The Four Feathers is a novel that was published in 1902.  One can only conclude that it must be a popular story, for there have been seven movies based on it, the best of which is said to be the one produced in 1939.

That movie begins when a Dr. Sutton arrives at the home of General Faversham for a reunion of retired military officers of the British Army.  Sutton brings word that General Gordon has just been murdered at Khartoum, which happened in 1885.  General Faversham’s arrogance upon hearing of this is unabashed:  “That’s no news to me.  I said that was going to happen years ago when they first sent Gordon to Egypt. He wasn’t hard enough.”

Whether sincerely or disingenuously, Dr. Sutton feeds his vanity.  “They wanted someone like you out there,” he says.

“Just what I was going to say myself,” the general agrees without the slightest trace of modesty. “First time for a hundred years there hasn’t been a Faversham in the Army, and look at the mess they make.”

General Faversham berates himself for not having married sooner.  As a result, he is too old to have gone to Egypt and do things proper, and his son Harry is too young, only fifteen.  Furthermore, he is worried about the boy.  After sending him to the best army school in England and inspiring him with tales of his ancestors, the many portraits of which are hanging on the wall, famous for their military exploits, he caught Harry reading poetry.  “Shelley, of all people!”

Presumably, it wouldn’t have been so bad if Rudyard Kipling had been the poet Harry was reading, but Percy Bysshe Shelley was an atheist who wrote the subversive poem “Ozymandias,” mocking the conceit of the British Empire.

The general has decided to let Harry dine with them that night, hoping to infuse some martial spirit into the boy.  That night, General Burroughs (C. Aubrey Smith) starts things off by reminiscing about the Crimean War, some thirty years earlier, telling of how he led the charge at Balaklava:  “Ah, war was war in those days, and men were men. No room for weaklings.”

As for those weaklings, several stories are told of men who were cowards and ended up getting the death they deserved, either while running away or by committing suicide later out of shame.  “There’s no place in England for a coward,” General Faversham avers, while giving his son a stern look.

Ten years later, Harry (John Clements) is now an officer.  He learns that his regiment will join Sir Herbert Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian Army for the reconquest of the Sudan, finally avenging the death of General Gordon.  His fellow officers are ecstatic.  Later, we see people cheering as the soldiers march down the street and a military band plays “The British Grenadiers.”  We see a woman weeping sentimental tears as she sees her husband off.  Then she and the crowd sing “Auld Lang Syne.”  However, no one is more teary-eyed than General Burroughs, who wishes he could go with them.

Harry is among the crowd, dressed in civilian attire, viewing the spectacle with dispassion.  The day before the regiment was to leave for Egypt, Harry informed his commanding officer that he was resigning his commission, saying that now that his father is dead, his duty to him in upholding the family tradition of service in the Army is over.  After the colonel reminds Harry of his duty to his country, but to no avail, he accuses him of being a coward.  Harry remains adamant in his determination to leave the Army.

Prior to this, Harry’s engagement to Ethne (June Duprez), daughter of General Burroughs, was announced at a party celebrating the occasion.  Now at the Burrough’s home, Harry explains to a bewildered Ethne why he did not leave with the others:  “We’ve discussed it so often, the futility of this idiotic Egyptian adventure, the madness of it all, the ghastly waste of time that we can never have again.”

While Ethne may have agreed with Harry in principle when they discussed it, he mistakenly assumed that she would approve of his resigning his commission.  Upon hearing about it, however, she eases back out of his arms.  Harry continues:

I should have done it sooner. Long ago. It’s released me from the life of an impostor. That’s all a man is when he fails to be true to the things he believes in. I believe in our happiness. I believe in the work to be done here to save an estate that’s near to ruin, to save all those people who’ve been neglected by my family because they preferred glory in India, glory in China, glory in Africa.

As Ethne listens, not fully comprehending, a package arrives.  It contains a calling card from each of Harry’s three friends:  Mr. Thomas Willoughby, Mr. Peter Burroughs, who is Ethne’s brother, and Captain John Durrance (Ralph Richardson), Ethne’s disappointed suitor.  Attached to each man’s card is a white feather, signifying cowardice.

Moreover, Harry realizes that Ethne also thinks he was wrong to resign his commission. She says:

Some people are born free. They can do what they like without concern for consequences. But you were not born free, Harry, and nor was I. We were born into a tradition, a code which we must obey even if we do not believe. And we must obey it, Harry because the pride and happiness of everyone surrounding us depends upon our obedience.

In response to this, he plucks a white feather from her fan to go with the other three.

As I watched this first part of the movie, I thought about what might have been.  If only Harry had remained true to his resolve, forgoing his love for Ethne, accepting the accusation of cowardice from his three friends, remaining true to himself while helping those neglected by his family’s estate.

But that would have been impossible in a movie, where cowards must either redeem themselves or come to a bad end.  The only exception is comedies, such as in a Bob Hope movie, where cowardice can be played for laughs.  But this movie is no comedy.  So, what I was dreaming of was not realistic.

And yet, it would have been far more realistic than what follows.  Overwhelmed by the judgments of others, Harry concludes that he is indeed a coward.  So, he goes to Egypt and disguises himself as a Sangali native whose tongue had been cut out as punishment, the reason being that since he cannot speak the language, he needs an excuse for not talking.  This allows him to sneak around the general area of Egypt and the Sudan in hopes of redeeming himself in some way.

Meanwhile, Captain John Durrance has had a sun stroke and been blinded by the sun. Determined to do his duty, he lets no one know of his condition, leading his men without being able to see where he is going, brandishing his sword and swinging it about in ludicrous fashion.  When his company comes under attack, many are killed in the battle, and Durrance is almost one of them.  But Harry, who had managed to infiltrate the Dervishes, saves him while he is being attacked by a Fuzzy Wuzzy.  Durrance passes out, and Harry is knocked unconscious.  As a result, both are left for dead.  When Harry recovers, he leads Durrance to safety.  While Harry is slipping one of the white feathers into Durrance’s papers, some British soldiers think he is robbing him and take him into custody, putting him in a convict gang.

Durrance is sent back to England, where Ethne decides to marry him out of pity.  Women often make sacrifices like this in the movies.  Speaking of the fair sex, Ethne is the only major female character in the movie.  All the other women have only bit parts.  Her mother is no longer living, just as Harry’s mother was no longer living.  This makes the movie intensely masculine.  Ethne’s sole function in this movie is to be the prize for a man of courage.

Meanwhile, back in Africa, Peter Burroughs and Thomas Willoughby, who were part of Durrance’s company, have been captured.  Harry manages to get himself into the prison where they are being held, at which point he orchestrates a jail break, getting the three of them to safety, returning to them their white feathers as well.

In the end, when Durrance finds out who saved him in the desert, he breaks off his engagement to Ethne, allowing her the freedom to marry Harry.  But while Harry has managed to return the white feathers to his three friends, Ethne says he must still do something to prove his courage to her, although she says this in a good-natured way.  While her father, General Burroughs, is once again telling of how he gave the order to charge in the battle of Balaklava, Harry has the temerity to contradict him.  Presumably, his father had told him what really happened, that Burroughs never gave that order, that he ended up leading the charge inadvertently because his horse got spooked and took off with everyone else following him.  Burroughs admits that he will never be able to tell that story again.

With that, Harry returns the feather to Ethne, and they live happily ever after.

It is only natural when watching a movie to try to put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist, wondering what you would have done.  However, my personal experience is limited to the Vietnam War.  There are some superficial similarities.  For one thing, just as the British had no business being in Egypt and the Sudan, America had no business being in Vietnam.  For another, when Harry resigned his commission, that corresponded to my dodging the draft.

But for the most part, the Vietnam War was the complete opposite of the British adventures in Africa.  During the late 1960s, there was no shame in dodging the draft, quite the opposite.  It was practically a badge of honor, with other guys that I knew in college hoping that they would be so lucky.  Even the sergeant at the draft board, upon reading the recommendation written by the doctor, based on the lie I had told him, looked up at me with a big grin and said, “Congratulations!  You just got yourself a 1-Y deferment.”

My parents were pleased.  My father had fought in World War II, which many people would regard as one of America’s good wars, but he told me that he would never fire another shot in anger for the whole lot of them.

My two friends also managed to get out of the draft, although, unlike me, they did so legally, each having a minor health problem.

As for my girlfriend, when she learned that I had dodged the draft, she said she would give me something special that night as a reward.  I’m still thinking about that one.

Several years later, I knew another girl who said that she would never have sex with any man who had been in the Army.  I had sympathy for the men who were not as fortunate as I had been and were sent to Vietnam instead, so I asked, “What if the man had been drafted?”

She said it didn’t matter, that he should have had the moral courage to refuse to be inducted, even though it meant going to prison.  I thought that was a little harsh, but she was beautiful, so I was pleased to hear that I was not disqualified from consideration.  At least, not for that reason.  Unfortunately, she apparently had a different reason for disqualifying me.

All my college professors were against the war, so they were happy for me too, and I was now free to enter graduate school.

In other words, given the social milieu in which I existed, no one accused me of being a coward.  And yet, that is exactly what I was.  You see, the way I figured it, if they sent me to Vietnam, there were people over there who would try to kill me.

But let us assume that things had been different:  that my father disapproved of my dodging the draft; that my friends had enlisted, proud to be doing their patriotic duty, while regarding me as a coward for shirking mine; and that my girlfriend broke up with me, ashamed of what I had done.  So, in order to redeem myself, I go to Vietnam as a civilian and disguise myself as a mute Vietnamese.  Then, when one of my friends is blinded from exposure to napalm, I manage to find him and lead him to safety.  My other friend is captured and put in a prisoner-of-war camp in North Vietnam, but later on, I am also taken prisoner and end up in the same camp, after which I organize a jail break, and we escape to safety.

The absurdity of this fantasy can go no further.  How could anyone set out to do something like that with any expectation of pulling it off?

In one last effort to identify with the protagonist of this movie, I ask myself what I would have done had I been Harry.  In that case, I suspect my cowardice would have taken a different form.  I would never have had the courage to resign my commission and face the opprobrium.  I would have gone off with the rest of the regiment, wondering all the while, “What am I doing here?”  Then, during a battle, assuming I was lucky enough not to be killed myself, I would have killed men who didn’t deserve it, men who were only defending their land against an invading army.

In fact, that was what I figured would happen if I had been unable to dodge the draft.  Not having the moral courage to face going to prison, I would have put on a uniform and allowed myself to be sent to Vietnam where I would have committed murder out of cowardice.