So when I am talking about the sailors as if they were heroes, suddenly
something gay comes romping in. I see them again, as I have so often
seen them in the dunes of Flanders, and what I see is a race of
children.
"Don't forget we are only little ones," they say. "We don't die; we are
just at play."
"ENCHANTED CIGARETTES"
Where does the comfort of the trenches lie? What solace do the soldiers
find for a weary life of unemployment and for sudden death? Of course,
they find it in the age-old things that have always sufficed, or, if
these things do not here altogether suffice, at least they help. For a
certain few out of every hundred men, religion avails. Some of our dying
men were glad of the last rites. Some wore their Catholic emblems. The
quiet devout men continued faithful as they had been at home. Art is
playing the true part it plays at all times of fundamental need. The men
busy themselves with music, with carving, and drawing. Security and
luxury destroy art, for it is no longer a necessity when a man is
stuffed with foods, and his fat body whirled in hot compartments from
point to point of a tame world. But when he tumbles in from a gusty
night out of a trenchful of mud, with the patter from slivers of shell,
then he turns to song and color, odd tricks with the knife, and the
tales of an ancient adventure. After our group had brought food and
clothing to a regiment, I remember the pride with which one of the
privates presented to our head nurse a sculptured group, done in mud of
the Yser.
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