The Prisoners of Mainz

But for two fortunate contingencies those early days would have been almost unendurable. One of them was the arrival from Karlsruhe of Tarrant and Stone. During our first week every evening brought a draft of new arrivals; and among one of the later of these appeared Tarrant and Stone, staggering beneath the accumulated kit of fourteen months’ imprisonment. The change contented them little. After the shelter and privacy of a room for two, it was no joke to be dumped into the publicity of a room of ten. The creature comforts were missing. Naturally we showered sympathy. But as a practical philosophy altruism is a sadly broken reed. The pleasure at the prospect of their company quite outweighed the inconvenience that its presence had caused to them; and, besides that, they brought with them no small part of a library. The bookless days were over now. No more should I have to spend a whole morning over the only volume in the room—The Book of Common Prayer. No more should I have to go to the most extreme lengths of subservience to borrow Freckles or The Rosary.

The other piece of luck we had was in the weather. During the early days of May the square was bathed in a metallic heat; and as soon as roll-call was over a deck chair was pushed into the shade of a tree, where one could doze and read throughout the whole morning, and forget that one was hungry.

For those were hungry days. Indeed it is hard not to make the first two months a mere chronicle of sauerkraut. I honestly believe that the Germans gave us as much food as they could, considering we were “useless mouths”: but it was precious little. After all it is one thing to be reduced to short rations by slow gradations, but it is a very different thing to be taken from the flesh-pots of France where one eats a great deal too much, to a vegetable diet that was not nearly sufficient. There was only one proper meal a day: lunch. We then got two plates of soup, three or four potatoes, and a spoonful or two of beetroot or cabbage. The effect lasted for three hours. Supper rarely provided potatoes; usually two plates of thin soup, and sauerkraut or barley porridge. In addition there was a fortnightly issue of sugar, a weekly issue of jam, and a bi-weekly issue of bread. On this last issue the Gefangener’s fate depended. Life simplified itself into an attempt to spread out a small loaf of bread over four days. It did not often succeed. On the first day one carefully marked out on the crust the limit at which each day’s plunderings must stop. The loaf was divided, first of all, into four equal parts, then each quarter was again marked out in divisions; so much for breakfast, so much for tea, so much for supper. It did not work. Each day removed its neighbour’s landmark. By the third day only a little edge of crust remained. It was demolished by tea-time, and nothing quite equalled the depression of the evening of that third day. The worst time was at eight o’clock. The effect of a slender supper had by then worn off, and there was the comforting reflection that for sixteen hours there was not the least likelihood of being able to lay hand on any food; and the dizziness of a breakfastless morning is an experience no one would wish to indulge in twice.

They were strange days, and strange things happened. Money ceased to have any value unless it could be turned into edible substance. Those with big appetites carried on a sort of secret service to obtain bread; fabulous sums were offered for a quarter of a loaf of bread that contained less flour than potatoes; and, at a time when a mark was worth a shilling, there were those who were prepared to pay seventy-five marks for a loaf; and twenty marks for half a loaf was the lowest rate of exchange.

One knew then the emotions of the man with threepence in his pocket; who is feeling ravenously hungry and knows that, if he spends that threepence on dinner, he will have nothing left for the next day. It is an alternative that in terms of brown bread has presented itself to every prisoner of war.

The psychology of semi-starvation would make an interesting study; and it would bring out very clearly the irrefutable truth that the only way to get any peace for the mind is by throwing sops to the physical appetites; that passions must be allayed, not suppressed; and that the moment anything is suppressed it becomes an obsession. For there is poison in every unacted desire, and the only way to deal with the appetites is to be neither their slave nor tyrant. Asceticism renders a clear view of life impossible.

And during those days, if one sufficiently objectified one’s emotions, there would be always found the insidious germ working its way into the most unlikely places. Even in books there was no escape from it; it deliberately perverted the author’s meaning. And one occasion comes back very vividly. I was reading La Débâcle and had reached the scene where Louis Napoleon is sitting alone in his room, and his servants lay before him dish after dish which he leaves untouched. And because of this perpetual hungriness the whole effect of the incident was spoilt. I could not get into the mood necessary to appreciate the effect Zola had aimed at. All I could think was, “Here is this appalling ass Louis Napoleon, surrounded with meats and fish, entrées and omelettes, and the fool does not eat them. If only they had given me a chance!”

It was interesting, too, to notice its effect on a man like Milton Hayes. Naturally it hit him in that most vulnerable point, his theory of Popular Taste.

One morning I found him sitting on a seat, dipping into three books in turn, Lorna Doone, Pickwick Papers, and The Knave of Diamonds.

“A strange selection,” I said.

“No,” he said; “they are all the same, really. They’ve all done the same thing; they’ve sold; they’ve got the same bedrock principle somewhere, and I think I’ve found it.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Gratification of appetite. All these accounts of big meals and luxury. That’s what gets over. People don’t want psychology. But they’ll smack their lips over the dresses and feasts in The Knave of Diamonds; and then look at the venison pasties in Lorna Doone, and the heavy dinners in Pickwick. That’s what people want. They have not got these things; but they want to be told they exist somewhere, and that they are there to be found. If ever you want to write a book that will really sell, remember that: gratification of appetite: make their mouths water.”

§ 2

There was, of course, in the form of the Kantine an official method of supplementing the ordinary issue. And across that counter strange things passed.

Every day provided a fresh experiment. A rumour would fly round the camp that there was a new sort of tinned paste to be had, “I saw a fellow coming out with a biggish-looking tin,” some one would say. “I don’t know what was in it. But it was too big for boot polish.”

There would follow a general rush, and a queue thirty deep would prolong itself outside the door. The mixture would turn out to be a green paste purported to be made from snails and liver. For a day or two the unfortunates who had bought it spread it over their bread, and tried to make themselves believe they liked it. The only purpose it really served was to make the bread look thicker than it was.

Then another tin would appear; there would be another rumour, another rush to the door, another disillusionment. There was a crab paste, a vegetable paste, a nondescript brown paste; all in turn went their way, and yielded to the soft intrigue of Dried Veg.

Dried Veg presented itself very innocuously in a paper bag covered with directions in German. It looked dry and unappetising. None of us knew how it should be treated,

but the consensus of opinion decided that half an hour’s boiling was all that was needed; and so adhering to the popular idea, we emptied the packet into a saucepan full of water, boiled it for half an hour, and ate it. It was really not so bad.

Within half an hour, however, we knew that something was wrong. All of us began to move uncomfortably. Pain spread itself across our stomachs: and then too late appeared one who could translate the instructions on the wrapper. The contents should have been left to stand in water for at least twenty-four hours, by which time it would have absorbed all the moisture demanded by its composition. We had given it only half an hour’s boiling. It took its revenge by swelling silently within us.

It was a terrible night.

From these expenditures it will follow that life at Mainz was not quite so cheap as might be imagined. And we were unfortunate in being captured at a time when the value of a mark was very high. For, thanks to the business instincts of our German bankers, a cheque for three pounds was worth only sixty marks.

Myself I do not pretend to understand bimetallism, rate of exchange, or any of the other commercial problems that regulate the value of money. But the equivalent of the sixty marks paid monthly by Messrs. Cox to the German Government appeared in our pass-books at that time as £2 10s. 6d.; and as at our end we had to pay £3 for the same number of marks, one is driven to assume that the intermediary German firm was making a profit of about sixteen per cent. on every cheque drawn; a basis on which we would all like to run a bank.

The result both of the rushes to the Kantine and the succeeding rushes to the Paymaster’s office was the distinguishing feature of our daily routine—Queues. For the first impression of a stranger entering the citadel would have been of a sequence of trailing lines receding from open doors. Every department had its own particular queue. There was the queue outside the library, an insignificant affair owing to the thinly lined shelves; the queue outside the tin store for those who had parcels, and the two main streams of humanity, the queue from the Kantine, and the queue from the Paymaster’s office. These two last were in a continual state of flux, a ceaseless ebb and flow; the moment that they seemed likely to be engulfed within the welcoming portals there would be another meeting of the ways, more applicants would arrive, and the human rivers would overflow their banks. To any one who enjoyed this pastime, life was prodigal of entertainment. He could flit from one dissipation to another. But to the majority it was a tedious business, and the art of “queuing” began.

For an art it certainly was. As the master of finance is always watching the rise and fall of the markets, so that he shall know the exact moment at which to buy or to sell; so the master queuist would bide, waiting for that moment when the stream would be at its lowest ebb, and when he might safely attach himself to its interests. The cowardly might enrol themselves stolidly at an early hour, and shifting forward slowly, almost imperceptibly, they would eventually reach the doors. For them there was in queuing neither colour nor excitement. It was a dead level.

But for the artist in queues it was altogether different. He hazarded much. He had to work out whether or not it would really pay him to get to the door of the Kantine an hour before it was due to open. If he waited till later on in the day, he might manage to take advantage of some quiet lull, and gain his ends after a paltry thirty minutes’ wait. But, if he did, there was always the chance that when he did arrive the article he had desired would be no longer there. The whole stock of liver paste might have been exhausted. An appalling contingency. All these considerations had to be weighed.

And with regard to the Paymaster’s office there were attached notable risks. At noon every day the gates were closed, and consequently at about half-past eleven the applicants ceased to arrive. Nobody cares to wait thirty minutes and then have the doors shut upon him; and it was here that the genius of the queuist was most in evidence.

At half-past eleven he would look at the queue: there were fifteen people waiting: would those fifteen people be able to draw their cheques in time? and in cases like this a mere average of time was valueless. In queuing, as everywhere else, all standards were relative. Because on one day twenty people had drawn their money in as many minutes, it did not follow that on another fifteen would draw theirs in an hour. Nationalities had to be taken into consideration. Those twenty men were probably Irishmen. But if there were ten kilts outside the gate, even when the hands of the clock stood only at a quarter-past eleven, the great queuist would turn away. He knew that to each of those ten Scotsmen the Paymaster would have to explain the theory of exchange in indifferent English, which would not be understood, and that the Paymaster would then have to try and gather the drift of a Scotsman’s logic in a language he had not heard before, and that for each individual applicant an interpreter would have to be summoned.

Queuing, if refined to an art, required a great deal more than the merely neutral quality of patience.

CHAPTER V

THE PITT LEAGUE

It opened very modestly, under the auspices of a field officer and two subalterns. Its programme was to find out what each person wanted to learn, and to provide classes as far as was possible in the required subjects. It was hoped to bring together members of the same profession and form circles for Schoolmasters, Bankers, and Farmers.

This scheme presented countless opportunities for the Bureaucrat. There is in every community a certain number of people who are never so happy as when they are confronted with a host of particulars that demand tabulation. They glory in the sight of a ledger, ruled off into meticulously exact columns. They love to write at the top of each column: size of boots, colour of hair, number of distinguishing marks.

To such a one was entrusted the clerkship of the Future Career Society. It was announced that at such and such an hour he would receive applicants. Wishing to learn French, I attached myself to a queue, and after a wait of twenty minutes duly presented myself at the desk.

I was received with the stern official gaze that seems to say, “Now then, young fellow, I’m a hard-worked man and can’t afford to waste time on you. Let’s get to business at once.”

“Name?”—Waugh.

“Initials?”—A. R.

“Married?”—No.

“Single?”—Yes.

“Children?”—None.

“Age?”—Nearly twenty.

The questions followed each other with the rapidity of machine-gun bullets. These preliminaries over, he looked up at me with the benevolent Fairy Godfather expression of, “Now, young fellow, I’m doing my best, I want to help you, but you must meet me half-way.”

“Now,” he said kindly, “what work did you do before the war?”

“None at all,” I answered truthfully; “I was at school.”

“Then you don’t know what you are going to do when you get back?”

“Oh, something to do with books,” I hazarded.

“Ah, yes, Book-keeping. Then I suppose that what you want is a really sound commercial education?”

And he was about to jot down “Commerce” when I pointed out that what I really wanted to do was not to keep books, but to write them.

“Journalism? Then why couldn’t you say so at once,” and he returned to the official “Busyman” attitude.

Finally we reached the stage to which this examination had led.

“Now, then, what classes do you think of taking up?”

“French.”

He looked at me, doubtfully avuncular.

“You know, I don’t know whether French will be much use to you. Is that all you are taking up? Because, of course, French is very amusing, but from a commercial point of view really I should advise shorthand. No? well, then, I must just put you down for French. Some notices will come round about the classes.”

And he began his inquisition of my successor. Really, considering that to be entered in a French class was the whole object of my visit, the interview was sufficiently prolix, but the fellow enjoyed doing it. That was the great thing.

Like all innovations, the F.C.S. (as it appeared on official abbreviations) met with great support, numerous classes were formed, so numerous, in fact, were they that there was hardly enough room for them. At all periods of the day students could be observed hurrying across the court, a stool under one arm, and a pile of books under the other. The whole day was mapped out into periods; there was no vacant spot but it had to serve as a classroom; and the attendance was admirable. Over a hundred officers attended the first lecture of the shorthand expert. The elementary French class was so large that it had to be divided up into three.

Great trade flourished then in the Kantine. Otto’s Grammars were at a premium. They were hoarded deliberately. One enterprising linguist went so far as to amass within the space of a week, grammars of Spanish, French, German, Italian, Arabic and Hindustani, together with their keys.

It did not last long: within a week the numbers were diminished by a half; they then sank to a quarter, then an eighth. Within a month no class numbered more than half a dozen, which was just as well, for really people do not want to be taught things. Educational experts who spend years working out theories do not make a sufficient point of this. It is not enough to form a system, and expect the world to fit into it. Only a very few desire knowledge, and those few should be catered for. They will profit by instruction. But those who are taught things against their will, speedily forget whatever they have learnt. There are, it is true, those men who can inspire a love of work, who can produce results from any material, but they are not schoolmasters. There is rarely more than one in each school. For the profession presents insufficient attractions to the really brilliant man, with the result that schoolmasters are drawn from the ranks of mediocrity; and as long as this state of things continues, all that the average schoolmaster can hope to do is to keep the lazy in order, and impart his knowledge to those who want to learn. For the masses education can only mean information, and information by itself has little value.

And so within a month the educational life of the camp had assumed modest limits; but, as those who remained were genuinely keen, the classes became infinitely more efficacious. Conversational French, for instance, was possible as it would never have been in a gathering of thirty. For the enthusiasts the decreased numbers were in every way advantageous, but it gave no pleasure to Colonel Westcott.

Colonel Westcott was one of those delightful persons whom captivity had turned into a burlesque. He was as extravagant as a character out of Dickens, and it was hard to believe in his reality. He was so exactly the type of army officer that is caricatured on the music-hall stage. He had all the foibles and loyalties of his caste. He believed fearlessly in discipline, in the Anglo-Saxon race, in an Utopia made not with hands but with muskets.

In the time when his enthusiasms had been kept in control by the business of war, he had been an excellent soldier; but once captured, he had no outlet for his temperament. Looking down on the court from the window of his room, he was horrified at the thought of so many subalterns passing out of his hands, out of the hands of discipline back into the individual energies of civilian life. And Colonel Westcott hated individualism: he liked to see humanity moving forward in one compact body, with himself at its head. He loathed, and was frightened by, the small bodies that went their own way and in their own time. During the four years of war nothing had given him more pleasure than to watch the slow conscription of England. In it he saw unity and safety. He was with the majority and was therefore safe.

But now all those good things were ending. He saw the splitting up of all this common impulse into countless cliques, with interests not his own; and he felt that he must make one effort before the close. For Colonel Westcott was a brave man. He would sell everything for the comfort and assuagement of his soul. And so he founded the Pitt League.

As an essay in the floating of a bogus company, it was a notable achievement. Never was such a web of words woven round such a dummy. Not that the Colonel spake one word that he did not believe. He was impeccably honest. He really valued the goods that he extolled.

One evening in the theatre he laid his wares before us. With an unconscious skill, he began by an appeal to the vanity and the emotions of his hearers.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have been told by one of the padres that in the lesson for March 21st, the day on which most of us were captured, occurs the text, ‘Be thou a ruler even in the midst among thine enemies.’ That, gentlemen, is what I want to say to you to-night. Be rulers, I will tell you how.”

The prospect of gaining the mastery over the generous supply of armed sentries was alluring. There was an instant and unanimous attention.

“We can only do it in one way, gentlemen, and that is by combination. We must all work together, we must work not towards individual prosperity, but towards the prosperity of the community. No longer can we fight our enemies in the field, but we can wage a silent war, we can prepare ourselves so that afterwards we may be triumphant. We must work collectively: we must unite: the life of this camp should be like one machine, in which you are all cogs. And so, gentlemen, I have brought forward my scheme. I have called it the Pitt League, because, well, gentlemen, because it rhymes with grit.”

And then followed an exposition worthy of the great Tartarin. But even the hero of Tarascon can hardly have brought to play in the account of his visionary Saharas such a fancy, such an overwhelming unreason, such a complete contempt for the bounds of probability. Slowly idea followed on idea, slowly the colossal fabric was raised. That Colonel Westcott was a caricature must always be kept in mind; but even so I think the excitement of the moment must have caught him up. Even he could not in cold blood have conceived such fabulous creations.

The scheme began by amalgamating The Future Career Society; and starting at the point where that society had wisely halted, proceeded to include every department of Imperial life. Committees would be formed; debates and lectures arranged. A research committee would be able to provide information on any subject; a trade and commerce department would provide a comprehensive study of the growth of trade and of Colonial expansion. It would work out every problem of navigation, and every fine question of markets, their rise and fall. A department for home affairs would provide recipes by which thirty million people could live without competition. Divorce, Politics, Education, State control of vice, small holdings, all these would be settled. And then the Dominions, each Colony would have its own department, where Colonials would decide on how best they could further the Imperial ideals. Then there was the regular soldier side, the Imperial Force branch. And here perhaps the Colonel’s fancy flew farthest and highest, military strategy would be dealt with from primeval time. Sand-maps on the floor would show the site of battle-fields and the dispositions of the rival armies; tactics would be exhaustively discussed. A new and infallible method of attack would be evolved for the next war.

And all these activities would be accomplished, in spite of the fact that no one in the camp possessed the least information on any of these points; and that as a remedy for their defect there existed neither a reference library nor the likelihood of obtaining one. But by this Colonel Westcott was nothing daunted. Perhaps at the back of his mind there was the unconscious knowledge that the end is nothing, the means all, “and that to move is somewhat although the goal be far.”

“And when we go back to England,” he concluded, “you will be able to effect the reforms you have thought out here. You will go back with a collective and not an individual patriotism. You will be capable of really efficient citizenship. We shall still be able to move forward as one body. That is the Pitt League, gentlemen.”

And then followed the sentence for which he deserves immortality.

“It’s my scheme and I like it. I know you’ll like it too.”

He had out-tartarined Tartarin. Caricature in one human frame could go no further.

§ 2

The Pitt League fared as might have been expected. It was born and christened amid much enthusiasm. The whole camp found itself enrolled under some branch or other, elaborate programmes were devised. The walls of the theatre were covered with notices. Every Wednesday the heads of each branch met in what was called the Parliament of the Pitt League, of which Colonel Westcott was Prime Minister. This gave the required semblance of unity and collective patriotism. A few field officers and senior captains found that a certain amount of work had devolved upon their shoulders, but the life of the average subaltern continued undisturbed. In practice no one is a collectivist, unless it is likely to prove to his advantage. No one wants to be a cog in any machine that does not produce tangible results; and though the camp gave the Pitt League its sympathy and encouragement, it did not see its way to further any interests not its own. The Colonel, however, was quite content with his work. He was Prime Minister of his own Parliament, and everywhere his eyes were confronted with tabulated evidence of his enterprise.

“A very different camp,” he would say to himself. “There is now a purpose and an end ... a thorough change of attitude, and,” he would proudly add, “it is all my doing.”

From this energy, however, there did spring two incidental results: one touched me personally, the other only in as far as I was a member of the general community. The former was that I discovered my name on the syllabus of the Home Affairs branch as a future lecturer on Social Reform, a privilege which was deferred weekly with considerable ingenuity until the signing of the Armistice absolved me from my promise; the other was the inauguration of the Priority Pass.

For it is one of the traits in human nature that no sooner does a man begin to do any work for which he is not paid than he demands recognition of some sort. He wants to be differentiated from the rest. The man who has served twelve months as an A.S.C. batman clamours for an extra chevron. Why should he be ranked on the same level as the infantryman who has only been in the line thirteen weeks. The officer who censored letters at the Base in the first October of the war demands a riband to show he is not one of those mere conscripts who only landed in 1915. They are working of course not “for glory or for honour.” Their service is perfectly disinterested, all they want is to be of help to the nation. But still, they do think, that in common justice some sort of difference should be made, some privilege perhaps....

And it was so with the officials of the Pitt League. They all maintained that it was their greatest delight to be of service to the camp, that they were collectivists of the truest and most practical kind. Yet they were only human, and when they saw lazy officers reaping where they had themselves sown, the wedge of justice slipped itself beneath the barrier of their altruism. The elemental idea of “mine and thine” once firmly planted, strengthened and took root. They felt the need of recompense.

For some time they were in doubt as to the dress in which public gratitude should be arrayed. But at last the shorthand expert was gifted with an inspiration. Triumphantly he bore his commodity to the premier.

“Sir, couldn’t we have precedence in queues?”

“Precedence, Wilkins?”

“Yes, Sir, we have such a lot to do, that really we have not time to waste half the morning in queues. Couldn’t we have a pass or something so that we could go straight in?”

“Oh, yes, admirable, Wilkins, admirable. A Priority Pass, the very thing.”

And so the abuse of privilege began.

The camp, not realising what it would lead to, received this news with equanimity.

“Quite right too,” was the general opinion. “These fellows do a lot of work. They have not got too much spare time.”

Within a day or two the opinion changed. For holders of passes always used them at the same time, that is, when it was most inconvenient to the rest of the queue. For the chief joy of a privilege lies in the flaunting of it before the eyes of the less fortunate. There were low murmurs of resentment.

Two afternoons later I met Stone in the last stage of exasperation. After a stream of abuse, the “sad accidents of his tragedy” became clear.

It was a wet, windy afternoon, and Stone had been waiting in the “cheque” queue for over an hour. He was heartily sick of it, but had been particularly anxious to draw his money before roll-call, having booked the billiard-table for immediately afterwards. And it had really looked as though he would be just in time. Five more minutes, and he was fourth in the queue; a minute a man. It should have worked out all right.

Slowly the queue had moved forwards. Too slowly for Stone. There had been a delay of almost two minutes, because some ass had not been able to remember the amount of his cheque. Numerous sheets had to be turned over. It was “a bit thick.”

But at last the three men in front of him had been disposed of. With a minute to spare, he had just been about to walk into the office, when a voice had bawled, “Half a minute,” and a diminutive captain had rushed up panting.

“Just in time.”

“Afraid you won’t get in before roll-call,” Stone had said, sunning himself in his serenity.

“Oh, that’s all right. I’ve got a Priority Pass.”

“A what?”

“A Priority Pass.”

“But what for?”

“Botany. Ah, there’s that fellow coming out. My turn, cheerioh.”

And thirty seconds later the bell had gone for roll-call.

“It’s the limit,” said Stone, “the absolute limit, and do you know what that absurd botany ass does, two hours a week, that’s all. Damn it all, and then he can just saunter into a queue whenever he likes. I’ve a jolly good mind to get a Priority Pass myself, it’s quite easy, all you’ve got to do is to invent a language that no one else is likely to know. Finnish, say, and old Westcott would be only too bucked to have another branch to his ‘Up dogs and at ’em’ League.”

To invent a language.

The idea ran through my mind, a glimmering thread of thought. What was it George Moore had said? A new tongue was needed. The day of the English language was over. It had passed through so many hands, been filtered in so many places, that it was now colourless and without significance. But this new tongue, this child that was waiting to be cradled; it was a lyre from which any rhythm might be struck; it was virgin soil that would bear epic upon epic, masterpiece on masterpiece; and it would be so simple, so childishly simple. All that was needed was the purchase of an Otto-Sauer conversation grammar which we could translate into Finnish. No one would be any the wiser. Colonel Westcott could be taken in quite easily.

I began to picture the scene.

Stone and I would go to him one evening, when there had been potatoes for supper. We should find him well filled and satisfied, puffing contentedly at a cigar, and musing sentimentally over an ideal world peopled with the Anglo-Saxon race, bred on collectivism and eugenics.

He would greet us with a kindly patronising smile.

“Well, Stone. Yes, and let me see, who is it, Waugh. Well?”

“Well, Sir, the fact is that Stone and myself have been thinking a good deal lately about our duties as citizens. We were wondering whether we were really doing all we could. It’s such a splendid opportunity here, Sir. We could lay the foundations of so much.”

“Certainly, Waugh, certainly, an admirable thought.”

“And, Sir, we were wondering whether you had ever considered the possibilities of Finland, Sir.”

“Finland, Waugh.”

“Yes, Sir. I believe it’s the coming centre of the herring trade, and I’m sure if some of these fellows here realised it, they would be only too keen to try their luck there, and it would be a great thing for the Empire, Sir, if we could collar the herring trade.”

And Colonel Westcott, whose ideals of citizenship were more surely laid than his knowledge of commerce, would not be able to withhold a grunt of assent.

“But, Sir,” I should go on, “the fact is that in order to trade with the Finns one must be able to speak their language, and you see, Sir, it’s the only language they’ve got, and they’re very sensitive about it.”

“Of course, of course, very natural, very natural indeed.”

“And, Sir, Stone and I, well, I’ve lived there a good deal, and so has Stone, and we thought, Sir, it might be a good thing to start a Finnish class.”

“Admirable, Waugh, of course, if you think you can do it.”

“Oh, yes, I think we could, Sir,” I should explain. “As I said to Stone, ‘we owe a duty to the State as well as to ourselves, and it would be very selfish if we went to Finland alone.’ It’s our duty as citizens, Sir, to think, not in terms of the individual, but of the community.”

Almost an echo of the Colonel’s own sentiments as expressed in his most recent jeremiad. How benignly he would beam on us, how he would recognise in us the objectification of his ideal.

“I’m very glad, very gratified indeed that you should feel like that,” he would have said. “It’s the right spirit, the sooner you start the class the better.”

We should have risen to go, but at the door we should have turned back.

“I’m sorry to trouble you again, Sir,” I should say, “but there is just one little point. It’ll mean a great deal of work for Stone and myself. We shall have no grammar or anything.”

“Of course, Waugh, I can quite see that.”

“And there’s very little spare time with these queues and things.”

“Oh, but I think we shall be able to manage that,” Colonel Westcott would say. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t both be given Priority Passes. It’s a very unselfish work, I’ll see about it. I think it’ll be all right.”

And within two days our names would appear on the already lengthening list of privileged persons.

And then what would happen? The Finnish class would follow the course of all our studies in the Offiziergefangenenlager, Mainz. Upwards of thirty would attend the initial lecture. Within a week this number would have sunken within the teens, from which it would gradually recede to the comfortable proportions of five or six. For these few enthusiasts we should cater, and for their righteousness, as aforetime for Gomorrah’s, would be issued the divine dispensation—a yellow ticket.

And what a language it would be. With what fancy would the common articulation of the everyday world be passed into an æsthetic mould. How arbitrary would be the rules of taste, what a harmonious blending of sibilants and liquids. How George Moore would glory in our creation.

And then I supposed we should begin to tire of our toy; the novelty would wear off; the lyric impulse would be lost. It would degenerate into hackwork. And then we should try to get rid of it; with a sort of false sentimentality we should muse over the pleasant hours we had spent with it, and wonder if the affection had been returned, almost as the hero of a French novel sighs over a discarded mistress.

Then, of course, there would be Colonel Westcott. We should not wish to disillusion him, to show ourselves as we really were. We should wish to maintain the deception to its end. His opinion of us would be very high.

We should present ourselves to him apologetically, as men for whom the burden of reforming mankind had grown too heavy. We should give the Colonel the impression that he and we were pioneers in advance of our age, stationed at the outposts of progress; that where we stood to-day, the world would stand to-morrow. But in the meantime....

“You see, Sir,” I should say, “there are only four fellows learning Finnish, and none of them, if I may say so, seem to me the sort of fellows we really want. They’re more of the class of chap who learns a language merely to be able to say he knows it, and really, Sir, I don’t know if it’s worth our while to spend so much time on them. You were talking the other day about conservation of energy, Sir.”

The Colonel would bend confidingly. So far this catchword had not suggested itself to him. But it was surely only a matter of time.

“And,” I should continue, “we thought we’d be really doing better if we were to learn a language ourselves. Stone thought the same, Sir, but he said, ‘We must ask Colonel Westcott first.’”

“Ah, quite right, quite right, it’s no use wasting our forces. If fellows won’t back you up, well, it’s their fault, not yours. You’ve done your best.”

And doubtless in that moment the Colonel’s thoughts would be flying forward tentatively to the grey days of demobilisation, to the sundering of the one river into its many streams. And he could see himself standing there at the parting of the ways, his averted eyes turned back to the pleasant pastures, to the unity and harmony of war. He could see himself as the last relic of a more golden era, of a cleaner if not more clever world.

“And you really think, Sir, that we have done our best?”

“No doubt about that, oh, none at all,” he would sigh. “I only wish we had a few more like you in the camp. It’s the right spirit.”

And we should acknowledge the panegyric with a smile, and leave him to his dreams and aspirations, his Pan-Saxon Utopia.

But it could not be done. In actuality the scheme would lose its glamour, its wayward charm. It was better to let it remain in the imagination, the fresh counterpart of some less noble phenomenon. Aimez ce que jamais on ne verra pas deux fois.

CHAPTER VI

THE GERMAN ATTITUDE

Of course this opinion is subject to numberless qualifications. Even from the highest window of the citadel only a limited view can be obtained of a country that has been the subject of so much calumny and conjecture. Our impressions were confined to one province and one town in that province; they cannot be said to represent the mentality of Germany as a whole; and of the five hundred officers confined within the barracks, each individual has brought home with him a different idea of Germany and the Germans.

And again, it may be that personally I have been rather fortunate in my experiences. Baden-Hessen is one of the least Prussianised Provinces in Germany, and officer prisoners of war are treated a great deal better than the men. But I do believe that the conversations I had with various Germans, both soldiers and civilians, give a fairly accurate index to the attitude of a large number of the enemy.

What came as the greatest surprise to me personally was the absence, to a considerable extent, of all vindictiveness and hate. Evidence goes to prove that there was in the early months of the war a good deal of collective hate; and as a relic of this there were in the shops picture postcards of sinking battleships headed “Gott strafe England,” and the cartoons in the illustrated papers such as Simplicissimus and the Lustige Blätter were all to the tune of “my baton drips with blood.” But the Frankfurter Zeitung, which is the representative paper of that part of the country, was absolutely free from articles headed “The English Beast” or “The Devilish Briton.” It afforded an ideal example of journalistic continence.

And it was the same with their poetry and literature. There was much verse inspired by the same violence as “The Hymn of Hate.” There were numberless sonnets starting off, “England, du perfides land,” and it is only this sort of stuff that we have been allowed to read in England. This is the standard by which the Germans have been judged, and it presents them in a very false light. For after all, if the “hate” verse that is scattered throughout the English Press were to be taken as representative of the ideals and the aspirations of the race, we should show up none too well. For with the majority, no sooner does a man try to put his thoughts into words, than he loses his bearings. He does not write what he feels, but what he thinks he should feel. All that is genuine in him is inarticulate, and the obvious rises to the surface. And it has followed that in the last four years there has been an incredible quantity of bad verse written and very little good. But that little good is the key to the English temperament. The secret longings of the individual have been revealed not in the type of poem that goes—