Citation

Nobuoka Y. J. Fac. Human Cult. Sci. Fukuyama Univ. 2004; 4: 159-202.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Fukuyama University)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

When World War I broke out in July of 1914, T. E. Hulme at once joined the Honourable Artillery Company as a private, and was sent to France to fight. Early in March, of 1915, he was wounded in the arm, and sent home. After recovering, he returned to the front this time as a commission of the Royal Marine Artillery. The batteries of the Artillery were situated at Oost-Duinkerke Bains, on the coast behind Nieuport. On September 28, 1917, just when everybody seemed to have knocked off for lunch, there was an unexpected burst of shell-fire and Hulme was killed. Judging from his 'Diary from the Trenches' he found nothing romantic or attractive in the war, but only misery, boredom and discomfort, as he says, "the wretched life, practically a condition of slavery " ('War Note'. Csengeri, p. 399). Then why did he volunteer twice to go to the muddy trenches? During his stay in the hospital with his combat wound, he put forward a reasoned defence of the war in The New Age and The Cambridge Magazine, based not on any liking for the excitement of war, but on his conception of 'heroic value'. In The Cambridge Magazine, he also engaged in controversy with Bertrand Russell, who was campaigning against the war. Hulme attacked Russell's pacifism as resting on a romantic conception of progress and overvalue of 'life'. He asserted that it was the absolute ethical value that makes life worthwhile. What is the 'heroic value' or, absolute ethical value' that Hulme asserts? His thought was anti-romanticism, anti-humanism and anti-democracy. Hulme was a firm believer in Original Sin and he called himself a 'Tory'. What did all this have to do with his participation in the war? This note is a preliminary work to clarify the political aspect of his thought, taking into consideration the influence on him of G. Sorel and the French neo-Royalist group. The theme is approached through 7 parts : 1. Preface 2. Wandering on the grand plain of Canada and Conversion 3. Bergson and Action Francaise 4. A Tory Philosophy 5. The Ethics of War 6. Hulme's Combat in the War and the Ethics of Sorel's Violence 7. Conclusion.