ABSTRACT
A key moment in Mr Standfast (1919) is the death of Launcelot Wake, a conscientious objector and committed paci st. Having belatedly signed up as a non-combatant, Wake’s service in a Labour battalion and the Italian Red Cross pales in comparison to the gallant, patriotic and voluntary act that kills him: carrying a vital communiqué through enemy re to prevent a German anking move at the Battle of Amiens. Despite Wake’s heroics, and the ravaging of his body, his devotion to paci sm stays unrepentantly intact: ‘Funny thing life. A year ago I was preaching peace … I’m still preaching it … I’m not sorry.’1 By presenting paci sm in this way Buchan ensures that it retains an important otherness which would have been suppressed if he had made Wake shuck his principles for the aristo-military values against which he is de ned. Wake contributes to the war e ort but doesn’t have to abandon his principles, a loyalty textually approved by Hannay’s reading of events: ‘I had never had his troubles to face, but he had come clean through them, and reached a courage which was for ever beyond me’.2
