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 The Cause - moments when, instead of asking
myself, "What have I done for my country?" I asked, "What has my country
done for me?" - moments when I envied the hotel night-porters,
taxi-drivers, and red-nosed old women selling flowers in Piccadilly
Circus who had something more sensible to do than to bother their heads
about trying to be patriotic, and getting snubbed for their pains. Yet,
with characteristic infatuation for hopeless ventures, I persevered.
Another "whack" at the F.O. leading to another holograph, two more
whacks at the Censorship, interpreter jobs, hospital jobs, God knows
what - I persevered, and might for the next three years have been kicking
my heels, like any other patriot, in the corridor of some dingy
Government office at the mercy of a pack of tuppenny counter-jumpers,
but for a God-sent little accident, the result of sheer boredom, which
counselled a trip to the sunny Mediterranean.
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