendor. The Rajputs were that — one of the lordliest races on earth: great men, warriors, bronzed like the most ancient Egyptians. From the red Rajputs came the Buddha, holiest of mankind, and Rama, the divine hero, and Vishvamitra, creator of the Vedas’ noblest prayer. And from the beginning, the Rajputs had set their faces like flint against idolatry and priestcraft, and all the dark forces that have brought India to eclipse and shame.

‘But civil war sprang up among them, — five thousand years ago, if the Indian tradition be true, — a war of brother against brother, an internecine war of kindred blood. And the Pandus, with the hero Krishna as their spiritual leader, stood for the divine ideals, the old splendor of the Rajputs, while the Kurus fought for anarchic tyranny and the powers of darkness. The great battle was fought and won, on the sacred plain of Kurukshetra; but, in that supreme victory, the Pandus gave their life-blood; the great race of the Rajputs, weakened for ages to come, was eclipsed, and the lesser race, the men with priestly tyranny in their veins, won dominance over India.

‘The mighty battle was first recorded in war-songs and martial ballads. Then wise men saw that this battle was the type of that far greater battle, waged in the heavens, with God and his angels on the one side, and the powers of evil on the other — the endless battle for immortal souls. So they made the Bhagavad Gita the Scripture of that eternal war.’

You should have seen his eyes, glowing, yet full of contemplation, as he listened. Then he began again, meditatively, to seek for the passage that was in his mind, turning and re-turning the pages.

‘Here it is!’ he said, after a concentrated search; ‘listen! —“Those of demoniac nature know not right action or right abstinence; nor is purity or discipline or truth found in them. This world, they say, is without truth or firm foundation, without a Lord; not ruled by mutual law, driven only by wilfulness. Resting in this view, selfdestroying, devoid of wisdom, they come forth violent and hostile, for the destruction of the world.” — Isn’t that exactly Germany?’ he exclaimed triumphantly, ‘all except about discipline. But I suppose it means spiritual discipline. And is n’t this exactly like the Kaiser: “This foe has been slain by me, and I shall slay yet others. I am lord, I am master of feasts, I have won success and might and happiness. I am rich and of high estate; what other is like unto me?” And isn’t it fine how it goes on: “Wandering in many imaginings, enmeshed by the nets of delusion, he falls into the impure pit of hell!” I think that’s just what will happen to him!’

After breakfast, we went for a stroll through the highways and byways of t he village. From time to time, the corner of his eye rested approvingly on the green spire of a hollyhock dotted with blossoms like red roses, in one of the village gardens.

‘Isn’t that fine?’ he would say; ‘I love flowers!’ And then he would come back with a swift rebound to the spiritual issues of the war.

‘Don’t you think,’he asked, his brown eyes aglow, ‘that the spiritual forces — angels and demons — are hard at it, on the two sides? That would account for all the stories of apparitions, would n’t it ? though I don’t remember anyone on the German side saying anything about seeing devils in the air; but of course they would n’t, would they? They would think they were angels! But, even so, I don’t remember hearing about any Germans thinking they saw angels! All that kind of thing seems to be on our side!’

Then he fell to admiring a beautiful cluster of larkspur, dark and light blue sapphire and turquoise, drawing in his breath with a quick ecstasy of delight.

It happens that I am a lover of birds and find much joy in their morning music. So, after we had talked a while about the world-war and the great spiritual war, of which it is the outer shell,

I began to point some of my feathered angels out to him, for the village, as it happens, is pretty rich in them. And some such conversation as this followed, odd enough, and in its essence humorous enough, to be worth recording.

‘That’s a rose-breasted grosbeak!’ I said, pointing him out, on one of the higher twigs of an oak, over our heads. ‘ Listen a minute, and he ’ll sing again! ’

‘Yes!’ answered young Lee; and he whistled the fifteen or sixteen lovely notes with perfect accuracy. ‘I could play that on my flute! Don’t you think it’s a wonderful idea, in the Gita, of all the good forces incarnating in one tribe or race, and the dark forces incarnating in the other; and then coming together in battle, to fight it out to a finish — as if they could n’t have a settlement any other way? Every one now sees that France stands for all the splendid things, with England rushing to her side, and now ourselves! I’ve been trembling to think that we might not have got into it! Think if, afterwards, we were all to know it was the great war between good and evil, and if we had stood back! But what a pity about Russia! Do you know, I think the Allies are getting what’s coming to them because of Russia getting out, for their desertion of their ally, the Tsar!’

‘Yes!’ I said. ‘That was a goldfinch that looped his song over our heads: pe-cheechichee! He has a charming song, like a canary, only richer and mellower, besides! Listen! Do you hear that fellow on ahead, in the gum tree? — a brown thrasher!’

‘Seems to sing different words, in sets of two!’ he commented, appreciatively. ‘Could n’t play that on the flute so well! Could n’t get the different words! — How soon do you think people will see the real significance of the war, — the spiritual side of it, — and be able to set it out in black and white, like the war in the Gita?’

An odd dialogue. When I think of it, and of him, and of our different preoccupations, it wakes an odd emotion, of mingled humor and pathos, in my heart. As I saw him off at the station, — where military trains are now a magnificent daily experience, — he said, —

‘ I am ever so grateful to you! I hope we shall meet again!'

But I felt that the debt was on my side.

II

When we met again, young Lee was in the uniform of the United States army. He had written me, from Camp Devens, saying, very briefly, that he had been drafted, and asking me to send him three or four books on Persian mysticism. Then, some little time later, — for I had been a bit slow in getting the books, — he had written again, asking me not to forward them, as he was on his way to our own camp; I call it our own, because the reservation skirts the village limits. And, in a postscript, he asked me to come to see him.

So I walked over to the camp, on an early day in spring. There was lots of mud, but I have the exact date fixed in my mind for another reason, in its way characteristic: I saw the first robins of the season, not singing yet, but hurrying overhead, against a gray sky; the vanguard of the great migration. So I know it was the ninth of March.

A kindly soldier-chauffeur ferried me over the last desperate stretch of mud, — calling up, in its symbolic way, the mud of Flanders, — and I stated my errand to another youth in khaki, brisk and competent, with the badge of the Military Police on his arm. He directed me to the Hostesses’ House.

It was really a heart-moving scene. One feels, in the splendors of this war, so much that is akin to tears; much, too, that passes the depth of tears!

Once more I told my errand, and a message was sent for Private Eugene Lee. I sat down in the corner of a wicker sofa, close to a snug wood-fire, and, going through the motions of reading one of the monthlies, — there were plenty of them lying about, and brightly bound books, — I turned my authentic attention to the big, cosy room and the people in it. For the most part, besides the officially occupied persons, they were young soldiers and their kin, taking, there, in the quiet daylight, what, in a good many cases, was certain to be the final farewell.

And the notable and touching thing was, that nearly all of them felt constrained to give to that ultimate leavetaking a drawing room air. They were very reticent, very quiet; they seemed, almost of set purpose, to be limiting themselves to commonplaces. There was only one exception — an elderly Jewess, fondling the hand of her soldier son, was frankly sobbing, the tears trickling unwiped over her furrowed cheeks.

In part, I think, that almost detached air was due to the other people present, even though all of them, or nearly all, shared the same poignant emotion. In part, it was due to our American spirit which, so deeplyAngloSaxon in so much that is best in it, is so shy, so ill at ease, with deep feeling, so unable to express it. With the elderly Jewess, it was different; in her veins ran the blood of those who sang, ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept.’ But, in still larger degree I think that quietude had another and greater cause; the splendor of the undertaking, the awful eternalness of the issues, made their way into every heart and raised it somewhat above personal feeling; the poignancy of parting was hushed by the very presence of the Eternal.

Young Lee came in, and, after a quick glance about the room, marched briskly toward me, smiling, his hand stretched out in greeting. As I rose, I met the smile in his brown eyes — and that fire of enthusiasm that sprang straight from his eager, daring soul.

‘You know, I think,’ he said, as he sat down beside me on the sofa, ‘that the Lord made up his mind to have me in this war! I’m pretty short, and I’m pretty light, and I wondered whether I could get past the Board; but they passed me all right!’

Yes, the khaki uniform, the heavy army overcoat, a good deal too large for him, brought that out. His body looked even smaller, slighter, than when I had seen him in hollyhock time; but his soul, looking out through those eager brown eyes, looked bigger. No question at all about his valor.

‘Thanks for getting the books!’ he went on. ‘Won’t you keep them till I get back again? I would n’t know where to put them now! They’d get knocking about!’

Curious — I have talked to scores of them, on t he trains, on the ferries, and as they pass my garden; and every one seems certain of coming back. I wonder whether they have ever heard of the ‘First Hundred Thousand’? Not so many of them came back. From Ypres, from Verdun, so many did not come back. But perhaps many of them do think, instead, of going ‘forward,’ and this lighter talk is only Anglo-Saxon shyness.

A young couple sat at a wicker table a few feet from us — a soldier boy and his ‘girl,’ pretty, and light-hearted, and smiling; yet you could see from her bright eyes that she had given her whole heart. And they had been talking nothings, a dance, a play, a bit of innocent gossip, until the moment had come for them to part — he, on his crusade, she to her ‘war-work,’ her Red Cross committees.

‘Well, so long, Elsie! ’ the soldier-boy said, as they rose; he held her hand and smiled, as if they were parting on the front porch; and her cheerful smile exactly echoed his.

‘So long, Jack! Take care of yourself!’ And then tears suddenly welled in her eyes. She laid her other hand on his, which still held hers. ‘God bless you, dear!’ she said; and then, standing on tiptoe, she kissed him on the forehead. I think it was their first kiss.

‘And you too, Elsie — God bless you!’

Then he bent down, and just touched her cheek with his lips. Purity could not have been purer. Then he straightened himself up, smiled, stood for a moment at the salute, and turned and stepped briskly out through the door.

Elsie went over to an aunt, who had been waiting. Though there were tears in her eyes, she bravely left them there.

I turned to young Lee; his clear brown eyes were watching them, shining.

‘That was fine, beautiful!’ he said. ‘I have no one to bid me good-bye like that! I’m sorry, in a way, but glad in a way! I’m taking nobody with me but the Oversoul, the Lord. You ’re the only person I expect to see, that I know — and I only saw you once!’

He smiled — one of those luminous smiles of his, that expressed all the soul shining in his eyes.

We sat a while in silence. Then, I think simply with the wish to say something, I asked him,—

‘What did you find hardest in your training?’

‘Oh,’ he answered, after a moment’s thought, ‘I don’t quite know! Everything and nothing! Getting out of my shell was hardest, perhaps! And at first I could n’t sleep, for the noise! Now I can just curl up, and sleep like a top, even if somebody is sitting on my bunk, playing cards! And I’m not afraid of anybody now!’

His smile showed that, and the light in his eyes.

III

I heard from him, a good many weeks later; no address, simply a rubber stamp, in red ink, ‘Over-seas.’

‘ I am learning French! ’ he said; ‘ began in an odd way. We were mixed in with French soldiers, and some of us were lyingout in a bigwood, intrenches. The moon was full; you could see it in a hole among the treetops, in a veiled sky, and with a big, yellow ring round it. And suddenly there came the most lovely song, up among the branches; pathetic, and glad, and heart-breaking. Somehow it reminded me of the soldier and his girl we saw in the Hostesses’ House; do you remember? My French friend heard it too, and listened.

‘“Ah!” he said, “un rossignol!”

‘So that is what it was, though I don’t know the English for it; but it’s some bird we don’t have; at least, I don’t remember hearing it!

‘Do you know,’ he went on, ‘I think the Lord was right, in getting me into the army — in lots of ways! A small man has lots of advantages! And it pays to be skinny, too! I don’t think a skinny man minds starving a little quite so much as a fat one, or not getting water. And I’m sure the tall men get cramp in their shoulders, stooping in the trenches! But I’ve discovered another thing! A little man has a lot of advantage with the bayonet; I’ve discovered a trick — what you told me about that little Malay dagger on your table, the one you use for a papercutter, you know, suggested it, I think. You remember, you said, when I picked it up and made a stab with it, in the air, “Oh, but that’s not the way! They always stab upwards, under the heart, because there are no bones in the way! A blow downwards might easily glance off the ribs; a man has such a lot of ribs!” You did n’t think much, at the time you said it, but it stuck in my mind; and it came back, like a flash, a few days ago; just at the right moment, I think. If I’d waited ten seconds, I don’t think I’d be writing this letter! We were pushing forward through the woods — a string of six or seven of us; we had missed the rest somehow in the rush. Seven or eight big Boches suddenly jumped up out of nowhere, and rushed at us with bayonets. Then what you said flashed into my mind, and I shouted, “Jab upwards! Into their guts!” That sounds a bit coarse, but forgive me! My Boche — you can’t think of them as men; they’re not! they’re devils — was over six feet, and heavy, and he made a downward lunge at me; but that’s where a small, skinny chap has a pull! I sidestepped and jabbed upward! Well — another advantage is, your bayonet comes loose, quick! And that may mean the difference between this and kingdom-come, if there’s several of them. You know, if your bayonet gets jammed between his ribs, you have to snap a cartridge off, to loosen it up. But the upward jab comes loose of itself. Well, the rest of the boys caught the idea. We got those Boches. They told about it, and I got my stripe! What do you think of that?

‘Another thing. A small, skinny man can crawl through grass and brush and things, like a brown cat. And that’s a tremendous pull, in getting after machine-guns. I think they fix them so that they can’t easily fire down at you, even if they see you. But there’s so little of me to see! So I squirm along like a tortoise—you have a kind of odd feeling, a sort of itching, down your spine, thinking how it might feel if they did get you; and I would n’t like to be shot in the back — or in the face, for the matter of that! Well, you squirm along till you get a good sight; and then you must wait until they begin firing, — not at you, of course, — so that they won’t hear the snap of your rifle; then you get a slow, steady bead and let go. It takes time and patience, and you must only fire while they’re firing; but the small, skinny man has a long pull.

‘I’ve just read that over, and I’m wondering if you think I’m bloodthirsty? Well, when it’s Boches, I am! You’d have no compunctions about killing a devil, would you? And I’ve seen a bombed hospital. But there’s more than that. The Gita taught me. You remember that fine passage — wait a minute, I ’ll look it up!’ — So he had his Gita with him, in his knapsack! — ‘Here it is! It’s where Krishna says to Arjuna, “I am Time, grown ripe for the destroying of the worlds. Even without thee, they shall all cease to be, the enemies who stand there in the opposing armies. Therefore arise, win glory, conquering thy foes, enjoy thy splendid kingdom! For these are slain already by Me.” You know the passage? Well, that’s what I feel, and so I’m enjoying my kingdom!

‘You know, I think, when I entered the army, I left myself behind — lost self-centredness, in a way; and now, in France, in the actual fighting, I’ve found Myself. You know what the Gita says, “Unborn, eternal, immemorial, this Ancient is not slain when the body is slain!” So, though I can get the Boches, they can’t get me. “Swords cut Him not, nor may fire burn Him”; that’s what I feel, now. Do you know, I’ve come to think that Krishna and the Lord are all one. I said that to the chaplain the other day, when he came on me reading my Gita. He did n’t say anything, but he looked a bit shocked — I wonder why? I hope all this about myself does n’t sound conceited. I don’t think I am; that’s the great advantage of being small, and insignificant-looking; you don’t get vain.

‘Well, I must stop now. I’m very happy. I hope you are. — I ’ll have to close this, and you may n’t hear much of me for a while. They’ve passed the word, that something big is on tomorrow. I must n’t say any more, but you may hear of it. Good-bye! ’

And, by God, we have heard about it, for his letter is dated July 16! What, in Foch’s magnificent attack, may have befallen my great little soldier, how he fared, I do not know; I may never know. But I am well assured that, alive or dead, in the body or out of the body, he would fight on, blithe and valorous, an unconquerable soldier in the Lord’s war.