And so within a month the educational life of the camp had assumed modest limits; but, as those who remained were genuinely keen, the classes became infinitely more efficacious. Conversational French, for instance, was possible as it would never have been in a gathering of thirty. For the enthusiasts the decreased numbers were in every way advantageous, but it gave no pleasure to Colonel Westcott.
Colonel Westcott was one of those delightful persons whom captivity had turned into a burlesque. He was as extravagant as a character out of Dickens, and it was hard to believe in his reality. He was so exactly the type of army officer that is caricatured on the music-hall stage. He had all the foibles and loyalties of his caste. He believed fearlessly in discipline, in the Anglo-Saxon race, in an Utopia made not with hands but with muskets.
In the time when his enthusiasms had been kept in control by the business of war, he had been an excellent soldier; but once captured, he had no outlet for his temperament. Looking down on the court from the window of his room, he was horrified at the thought of so many subalterns passing out of his hands, out of the hands of discipline back into the individual energies of civilian life. And Colonel Westcott hated individualism: he liked to see humanity moving forward in one compact body, with himself at its head. He loathed, and was frightened by, the small bodies that went their own way and in their own time. During the four years of war nothing had given him more pleasure than to watch the slow conscription of England. In it he saw unity and safety. He was with the majority and was therefore safe.
But now all those good things were ending. He saw the splitting up of all this common impulse into countless cliques, with interests not his own; and he felt that he must make one effort before the close. For Colonel Westcott was a brave man. He would sell everything for the comfort and assuagement of his soul. And so he founded the Pitt League.
As an essay in the floating of a bogus company, it was a notable achievement. Never was such a web of words woven round such a dummy. Not that the Colonel spake one word that he did not believe. He was impeccably honest. He really valued the goods that he extolled.
One evening in the theatre he laid his wares before us. With an unconscious skill, he began by an appeal to the vanity and the emotions of his hearers.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have been told by one of the padres that in the lesson for March 21st, the day on which most of us were captured, occurs the text, ‘Be thou a ruler even in the midst among thine enemies.’ That, gentlemen, is what I want to say to you to-night. Be rulers, I will tell you how.”
The prospect of gaining the mastery over the generous supply of armed sentries was alluring. There was an instant and unanimous attention.
“We can only do it in one way, gentlemen, and that is by combination. We must all work together, we must work not towards individual prosperity, but towards the prosperity of the community. No longer can we fight our enemies in the field, but we can wage a silent war, we can prepare ourselves so that afterwards we may be triumphant. We must work collectively: we must unite: the life of this camp should be like one machine, in which you are all cogs. And so, gentlemen, I have brought forward my scheme. I have called it the Pitt League, because, well, gentlemen, because it rhymes with grit.”
And then followed an exposition worthy of the great Tartarin. But even the hero of Tarascon can hardly have brought to play in the account of his visionary Saharas such a fancy, such an overwhelming unreason, such a complete contempt for the bounds of probability. Slowly idea followed on idea, slowly the colossal fabric was raised. That Colonel Westcott was a caricature must always be kept in mind; but even so I think the excitement of the moment must have caught him up. Even he could not in cold blood have conceived such fabulous creations.