No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [9]
The curse of the army, as far as the organization is concerned, was our imbecile national belief that the game is more than the player. That was our ruin, mentally, as a nation. We were taught that cricket is more than clearness of mind, so the blasted quarter-master, O.C. Depot Ordnance Stores next door, thought he had taken a wicket if he refused to serve out tin hats to their crowd. That's the Game! And if any of his, Tietjens', men were killed, he grinned and said the game was more than the players of the game...And of course if he got his bowling average down low enough he got promotion. There was a quartermaster in a west country cathedral city who'd got more D.S.O.'s and combatant medals than anyone on active service in France, from the sea to Peronne, or wherever our lines ended. His achievement was to have robbed almost every wretched Tommie in the Western Command of several weeks' separation allowance...for the good of the taxpayer, of course. The poor ---- Tommies' kids went without proper food and clothing, and the Tommies themselves had been in a state of exasperation and resentment. And nothing in the world was worse for discipline and the army as a fighting machine. But there that quartermaster sat in his office, playing the romantic game over his A.F.B.'s till the broad buff sheets fairly glowed in the light of the incandescent gas. 'And,' Tietjens concluded, 'for every quarter of a million sterling for which he bowls out the wretched fighting men he gets a new clasp on his fourth D.S.O. ribbon...The game, in short, is more than the players of the game.'
'Oh, damn it!' Captain Mackenzie said. 'That's what's made us what we are, isn't it?'
'It is,' Tietjens answered. 'It's got us into the hole and it keeps us there.'
Mackenzie remained dispiritedly looking down at his fingers.
'You may be wrong or you may be right,' he said. 'It's contrary to everything that I ever heard. But I see what you mean.'
'At the beginning of the war,' Tietjens said, 'I had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellow...What do you think he was doing...what the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. You can't say we were not prepared in one matter at least...Well, the end of the show was to be: the adjutant would stand the battalion at ease: the band would play Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant would say: There will be no more parades...Don't you see how symbolical it was: the band playing Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant saying There will be no more parades?...For there won't. There won't, there damn well won't...No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country...Nor for the world, I dare say...None...Gone...Na poo, finny! No...more...parades!
'I dare say you're right,' the other said slowly. 'But, all the same, what am I doing in this show? I hate soldiering. I hate this whole beastly business...'
'Then why didn't you go on the gaudy Staff?' Tietjens asked. The gaudy Staff apparently was yearning to have you. I bet God intended you for Intelligence: not for the footslogging department.'
The other said wearily:
'I don't know. I was with the battalion. I wanted to stop with the battalion. I was intended for the Foreign Office. My miserable uncle got me hoofed out of that. I was with the battalion. The C.O. wasn't up to much. Someone had to stay with the battalion. I was not going to do the dirty on it, taking any soft job...'
'I suppose you speak seven languages and all?' Tietjens asked.
'Five,' the other said patiently, 'and read two more. And Latin and Greek, of course.'
A man, brown, stiff, with a haughty parade step, burst into the light. He