They were full up, said Mr. F - - .
Full up?
Full up.
Then, after some further conversation as to my capacities, he thought he
might find me employment as teacher of science in the country, to
replace somebody or other.
The notion was distasteful to me. I am not averse to learning from the
young; I only once tried to teach them - at a ragged school, long since
pulled down, near Ladbroke Grove, where I soon discovered that my little
pupils knew a great deal more than I did, more, indeed, than was good
for body or soul. Still, this was a tangible, definite offer of
unremunerative but at the same time semi-pseudo-patriotic work, not to
be sneezed at. An idea occurred to me.
"Supposing I stick it out and give satisfaction, shall I be able to
interchange later into this department? I am more fitted for office
duties. In fact, I have had a certain experience of them."
"No chance of that," he replied. "It is the German system. Their
schoolmasters are sometimes taken to do administrative work at
head-quarters, and vice versa. Our English rule is: Once a teacher,
always a teacher."
Here was a deadlock. For in such matters as teaching, a man may put a
strain on himself for a certain length of time; he may even be a
success, up to a point. But if he lacks the temperamental gift of
holding classes, the results in the long run will not be fair to the
children, to say nothing of himself. With reluctance I rose to depart,
Mr. F - - adding, by way of letting me down gently:
"Tried the War Office?"
I had.
If the War Office was too lively, this place was too slumberous by half.
A cobwebby, Rip-van-Winkle-ish atmosphere brooded about those passages
and chambers. One could not help thinking that a little "German system"
might work wonders here. And this is merely one of several similar sites
I explored, and endeavoured to exploit, for patriotic purposes; I am
here only jotting down a few of the more important of those that occur
to me.
And, oh! for the brush of a Hogarth to depict the gallery of faces with
which I came in contact as I went along. They were all different, yet
all alike; different in their degrees of beefiness, stolidity, and
self-sufficiency, but plainly of the same parentage - British to the
backbone; British of the wrong kind, with a sprinkling of Welshmen,
Irishmen, and Jews. Not a Scotsman discoverable in that whole mob of
complacent office-jacks. My countrymen were conspicuous by their
absence; they were otherwise engaged, in the field, the colonies, the
engine-room. I can only remember one single exception to this rule, this
type; it was the head of the Censorship Department.
For of course I offered my services there, climbing up that decent
red-carpeted stairway, and glad to find myself among respectable
surroundings after all the unseemly holes I had lately wallowed in. I
sent up a card which, to my surprise, caused me to be ushered forthwith
into the presence of the Chief, who may have heard of my existence from
some mutual friend. Here, at all events, was a man with a face worth
looking at, a man who had done notable things in his day. What a relief,
moreover, to be able to talk to a gentleman for a change! I wished I
could have had him to myself for five minutes; there were one or two
things one would have liked to learn from him. Unfortunately he was
surrounded, as such people are, by half a dozen of the characteristic
masks. For the rest, His ex-Excellency seemed to be ineffably bored with
his new functions.
"What on earth brings you here?" he began in a fascinatingly
absent-minded style, as if he had known me all my life, and with an
inimitable nasal drawl. "This is a rotten job, my dear sir. Rotten! I
cannot recommend it. Not your style at all, I should say."
"But, my dear Sir F - - , I am not applying for your job. Something
subordinate, I mean. Anything, anything."
"What? Down there, cutting up newspapers at twenty-two shillings a week?
No, no. Let's have your address, and we will communicate with you when
we find something worth your while. By the way, have you tried the War
Office?"
I had.
And it stands to reason that I tried the Munitions more than once.
It was my rare good fortune - luck pursued me on these patriotic
expeditions - to come face to face, at the Munitions, with the fons et
origo; the deputy fountain-head, that is to say; a very peculiar
private-secretary-in-chief for that department. He was a perpendicular,
iron-grey personality, if I remember rightly, who smelt of some
indifferent hair-wash and lost no time in giving you to understand that
he was preternaturally busy.
Did I know anything about machinery?
Nothing to speak of, I replied. As co-manager and proprietor of some
cotton mills employing several hundred hands for spinning and weaving, I
naturally learnt how to handle a fair number of machines - sufficiently
well, at all events, to start and stop them and tell the girls how to
avoid being scalped or having their arms torn out whenever I happened to
be passing that way. This life also gave me some experience, useful
perhaps at the Munitions, in dealing with factory-hands - -
That was not the kind of machinery he meant. Did I know anything about
banking?
Nothing at all.
"You are like everybody else," he replied with a weary sigh, as much as
to say: How am I going to run the British Empire with a collection of
imbeciles like this? "We have several thousands of applicants like
yourself," he went on. "But I will put your name down.
