Why Stay We
Here?
III. Sample
Passages *(a)*
(a) how the War affected people
(b) the Germans
(c) casualties of the War
Godwin has much to say about
mismanagement and propaganda. On the
theme of propaganda versus reality,
there is a noteworthy passage in
which the Allied leadership is
called to question. It is just
before the battle at Vimy Ridge.
Stephen is billeted behind the line
with brother officer O’Reilly and
the two are trying to make sense of
Land and Water, the official tactics
bulletin issued to officers. Both
men look to this book hopefully but
in vain for convincing answers to a
lot of questions:
“How could one grasp the design
behind the apparent chaos of trench
warfare? An expert wrote
marvellously in Land and Water,
expounding the theory of war,
explaining the strategy of the
western front, masterly expositions
that wrought design and significance
out of seeming anarchy.
O’Reilly was enthusiastic. Stephen
studied them earnestly, and
presently he felt the beginning of
understanding. War as a bird might
see it, as those birds that still
flew over the line saw it, those
birds who, maybe, puzzled the riddle
of their vanished woods. His reading
lifted him out of this sector and
displayed to his mind's eye the
tortuous line that zig-zagged across
northern France, and the lacework of
feeding arteries, nerves, that
converged, back there somewhere, in
the central ganglion, G.H.Q. To
think of this tremendous front as
the General Staff must envisage it,
as a whole... That hairpin bend now,
down at Laon. How significant this
writer made the turning movement
there!
Yes, it was all so simple after all;
scientific. Beautiful in their
logic, they were, these weekly
articles, carrying conviction to the
mind. But this war somehow seemed
unaware of the immutable laws of all
war. It ignored them.
So Stephen ceased to read the
strategist, for events proved the
expert a poor prophet. After all,
then, this war was not so simple an
affair. Land and Water lay
discarded, discredited. They ceased
to bother with its oracle.
And the General Staff?
Those unseen masters of the army’s
destiny, somewhere there beyond the
last battery and further still, in
some secluded chateau where the
routine of normal life was merely
coloured by the war. Did they know
much more about it all? It seemed
doubtful.
And Stephen decided against it as
improbable. The science of war, he
concluded, was purely empirical. It
consisted in winning. Who won knew
this science; who lost lacked it.
What was it then but the science of
being powerful, which is, after all,
no science at all.
Was it just possible that our
leaders were merely old men decked
out in uniforms, impotent old men,
grappling desperately with a problem
utterly beyond them? But old fools.”
(Ibid, p. 91)
That little detail of the birds
“puzzled by the mystery of their
missing woods” is a deftly chosen
image of the unnatural waste and
destruction (editor's note).
Sample Passage from Hilaire
Belloc's 'Land and Water'.
It is interesting to look at a
sample passage from 'Land and Water'
and compare it with what Godwin
wrote above concerning its tone.
"The launching of the first great
Allied offensive of this year (1917)
has fallen at such a time in the
week that it is unfortunately
impossible to deal with at all
thoroughly in the present number of
Land and Water. (...)
The general position which makes an
offensive in this particular region
of such high strategic value, is
that which we have been following
uninterruptedly for nearly two
months since the Germans were first
shaken back towards the Bapaume
Ridge. A straightening of their
line, which eliminated the Noyon
salient, took them back to positions
running more or less directly from
the eastern suburbs of Arras to the
Aisne above Soissons.
These two points, the region of Laon
and the old trenches still
maintained in front of Arras were
the two points of junction between
the new line and the old. These
points of junction were the two
links upon which the whole of what
may be called from its central point
the St. Quentin line, depended. The
advance of the Allies over the
destroyed belt of the German
retirement proved more rapid than
the enemy had allowed for. The
French pushed forward to the Oise
above La Fere and came within range
of St. Quentin in quite the first
few days." (April 12, 1917)
Below: Cover of Land and
Water, Thursday, April 26, 1917.
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