The long essay by Peter Tree is quite profound I think, and although it is quite hard going to read it, I think it is worth it - even though his thoughts and hopes for the future have not exactly been realised.

Again most of the writing is Jessie's with just the odd bit at the end from me.

1918

Lansdowne Crescent stories

Mother, on coming into the drawing-room at the beginning of this year, found her small grandchild Betty with hands clasped behind her gazing up with great earnestness at her uncles' photographs.

‘I'm thinking about Uncle Frank and Uncle Charlie,’ she announced.

‘Are you, darling? What are you thinking?’

‘I am thinking of them in heaven, playing with God and the angels. But,’ with a wistful look, ‘I do wish my Uncle Pete could play with me.’

So Peter, our last remaining brother returned to the fighting in France. Most of the time he was. quartered somewhere round Ypres, and his time seems to have been taken up in much the same way as it was in Grantham, either taking courses or giving them. In almost his last letter he writes: ‘I have just discovered I have to take a class for backward men.’

He wrote regularly during the months he was out, and very cheerfully. His letters give the impression that he had a far less unpleasant time than he did when he was out before, and till the very end he seems to have seen little fighting.

He experienced some difficulty in grappling with the intricacies of the French tongue, and tells one or two amusing stories about himself. On one occasion he was one of a party who entered a canteen in the hopes of getting a drink. Courage failing the rest of the party, Peter boldly volunteered to make himself understood by a good-looking damsel standing in a corner. So in execrable French and with much gesticulation he stammered out: ‘Mamselle, voulez vous, that is, est-ce que, what I mean to say is, beer, voire, drink, manger.’ She let him finish, and then answered in excellent English: ‘I think we shall understand each other better if we both talk our native tongue. I am English too!’

Of a certain voluble landlady he wrote: ‘My landlady has at last come to the conclusion that if she wants me to understand anything she must speak at the rate of one word a minute, or better still, write it down.’ It reminds one of Frank, who once spent a whole afternoon coming to an understanding about the price of a chicken.

The last letter we had from Peter was from the neighbourhood of Ypres, and as he had no friends in his company we cannot tell exactly what his movements were at the last. But apparently, in the disastrous retreat to Amiens, help from all parts of the line was sent for, and Pete's company was among those that moved south. As commander of a section of machine guns his work was to help in covering the retreat of the infantry, and in supervising this work on the very first day of the retreat he was hit on the head by a. shell, and died instantly. It was the 24th of March.

He was not quite twenty-four, a short life as years go, and yet he left his mark on his world as many a longer life has not. Of him, too, can we say, as was said of Rupert Brooke, ‘He has gone to where he came from; but if anyone left the world richer by passing through it, it was he.’

He would, I feel sure, have felt deeply the truth of the following words, written to his parents after his death by an old friend of the family, and which, as it were, sums up his idea of the depths of the sacrifice of parenthood.

‘Lately,’ writes the friend, ‘I have come rather to doubt the use of prayers for the safety of loved ones concerned in the war, but feel that our prayers that they might have courage, that their self-sacrificing spirit might ennoble them, have been abundantly answered. No one has ever plumbed the depth of childhood, and it is only in glimpses of light and inspiration that we now and then obtain into the meanings and wonders of these great relationships that enable us to rise to the consolation of the Fatherhood of God, who, doubt it not, loves a thousand times more than even father or mother can.’

While the great truths of Christianity became as it were thus vitalised for him, he began to feel restive under the trammels of organised Christianity as he knew it. When he joined up he was still a loyal son of the English Church, but during the three years which followed he gradually came to view it rather differently. The official attitude of the Church in holding back the clergy from going forth to take their part in the great struggle side by side with the other sons of the Empire at first grieved and finally angered him. He realised with many of us the almost suicidal mistake thus made. ‘If the Church of England wants to commit suicide, she's going jolly well the right way about it,’ he once exclaimed angrily when specially stirred upon the subject. The knowledge of the untold good which has been done by French priests fighting side by side with the ‘Poilu’ made him feel all the more sad when he thought of the great opportunity thus lost to the English Church. And again, another cause of sadness was what seemed to him the utter breakdown in the organisation of the Church of England's Chaplains’ Department in regard to the men's spiritual welfare. In the last letter we had from him three days before he fell he says: ‘I'm afraid there are very few parsons out here who do much good. Somehow or other they never seem to take much interest in our welfare, spiritual or otherwise, apart from holding parade services on Sunday. I think that they have missed just about the greatest opportunity they are ever likely to have to show their worth.’

He knew, as men who come daily and hourly face to face with death must know, how false have been the values which we have hitherto put on the things of this world. From the brink of Eternity he wrote the following ‘Reflections on the War.’ They are hastily and loosely put together. One can appreciate the difficulties of any consecutive thinking with which he had to contend, but they give us a very clear idea of how he viewed the world struggle in which he was so soon to fall.

‘SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE WAR (by Peter Tree)

‘One of the most remarkable effects of the war in this country seems to me to be the way it has changed people, or perhaps not really changed them, but brought to the surface latent qualities which had previously lain beneath the surface but had had no opportunity of showing and asserting themselves. Their previous non-appearance was probably not due merely to the lack of power of the individual to bring them out, but more to the fact that the individual himself was ignorant of their existence, and until a great effort called for a greater output of mental and physical energy there was no need for them to assert themselves. A dog is quite unaware of the fact that he can swim until he finds himself compelled to do so by the force of circumstances. In the same way man or most men had no idea of their powers of endurance or of their ability to command until called upon by grim fate to call these qualities into action.

'And so when one hears of the new spirit of England it is not really anything radically new, but a renaissance of men's dormant powers. As we look back to that far-off period before the war, and remember the consternation which filled our hearts at the mere suggestion of a sleepless night or a meatless dinner, we marvel at the change that the war has wrought in us. People are now making sacrifices which they would have laughed at as ridiculous and impossible three years ago.

'And what is now, alas! The normal routine of hundreds of thousands to-day would have been regarded then as the fantastic babbling of a lunatic, had anyone dared to predict such a thing. And yet all this change in our mode of life has not so much changed as developed us. Few people now seem to bear much resemblance to their pre-war selves. If you place the picture of what a man is now with what he was then side by side, only by watching the train of events since can you see how this new figure has been evolved. Of course, many facts contribute to the cause of this. Perhaps most of all is the personal influence which the war has brought out. Not until we have lost someone very near to us do we really realise how near he was. And having discovered this by bitter experience we who are left instinctively draw nearer to each other, so that we may try and realise here and now what one is to the other.

'And as this is true of the family so it is of the nation, and is the main reason why all are now trying to solve national problems in harmony instead of by superiority of numbers as heretofore. And though war is in a sense a catastrophe, it is not the unmixed evil that some would have us think it. Were death the worst evil that could befall a man one could hardly credit ever the possibility of war. But if death is not so regarded, then it is possible to conceive of good emanating even from a war which has robbed the world of some of the best of its sons. And though the world is poorer by the loss of thousands of its best, it is also richer by the ideals which they have raised up. Never since self-sacrifice was raised up as the standard of Christianity has self-sacrifice been so freely shown.

'And after all, those who would have it that war is the most terrible of all calamities can only put forward to support their claim the fact that war robs us of the flower of the world's manhood, and renders homeless and destitute thousands of innocent sufferers. But even though we deeply mourn the loss of those we love, we must deep down in our hearts be proud and thankful that it has been irrefutably proved that there are higher things than materialism and gain. The world has received a fresh lease of life by the sacrifices of those who have given theirs on its behalf. And so to come back to the starting-point, the world has not changed, but rather developed through the influence of love and sacrifice.

'Then there is the obvious objection to all this, that only while we are at war will this spirit of unity continue. And there, indeed, those who argue in this way have the advantage, for we cannot refute them about future events. But this we can say. That unless England in the years after the war is prepared to carry on what has been begun during the war, namely the united effort to do our best, then all the sacrifice shown now will have been wasted. Doubtless there will be trouble of a domestic nature after the war, until things have readjusted themselves, but ultimately surely the spirit of England now must prevail and a new and glorious prospect be opened up. Unless the class hatred, which is now to a large extent dying down, is forever buried, and unless every class of society strives to treat the other, not with tolerance but with something much more than that, then never again shall we be able to look those in the face who have fallen to prepare this for us.

'War can never be abolished by international congresses. Those who urge upon us that disarmament is the panacea of international politics forget that when civilisation has advanced far enough it will repudiate war as unnecessary. Just as in civil law the time came for arbitration to be submitted for hand-to-hand fights, so when nations are far enough advanced they will come to see that war is not the best solution of international problems.

And surely the lessons of this war will ultimately affect this. The closer ties between men which we are now beginning to realise will surely be strengthened with the march of time. And so it will not only be the horrors of war that make us shun it, but the fact that as amidst the horrors of war we can fight side by side, so in peace nations can also side by side strive to perfect civilisation. The class of society known as the 'pacifists' believe that disarmament will bring about the millennium. Probably they are right, but only so if disarmament comes not by legislation but by the unanimous demand of mankind. The progress of the world now begun will have then reached its final goal.’

How strange it is that things from the past come back in various forms to remind us of our loved ones. A little incident with regard to a cup which Charlie gained as a prize while at Merton House is of interest. This cup, which Charlie particularly prized, is a pewter mug with a glass bottom, and has printed on it: ‘C. J. Tree, Merton House, 1902.’ Charlie went to a Boy Scouts' Camp, and took with him among his kit this pewter mug. On the way home his portmanteau was stolen, and its contents, we feared, irretrievably lost. Charlie was much upset at the unfortunate occurrence, specially at the loss of his mug. No more was heard of it until the spring of this year when one morning on going into father's room at the office I saw, to my astonishment and joy, this mug upon his desk. It had been brought to him by an old client of his who was lodging for a few days in Worcester, and who had discovered it upon her landlady's dresser. The latter, on being questioned, gave as an explanation that it had been brought up from-the bottom of the river by a dredger. ‘That being as it might,’ we rejoice at its return, and feel that we have regained a link with Charlie's past.

Little Betty every night still prays for ‘Uncle Frank, Uncle Charlie, and now also for Uncle Pete.’ And we, whatever be our belief as to the future life, and however much at times our faith may waver, know in our hearts that the instinct of a little child is right, and that somewhere ‘beyond the stars’ they still go forward, and can be prayed and lived for.

Janet and I decided to write a book about our brothers’ lives, and we have had it published privately, and gave it to our parents for Christmas. We described the boys as children and included all our favourite stories about them. I was pleased that I had written so much already about them over the past eight years, as it made it much easier for me to write my part of the story. We dedicated the book to our parents who gave us such wonderful brothers and called it Orate Fratres.

Other news from Lansdowne Crescent:

Tom Stinton, Mary’s husband and our brother in law, has been given the Italian Bronze Medal for Valour. And Mark Day was given the Military Cross and mentioned in dispatches.

Gwenllian is working as a VAD in Brecon. She wants to feel a part of the war effort too. She also does some work in her father’s office. Her family are so much missing their 3 brothers. I know just how they feel.