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.
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