Alone | Page 5

was only one more afternoon wasted--one out of
how many!
This time I saw Mr. W----. Though I had never met him in the flesh, I
once enjoyed the privilege of perusing a manuscript from his pen--a
story about a girl in Kew Gardens. A nice-looking young Hebrew was
Mr. W----. He had made himself indispensable, somehow or other, to
the Minister, and would doubtless by this time have been pitchforked
into some permanent and prominent job, but for that unfortunate name
of his, with its strong Teutonic flavour.
This, by the way, was about the eighth official of his tribe, and of his
age, I had come across in the course of my recent peregrinations. How
did they get there? Tell me, who can. Far be it from me to disparage the
race of Israel. I have gained the conviction--firm-fixed, now, as the
Polar Star--that the Hebrew is as good a man as the Christian. Yet one
would like to know their method, their technique, in this instance. How
was the thing done? How did they manage it, these young Jews, all
healthy-looking and of military age--how did they contrive to keep out
of the Army? Was there some secret society which protected them? Or
were they all so preposterously clever that the Old Country would
straightway evaporate into thin air unless they sat in some comfortable
office, while our own youngsters were being blown to pieces out
yonder?
Mr. W----, I regret to say, was not a good Oriental. He lacked the

Semite's pliability. He was graceful, but not gracious. A consequence,
doubtless, of having inhaled for some time past the rarefied atmosphere
of the Chief, and swallowed a few pokers during the process, his
manner towards me was freezingly non-committal--worthy of the best
Anglo-Saxon traditions.
Had I come a little earlier, he avowed, he might perhaps have been able
to squeeze me into one of his departments--thus spake this infant: "One
of my departments." As it was, he feared there was nothing doing;
nothing whatsoever; not just then. Tried the War Office?
I had.
I even visited, though only twice, an offshoot of that establishment in
Victoria Street near the Army and Navy Stores, where candidates for
the position of translator--quasi-confidential work and passable pay,
five pounds a week--were interviewed. On the second occasion, after
waiting in an ante-room full of bearded and be-spectacled monsters
such as haunt the British Museum Library, I was summoned before a
board of reverend elders, who put me through a catechism, drowsy but
prolonged, as to my qualifications and antecedents. It was a systematic
affair. Could I decipher German manuscripts? Let them show me their
toughest one, I said. No! It was merely a pro forma question; they had
enough German translators on the staff. So the interrogation went on.
They were going to make sure of their man, in whom, I must say, they
took little interest save when they learnt that he had passed a Civil
Service examination in Russian and another in International Law. At
that moment--though I may be mistaken--they seemed to prick up their
ears. Not long afterwards I was allowed to depart, with the assurance
that I might hear further.
Their inquiries into my attainments and references must have given
satisfaction, for in the fulness of time a missive arrived to the effect that,
assuming me to be a competent Turkish scholar, they would be glad to
see me again with a view to a certain vacancy.
Turkish--a language I had not mentioned to them, a language of which I
never possessed more than fifty words, every one of them forgotten
long years ago.
"How very War Office," I thought.
These good people were mixing up Turkish and Russian--a natural
error, when one comes to think of it, for, thought the respective tongues

might not be absolutely identical, yet the countries themselves were
sufficiently close together to account for a little slip like this.
Was it a slip? Who knows? It is so easy to criticise when one is not
fully informed about things. They may have suggested my acting as
Turkish translator for reasons of their own--reasons which I cannot
fathom, but which need not therefore be bad ones. Chagrined
office-hunters like myself are prone to be bitter. In an emergency of
this magnitude a citizen should hesitate before he finds fault with the
wisdom of those whom the nation has chosen to steer it through
troubled waters. No carping! You only hamper the Government. The
general public should learn to keep a civil tongue in its head. Theirs but
to do and die.
None the less, it was about this time that I began to experience certain
moments of despondency, and occasionally let a whole day slip by
without endeavouring to be of use to