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NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE

[Illustration: J B P Adams]




  NOTHING
  OF IMPORTANCE

  A RECORD OF EIGHT MONTHS AT THE
  FRONT WITH A WELSH BATTALION
  OCTOBER, 1915, TO JUNE, 1916

  BY
  BERNARD ADAMS

  WITH A PORTRAIT AND THREE MAPS

  METHUEN & CO. LTD.
  36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
  LONDON


_First Published in 1917_

  TO
  T. R. G.
  WHO TAUGHT ME HOW TO THINK




_IN MEMORIAM_

BERNARD ADAMS


John Bernard Pye Adams was born on November 15th, 1890, at Beckenham,
Kent. From his first school at Clare House, Beckenham, he obtained an
entrance scholarship to Malvern, where he gained many Classical and
English prizes and became House Prefect. In December, 1908, he won
an open Classical scholarship at St John’s College, Cambridge, where
he went into residence in October, 1909. He was awarded in 1911 Sir
William Browne’s gold medals (open to the University) for a Greek
epigram and a Latin ode, and in 1912 he won the medal for the Greek
epigram again, and graduated with a First Class in the Classical
Tripos. In his fourth year he read Economics.

On leaving Cambridge he was appointed by the India Office to be Warden
and Assistant Educational Adviser at the Hostel for Indian Students
at Cromwell Road, South Kensington. “He threw himself,” writes Dr. T.
W. Arnold, C.I.E., Secretary of Indian Students, “with the enthusiasm
of his ardent nature into the various activities connected with 21
Cromwell Road, and endeared himself both to the Indian students and to
his colleagues.” Adams was always a quiet man, but his high abilities,
despite his unobtrusiveness, could not be altogether hidden; and in
London, as in Cambridge, his intellect and his gift for friendship had
their natural outcome. Mr. E. W. Mallet, of the India Office, bears
testimony to “the very high value which we all set on his work. He had
great gifts of sympathy and character, strength as well as kindliness,
influence as well as understanding; and these qualities won him--in the
rather difficult work in which he helped so loyally and well--a rare
and noticeable measure of esteem.” On his side, he felt that the choice
had been a right one; he liked his work, and he learned a great deal
from it.

His ultimate purpose was missionary work in India, and the London
experience brought him into close touch with Indians from every part of
India and of every religion.

In November, 1914, he joined up as lieutenant in the Welsh regiment
with which these pages deal, and he obtained a temporary captaincy in
the following spring. When he went out to the front in October, 1915,
he resumed his lieutenancy, but was very shortly given charge of a
company, a position which he retained until he was wounded in June,
1916, when he returned to England. He only went out to the front again
on January 31st of this year. In the afternoon of February 26th he was
wounded while leading his men in an attack and died the following day
in the field hospital.

       *       *       *       *       *

These few sentences record the bare landmarks of a career which, in the
judgment of his friends, would have been noteworthy had it not been
so prematurely cut short. For instance, here is what his friend, T.
R. Glover, of St John’s, wrote in _The Eagle_ (the St John’s College
magazine) and elsewhere:

“Bernard Adams was my pupil during his Classical days at St John’s, and
we were brought into very close relations. He remains in my mind as
one of the very best men I have ever had to teach--best every way, in
mind and soul and all his nature. He had a natural gift for writing--a
natural habit of style; he wrote without artifice, and achieved the
expression of what he thought and what he felt in language that was
simple and direct and pleasing. (A College Prize Essay of his of those
days was printed in _The Eagle_ (vol. xxvii, 47-60)--on Wordsworth’s
_Prelude_.) He was a man of the quiet and reserved kind, who did not
talk much, for whom, perhaps, writing was a more obvious form of
utterance than speech.

It was clear to those who knew him that he put conscience into his
thinking--he was serious, above all about religion, and he was honest
with himself. Other people will take religion at secondhand; he was
of another type. He thought things out quietly and clearly, and then
decided. His choice of Economics as a second subject at Cambridge was
dictated by the feeling that it would prepare him for his life’s work
in the Christian ministry. There was little hope in it of much academic
distinction--but that was not his object. A man who had thought more
of himself would have gone on with Classics, in the hope (a very
reasonable one) of a Fellowship. Adams was not working for his own
advancement. The quiet simple way in which, without referring to it, he
dismissed academic distinction, gives the measure of the man--clear,
definite, unselfish, and devoted. His ideal was service, and he
prepared for it--at Cambridge, and with his Indian students in London.

When the war came he had difficulties of decision as to the course he
should pursue. Like others who had no gust for war, and no animosity
against the enemy, he took a commission, not so much to fight _against_
as to fight _for_; the principles at stake appealed to him, and with an
inner reluctance against the whole business he went into it--once again
the quiet, thought-out sacrifice.”

       *       *       *       *       *

In this phase of his career his characteristic conscientiousness was
shown by the thoroughness and success with which he performed his
military duties “He is a real loss to the regiment,” wrote a senior
officer; “everybody who knew him had a very high opinion of his
military efficiency.”

As is so often the case, a quiet and reserved manner hid a brave heart.
When it came to personal danger he impressed men as being unconscious
of it. “I never met a man who displayed coolly more utter disregard for
danger.” And in this spirit he