THE WATCH DOGS.
LVIII.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—Recent events calling for strong comment, I turned to my friend, my brick-red friend who is able to retain his well-fed prosperous look notwithstanding the rigours of trench life, Rrobert James McGrregor. I took a map with me and, calling his attention to the general position, asked him what about it? McGregor, as you may guess, is a Scot, whose national sense of economy seems to have spread to his uniform, in that the cap he wears covers but a third-part of his head, and his tunic (which I ought really not to call a tunic but a service jacket) appears to have exhausted itself and its material at the fourth button. Notwithstanding all this, I attach great weight to his truculent views, and, the better to incite him into something outright, addressed him in My best Scottish, which is, at any rate, as good as his best English. "Rrrrrobert," I said, "what like is the VON HINDENBURG line?" Whereupon McGregor, helping himself to our mess whisky and cursing it as the vilest production of this vile War, spoke out.
McGregor has no respect whatever for HINDENBURG or anything which is his. He says that HINDENBURG and his crew have all along taken the line which any man could, but no gentleman would. In HINDENBURG he sees the personification of Prussian militarism, and for the Prussians and their militarism he has no use whatsoever. I forget what exactly is the Highland phrase for "no use whatsoever," but its meaning is even worse than its sound, and the sound of it alone is terrible to hear. Whatever befalls in the interval, it is certain that when at last McGregor and HINDENBURG meet they will not get on well together.
McGregor hates militarism. It is entirely inconsistent with his wild ideas of liberty. As such he is determined to do it down on all occasions and by every means. Not only is he a Scot, he is also a barrister of the most pronounced type. Brief him in your cause, and provided it is not a mean one he will set out to lay flat the whole earth, if need be, in its defence. He will overwhelm opposing counsel with the mere ferocity of his mien; he will overbear the Judge himself with the mere power of his lungs, and he will carry you through to a verdict with the mere momentum of his loyal support. Once he has made a cause his own, no other cause can survive the terror of his bushy eyebrows and his flaring face. He is a caged lion, but he does not grow thin or wasted in captivity. As ever, he grows stout and strong on his own enthusiasms. The cage will not hold much longer. Heaven be praised, it's HINDENBURG and not me he's taken a dislike to.
He loathes militarism. Having waited nearly thirty years for a fight, it's himself is overjoyed that he has Prussian militarism for the victim of his murderous designs. To this end he has become a soldier, such a bloodthirsty soldier as never was before and never will be again. The thoroughness of it, for an anti-militarist, is almost appalling. The click of his heels and the shine of his buttons frighten me. His salute is such that even the most deserving General must pause and ask himself if it is humanly possible to merit such respect as it indicates. No man, even upon the most legitimate instance, may venture, in the presence of the dangerous McGregor, the slightest criticism of the British Army or of anything remotely appertaining thereto. He will not even permit a sly dig, in a quiet corner, at the Staff.
Nevertheless McGregor hates, loathes and detests militarism. His convictions are quite clear and convincing. Soldiers are one thing; militarists are another. Rrobert James McGrregor, for the moment at least, is by the grace of God and the generosity of His Majesty a soldier. That creature HINDENBURG is a militarist. Quite so, I agreed; but then what about the line? He helped himself to some more whisky, showing that he could forgive anybody anything except a Prussian his militarism, and said he was coming to that. But first as to HINDENBURG.
The man represents his type and is, says McGregor, a mere bully. He has become a bully because he could succeed as nothing else. Given peace, it is doubtful if he could get and keep the job of errand-boy in a second-rate butcher's shop. Lacking the intelligence or spirit to succeed normally, he has not the decency to live quietly in the cheaper suburbs of Berlin and let other people do it. Flourish they must, HINDENBURG and his lot, and so the world is at war to keep their end up.
Now, says McGregor, it is undoubtedly sinful to fight, but he can't help half forgiving those whose desire to have a round is such that they must needs cause the bothers. But do I suppose that HINDENBURG ever wanted to fight, ever meant or ever means to do it? Not he; and that is why the War goes on and on and on. We've got to work through all the other Germans, says he, before we'll get to their militarists, who are all alive and doing nicely, thank you, behind. When we are getting near the throat of the first of them then the War will end.
McGregor cannot bring himself to detest all the Bosches. After all, he says, they do stick it out, and their very stupidity makes some call on his generosity. But HINDENBURG, he is convinced, never stuck anything out, except snubs from his competitor, WILHELM, in the course of his uprising career; he makes no call on anybody's generosity, taking everything he wants, including (says McGregor) the best cigars. Without ever having studied them closely, McGregor has the most precise ideas of HINDENBURG'S daily life and habits. He is quite sure he smokes all day the most expensive cigars, without paying for them or removing the bands. He rose, says McGregor, by artifice combined with ostentation. While his good soldiers were studying their musketry, he was practising ferocious expressions before his glass. If he ever did get mixed up in a real battle (which McGregor doubts) he was undoubtedly last in and first out. However it may appear in print, his military career would not bear close scrutiny; for that reason McGregor does not propose to scrutinise it. And as for his indomitable will, he sees nothing to admire in the man's persistence, since, when he stops persisting, he'll become ungummed and, at the best, forgotten.
So said McGregor, and when I besought him to come to the point, he said he'd dealt with it, and if I had any sympathy left for HINDENBURG or his line I was no better than a slave-driving, sit-at-home-and-push-others-over-the-parapet Prussian militarist myself. As for the map, it didn't matter in the least where HINDENBURG took his old line to, since wherever in Europe it endeavoured to conceal itself his own little line would scent it out and follow it. And if the HINDENBURG line was more than two hundred miles long and the Rrobert James McGrregor line less than two hundred yards, still it didn't matter; for when a Scot takes a dislike to somebody, that somebody's number is up.
McGregor didn't say that last, but he looked it.
Yours ever,
HENRY.
McTavish (purchasing paper of posterless newsboy). "AWEEL, IT'S A 'PIG IN A POKE,' BUT AH'LL RISK IT."