said the Army Service Corps was ‘not involved, but there was thought to be a grave risk that the Japanese, in an endeavour to outflank the Chinese, might violate the International Settlement. Consequently the Settlement garrison had been put on an active service basis, with manned trenches, strong points etc, round our perimeter’. 18
TO HIS BROTHER:
Feb 15th 1932
The Kilns
My dear Warnie–
This will be a shortish letter, partly because I am still a convalescent from flu—this being not my first day but my first afternoon up-partly because we don’t really care to bank on the security of any letter reaching you in the present state of Shanghai.
Anxiety is of all troubles the one that lends itself least to description. Of course we have been and are infernally bothered about you—probably not more than you have been bothered about yourself! I suppose that about as often as I have stopped myself from repeating the infuriating question ‘Why was he such a fool’ etc, you have abstained from the parallel ‘Why was I such a fool as ever to come out here’. I will refrain from asking you any particular questions because I remember from war experiences that questions from home are always based on a misunderstanding of the whole situation.
It will be more useful as a guide to your reply to tell you that we have (from the Times) a map of Shanghai large enough to mark Gt. Western Road, so we should be able to follow your news in some detail. As for the printed news, it is plainly nonsense: the almost daily story being that fierce fighting raged all day in Chapei and the Japanese had one man killed and three wounded. In other parts of the paper the ‘fierce fighting’, I admit, usually turns out to be a heavy Japanese barrage replied to by two trench mortars. You will see at any rate that it is impossible from here to form any idea of the only aspect of the thing that concerns me: viz: the actual and probable distance between the A.P.B. and the firing. It is true that I have to my hand the axiom that the distance will be as great as the A.P.B. has been able to contrive-but that carries me only a very little way. The result is that my fancy plays me every kind of trick. At one time I feel as if the danger was very slight and begin reckoning when your first account of the troubles will reach us: at another I am—exceedingly depressed. All the news is of the sort that one re-interprets over and over again with new results in each new mood. A beastly state of affairs.
The last letter we had from you was the one you wrote to Minto immediately after your flu’. I had written to you a few days before that arrived. Since then I don’t know that much to record has happened. I was going on steadily with the ‘extraction of roots’ in the wood: but you’d hardly believe how the doubt about your situation takes the relish out of public works.
My term was continuing in a pretty good course. Segar19 has been specially attentive in inquiries about you and in his characteristic half comical attempts to put the situation in as favourable a light as possible. I must say I am a little surprised that he is the only person in College who has done so.
I have now been in my room for precisely a week. It has been an ideal illness. My little east room, as you know, gives one two views-one over to Philips an t’other up to the top wood—and the grate does not smoke. Most of the week there has been snow falling during some part of the day—wh. is just the finishing touch to a comfortable day’s reading in bed. I have re-read three Scotts. 1. The Monastery20 wh. I had read in the very old days—pre-Wynyard 21 and quite forgotten. I think it the poorest Scott I have yet read, tho worth reading. What really gave me most pleasure was to meet your quotation (in the Capt. Clutterbuck epistle) about the paradise of half-pay and the purgatory of duty. Lord—I wish you were out of the latter this moment. 2. The Abbot- originally read at the same time. This is much better, and I should put it fairly high among the pre-17th century novels, wh. as a whole I find inferior to the others. Still, it shares with Rob Roy the rare advantage of having a natural and even pleasant heroine. Finally The Antiquary for about the fifth time, wh. I have almost fixed on as the Scott novel.22 I have read it so often that I do not remember at which reading I ceased to regard Mr. Oldbuck as ‘a character’ and began to think him (as I now do) simply the one sensible man in the book, living as any rational man would live if he were given peace.
I wonder, supposing that the P.O. is working when this reaches you, would you mind letting me have a cable to say that you’re alright? Unless, of course everything is quiet by the end of the next fortnight. It would really cheer us up immensely.
I shall resume proper letter writing with the rest of my regular routine as soon as I get back to work. For the moment this is the best I can do. With best wishes, brother, for a speedy removal of your person to some quieter area.
Yours
Jack.
P.S. Your pictures have come. I think hanging them is the safest method of storing them and I shall do so as soon as I am about again: till then I have refused to have them unpacked.
TO HIS BROTHER (W):
[The Kilns]
Feb 21st 1932
My dear W–
Since I last wrote to you, four or five days ago, we had two communications from you. First, a message by Bibby Wireless which took exactly a fortnight to reach us. As this is much too short a time for anything but telegraphy, and much too long for any telegraph (wireless or wiry) I don’t know what to make of it: but I’m inclined to think that you expected it to reach us sooner and that its actual date of arrival does shew some dislocation of services. Thanks for sending it. The re-assuring view of the crisis is quite obviously untrue by now, whatever it may have been when you sent it; but thanks all the same.
Secondly, I have had your cheering letter of Jan 14th—‘cheering’ for giving one some conversation with you, though of course it bears not at all on the source of anxiety. I must confess I have imbibed enough of that rather specially shabby superstition which cries ‘Touch wood’ etc, to shudder when I read your proposals about walks in Ulster etc. In fact I have two unpleasantly contrasted pictures in my mind. One ‘features’ the two Pigibudda with packs and sticks de-training into the sudden stillness of the moors at Parkmore.23 the other is of you progressing from the Bund to Gt. Western Rd. with an eye cocked skyward, just in the old French manner, curse it, and ducking at the old Who-o-o-o-p-Bang! Like Boswell, on that perilous crossing in the Hebrides, I ‘at last took refuge in piety: but was much embarrassed by the various objections which have been raised against the doctrine of special providences’.24 Unfortunately I have not at hand the work of Dr. Ogden in which Boswell found this difficulty solved.25 I suppose the solution lies in pointing out that the efficacy of prayer is, at any rate no more of a problem then the efficacy of all human acts. i.e. if you say ‘It is useless to pray because Providence already knows what is best and will certainly do it,’ then why is it not equally useless (and for the same reason) to try to alter the course of events in any way whatever—to ask for the salt or book your seat in a train?
However, in spite of this discomfort, I cannot help joining you in your day-dream of a Parkmore walk. That is partly because I am now back in bed (nothing serious, just a slight re-rise of temperature owing to having tried to get up too soon). Do you find, during the endless afternoons of a week in bed, that one’s imagination is constantly haunted with pictures of seacoasts and cliffs and such like? Mine has been