“A runner came from the front trenches, down the communicating trench. His face and uniform were streaked with red. Montague asked if he was hit. He said everyone in the front trenches was splashed with blood from the German trenches. They were so close. If only they could have stopped to think how close.
“After half an hour the barrage was moving over the village. Montague, at the periscope, cried, ‘They’re up!’ And then—’The Boches are done for!’ He leapt onto the parapet and waved to all of us around him to look over the edge of the trench. A hundred yards ahead a long line of men trotted slowly across the scarred earth towards some shattered trees and broken walls. A few isolated shots. A man fell. Then stood up and ran on. He had simply tripped. The men about me began to shout as the line reached the first houses and a cheer came back. A red light soared up, and then we in our turn advanced. It was difficult to walk. And as we went forward, fear was driven out by horror. Not a shot was fired at us. But the ground became increasingly hideous. Nameless things, pink, white, red, mud-bespattered, still with rags of gray or khaki. We crossed our own front trench and traversed the no-man’s-land. When we came to the German trenches there was nothing to see. Everything had been buried or blown out of them. There we halted for a moment, lying down in the craters, almost in peace. To the north the firing was very intense. The Cameronians had been caught on the wire. In twenty minutes they lost every officer except one. And four-fifths of their men were killed.
“Figures appeared between the wrecked cottages ahead, their hands high. Some of them being held up by friends. They were the first prisoners. Many of them were yellow with lyddite. Yellow men out of the white curtain of light. One walked straight towards me, lurching, with his head tilted, as if in a dream, and fell straight into a deep crater. A moment later he reappeared, crawling up over the edge, then slowly standing. Lurching forward again. Other prisoners came weeping. One vomited blood in front of us, and collapsed.
“Then we were running towards the village. We came into what must have been once a street. Desolation. Rubble, fragments of plastered wall, broken rafters, the yellow splashes of lyddite everywhere. The drizzle that had started again gleaming on the stones. On the skin of corpses. Many Germans had been caught in the houses. In one minute I saw a summary of the whole butcher’s shop of war. The blood, the gaping holes, the bone sticking out of flesh, the stench of burst intestines—I am telling you this only because the effect on me, a boy who had never seen even a peacefully dead body before that day, was one I should never have predicted. It was not nausea and terror. I saw several men being sick, but I was not. It was an intense new conviction. Nothing could justify this. It was a thousand times better that England should be a Prussian colony. One reads that such scenes give the green soldier nothing but a mad lust to kill in his turn. But I had exactly the contrary feeling. I had a mad lust not to be killed.”
He stood up.
“I have a test for you.”
“A test?”
He went into his bedroom, returned almost at once with the oil lamp that had been on the table when we had dinner. In the white pool of light he put what he had brought. I saw a die, a shaker, a saucer, and a pillbox. I looked up at him on the other side of the table, at his severe eyes on mine.
“I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always goes to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one’s life. Do you understand?”
“Of course.”
“So in my perfect republic it would be simple. There would be a test for all young people at the age of twenty-one. They would go to a hospital where they would throw a die. One of the six numbers would mean death. If they threw that they would be painlessly killed. No mess. No bestial cruelty. No destruction of innocent onlookers. But one clinical throw of the die.”
“Certainly an improvement on war.”
“You think so?”
“Obviously.”
“You are sure?”
“Of course.”
“You said you never saw action in the last war?”
“No.”
He took the pillbox, and shook out, of all things, six large molars; yellowish, two or three with old fillings.
“These were issued to certain German troops during the last war, for use if they were interrogated.” He placed one of the teeth on the saucer, then with a small downward jab of the shaker crushed it; it was brittle, like a liqueur chocolate. But the odor of the colorless liquid was of bitter almonds, acrid and terrifying. He hastily removed the saucer at arm’s length to the far corner of the terrace; then returned.
“Suicide pills?”
“Precisely. Hydrocyanic acid.” He picked up the die, and showed me six sides.
I smiled. “You want me to throw?”
“I offer you an entire war in one second.”
“Supposing I don’t want it?”
“Think. In a minute from now you could be saying, I risked death. I threw for life, and I won life. It is a very wonderful feeling. To have survived.”
“Wouldn’t a corpse be rather embarrassing for you?” I was still smiling, but it was wearing thin.
“Not at all. I could easily prove it was suicide.” He stared at me, and his eyes went through me like a trident through a fish. With ninety-nine persons out of a hundred, I would have known it was a bluff; but he was different, and a nervousness had hold of me before I could resist it.
“Russian roulette.”
“But less fallible. These pills work within a few seconds.”
“I don’t want to play.”
“Then you are a coward, my friend.” He leant back and watched me.
“I thought you believed brave men were fools.”
“Because they persist in rolling the die again and again. But a young man who will not risk his life even once is both a fool and a coward.”
And he had me. It was absurd, but I could not let my bluff be called.
I reached for the shaker.
“Wait.” He leant forward, and put his hand on my wrist; then placed a tooth by my side. “I am not playing at make-believe. You must swear to me that if the number is six you will take the pill.” His face was totally serious. I felt myself wanting to swallow.
“I swear.”
“By all that is most sacred to you.”
I hesitated, shrugged, and said, “By all that is most sacred to me.”
He held out the die and I put it in the shaker. I shook it loosely and quickly and threw the die. It ran over the cloth, hit the brass base of the lamp, rebounded, wavered, fell.
It was a six.
Conchis was absolutely motionless, watching me. I knew at once that I was never, never going to pick up the pill. I could not look at him. Perhaps fifteen seconds passed. Then I smiled, looked at him and shook my head.
He reached out again, his eyes still on me, took the tooth beside me, put it in his mouth and bit it and swallowed the liquid. I went red. Still watching me, he reached out, and put the die in the shaker, and threw it. It was a six. Then again. And again it was a six. He spat out the empty shell of the tooth.
“What you have just decided is precisely what I decided that morning forty years ago at Neuve Chapelle. You have behaved exactly as any intelligent human being should behave. I congratulate you.”