The Soul of the Soldier: Sketches from the Western Battle-FrontTiplady, Thomas
History
The Soul of the Soldier: Sketches from the Western Battle-Front
Tiplady, Thomas
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English
I do not think I could kill or eat an eel. I have too much reverence for
it now that I have learned its story. When in the fish market I see an
eel struggling, I feel that I want to take it and drop it into the sea
that it may go to its long home "far from the madding crowd’s ignoble
strife." How passionate and wild must be its desire to get back to its
own ocean depths where it may perpetuate its kind and die in peace. Its
appetite is voracious, but then, what but the mightiest and most
elemental instincts and appetites could carry it through achievements so
sublime and tragic. Picture it on its lone way through the deep, urged
on by it knows not what. Scientists say that man has evolved from a
tiny form of life that passed through the fish stage. If so, it
explains a lot and I, for one, shall not be ashamed to acknowledge
relationship to a fish with a life story as sublime as that of the eel.
I know that Genesis speaks truly when it says that God made us out of
the dust of the earth and breathed into our souls the breath of His own
being thus animating dust with divinity. And if from the other inspired
book, the book of Nature, scientists can teach how God mixed the clay
when He fashioned man I will accept the teaching with gratitude, for it
will help me to understand things that are dark in me and in my fellows.
It will throw light on the wild longings, and instincts immature, that
baffle the mind, and come into the clear shallow streams of life like
eels out of the dark unfathomable depths of the ocean.
Since I went to France I have been amazed at the homing instinct as
revealed in the coming together of the sons of the British Motherland.
People at home do not quite realize what has happened. Britain’s sons
have come back to her--have come back to die that their race may be
saved and perpetuated. The British are a roving race. A large number
of them yield to an overpowering desire to go out into the world. The
South Pole and the North Pole have known the tread of their feet. Their
ships have anchored in every creek of every sea. There is no town or
country however remote where their voices have not been heard. Even
Mecca could not keep the Briton out. He must look upon its Black Stone.
All lands call him to come, and see, and conquer. He colonizes and
absorbs but cannot be absorbed. He is a Briton still. A friend of mine
told me that when visiting Australia strangers who had never seen
England, except in and through their fathers, would come to him in
railway carriage or ’bus, and ask "How is everything at _Home_?" And
Dr. Fitchett, Australia’s splendid author, confesses that when he first
saw the land of his fathers he knelt down and kissed its shore.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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