The Red Door (74 page)
Authors: Iain Crichton Smith
Someone else said: ‘It’s a sign.’
I looked at their faces. They all looked as if they were seeing a vision except this man and one or two others, and Musgrave cursing right, left and centre.
I turned too and looked where they were looking but I couldn’t see anything, nothing at all except the flashes from the guns. There were heads raised above the parapets near me and I could
hear even in that racket some of the NCOs shouting out:
‘Get your heads down, you stupid ——,’ but no one listened.
I thought there was going to be a mutiny, the soldiers looked so unmilitary, their rifles hanging in their hands as if they had forgotten all about them. I knew what to do all right. I took out
my pistol and shouted above the din:
‘We’re going over now. I’ll shoot anyone who doesn’t follow.’
Some of them stared at the pistol as if they couldn’t understand what it was.
I shouted again:
‘We’re going over now. I’ll shoot anyone . . . ’ and then just at that moment the bombardment stopped and I remember speaking the rest of the sentence out in dead
silence. I can’t tell you what it was like, that sudden dead silence and these words coming out of it. As I looked their faces changed again, became tense, I shot my pistol into the air and
we were off. Well, that was it. It didn’t last very long whatever it was and I forgot about it. I was pretty busy for the next few hours.
I think it was just tension myself. They snapped out of it pretty quickly when we got going and did very well all of them. Perhaps it’s something to do with guns and the flashes. Still,
there’s nothing we can do about that: that’s for the top people to deal with and what can a lieutenant do about it?
What does Pater say about it? Has he heard about it? I hope he’s keeping as fit as ever . . .
3
REPORTER | Now, sir, what can you tell me about this Angel business? |
GENERAL | I have nothing to tell you. |
REPORTER | Nothing? But surely, general, you can’t just say nothing. This has caused a terrific furore. I doubt whether you people can afford to ignore it. |
GENERAL | That’s what I intend to do. Ignore it. |
REPORTER | But . . . Look at it this way, the Germans are also writing about it. They saw it too, or so they say. They want to be in on it too. |
GENERAL | In on it? |
REPORTER | Obviously. They can’t allow the English only to see angels. They claim it’s one of theirs. |
GENERAL | And what do their generals say about it? |
REPORTER | I don’t know. I haven’t noticed. |
GENERAL | Well, I’m sure if you study these German comments you’ll find that their generals say nothing at all. And I also intend to say nothing. |
REPORTER | But you agree that there was an angel? |
GENERAL | I’m saying nothing. There may have been an angel: there may not. So far as I’m concerned that’s not my department. |
REPORTER | And whose department is it? |
GENERAL | I can’t imagine. |
REPORTER | But, general, can you not see the possibilities? ‘God is on the side of the British army.’ I must admit I find it comforting. |
GENERAL | I don’t. |
REPORTER | To think that these men . . . |
GENERAL | Nonsense. What do angels know of us? Can they suffer on our behalf? I’m a religious man but I don’t believe in angels. I believe in God and Christ but not in |
REPORTER | But the men believe in them. |
GENERAL | That’s their right. |
REPORTER | But how could so many men be deceived? |
GENERAL | I’m not saying they were deceived. I don’t know. |
REPORTER | And the ministers are preaching in the pulpits that it shows God is on our side. |
GENERAL | They have their rights, too. I pray to God every night and every morning, as they do. What are you writing? |
REPORTER | What you said. |
GENERAL | Read it to me. |
REPORTER | ‘General ——, himself a religious man, doesn’t believe in the appearance of the angel at Mons.’ |
GENERAL | Obviously you can’t print that. Anyway it’s untrue. I didn’t say I didn’t believe in it. Your despatch will have to be censored. |
REPORTER | Isn’t it always? What am I supposed to write then? |
GENERAL | I’ll tell you what I think now and make an official statement later. You agree to that? |
REPORTER | Naturally, I have no choice. |
GENERAL | Perhaps after the war when it’s all over and you want to write a book about it – so many people wish to write books, I can’t understand why – you |
REPORTER | After the war is over, this will have no value. |
GENERAL | Precisely. |
REPORTER | What are your real views? |
GENERAL | My real views? Well, I’ll tell you. My job is to win the war for my side, that is for the British. In order to win the war I have to make plans. I have a very good |
REPORTER | I’ve tried. |
GENERAL | I don’t. I leave that to my staff officer. But he always talks Mathematics, all about variables and constants. I know roughly what’s he’s talking |
REPORTER | And your objection I take it is . . . |
GENERAL | That that angel is a variable. It wasn’t allowed for in the plan. Not only so but it was a totally unknown variable. For instance, one might by chance run into two |
REPORTER | But surely . . . |
GENERAL | However, when you are confronted by the totally unknown and inexplicable there is a very long pause which is often fatal in war. You don’t know what to do. There are |
REPORTER | But the Germans themselves saw it. |
GENERAL | So they say. |
REPORTER | You don’t mean that . . . |
GENERAL | I mean nothing. Suppose the story got about that the Germans had a new secret weapon which could cause paralysis of the enemy forces so that instead of fighting they |
REPORTER | But such a weapon is inconceivable. |
GENERAL | You might argue that it has already been conceived. It is therefore best to assume it wasn’t there at all. Once you admit the presence of the unknown you have to |
REPORTER | I must admit I hadn’t thought of all this. But then . . . |
GENERAL | It is my job to think of these things. Anyway I feel it – or rather my staff officer feels it – untidy that God should have to intervene in this way. |
REPORTER | Untidy? |
GENERAL | We don’t wish to return to the Trojan War. This appearance was essentially pagan. There is no need for God to appear at all. And what would happen if we depended on |
REPORTER | We cannot depend on the undependable. |
GENERAL | We may, you know. We have to face this. The appearance must not be allowed to become fact. It’s too superstitious, as I said. |
REPORTER | But what could have caused it? |
GENERAL | I have no idea. In the long run men must rely on themselves not on angels. Angels have nothing to do with us. Do you understand? Ah, come in, Hume. This gentleman would |
4
‘The Battle of Mons was opened by the British with a barrage of fire and one angel.’
Here the reader – and I don’t wonder – will stop and stare. An angel? And how did they indent for that? Are the quartermasters of the bourgeois forces on good terms with angels
then? We wouldn’t have thought it. Or was it perhaps the bourgeois clergy that pulled the wool over people’s eyes? And was this a British angel or a French angel or a German angel? Or
was it educated at Eton and did it speak Latin? Who knows? They all claim this angel, as if it was one of their own aeroplanes!
What a scandal there would have been if they had shot it down! It would not have been cricket!
And what did German decadent metaphysics make of it? ‘The spirit of history. Hegel in person.’
But there is one thing that can be said: this was a bourgeois angel: it wasn’t only French or British or German: it was common ownership by all.
Nationalised, in fact!
And what is the explanation of this strange phenomenon? Surely the bourgeois aren’t beginning to swallow their own lies. That would be ironical indeed!
But you object it wasn’t the bourgeois that saw it but ordinary soldiers, who had no interest in this war.
And that is true. It was the ordinary soldiers who saw it.
But what did it do, this angel? As far as we can see, it just hung there fluttering its wings, looking very sad and very compassionate. It didn’t help either side. It just hung there like
a Christmas card.
What are we to make of it? If it had only done something, you say, but just hang there like a decoration.
But of course it couldn’t do anything. What could it do?
It was simply a sign that the war was at a standstill. It was simply a sign of the internal collapse of the whole bourgeois system.
But how can that be, you ask?
Well, it is quite simple. All countries move upwards into the so-called phase of the spirit, the phantom sphere where its inner resources are exhausted. It happens also with individuals who
merely reflect in this way the coming death of the system which they inhabit.
Aren’t Plato’s ideas the same, these phantoms in the sky?
And this angel which hung there motionless and compassionate, what else does it signify but the death of a system torn apart on earth but united in the sky?
Why was it that it was the ordinary soldiers who saw it first?
Again the answer is simple. The ordinary people – or rather the people – saw it first because they are in the van of knowledge. They feel – even before the bourgeois –
the death of the system which the bourgeois had created.
And why was it that their first idea was to lay down their arms till threatened by their officers? It was because they knew that that was not their war, that that was on the contrary a bourgeois
war, and they were no longer going to endure fighting for their so-called masters.
It is perfectly clear that this phenomenon – this angel – shows in fact that the death of the bourgeois system was beginning to penetrate the consciousness of the ordinary soldier:
and this was reflected in his consciousness by a picture drawn from the Christian myth. There is and can be no other explanation.
If it had happened in some other country – of a different religion but at the same level of bourgeois development – the picture might have been different but the explanation the
same.
We therefore believe that in some sense there was an angel – but that this angel was a sign generated by the mind and transmitted to the sky. It was as real as a dream is real. And in the
same way as dreams represent disturbances in the mind, so does this.
Our system, however, will eliminate both signs and dreams. We will not be looking to heaven like bird-watchers or philosophers but down to earth which is man’s home and not the clouds.
Well, let me first of all explain the aim of this programme. What we are doing is to bring back to Flanders one of the generals who fought there in the days of the First World
War. As you know there has been a great revival of interest in this – in that – war recently. None of us here of course fought in that war. I’m afraid we were too young and I
suppose as time passes one tends to forget these things.