The scheme began by amalgamating The Future Career Society; and starting at the point where that society had wisely halted, proceeded to include every department of Imperial life. Committees would be formed; debates and lectures arranged. A research committee would be able to provide information on any subject; a trade and commerce department would provide a comprehensive study of the growth of trade and of Colonial expansion. It would work out every problem of navigation, and every fine question of markets, their rise and fall. A department for home affairs would provide recipes by which thirty million people could live without competition. Divorce, Politics, Education, State control of vice, small holdings, all these would be settled. And then the Dominions, each Colony would have its own department, where Colonials would decide on how best they could further the Imperial ideals. Then there was the regular soldier side, the Imperial Force branch. And here perhaps the Colonel’s fancy flew farthest and highest, military strategy would be dealt with from primeval time. Sand-maps on the floor would show the site of battle-fields and the dispositions of the rival armies; tactics would be exhaustively discussed. A new and infallible method of attack would be evolved for the next war.
And all these activities would be accomplished, in spite of the fact that no one in the camp possessed the least information on any of these points; and that as a remedy for their defect there existed neither a reference library nor the likelihood of obtaining one. But by this Colonel Westcott was nothing daunted. Perhaps at the back of his mind there was the unconscious knowledge that the end is nothing, the means all, “and that to move is somewhat although the goal be far.”
“And when we go back to England,” he concluded, “you will be able to effect the reforms you have thought out here. You will go back with a collective and not an individual patriotism. You will be capable of really efficient citizenship. We shall still be able to move forward as one body. That is the Pitt League, gentlemen.”
And then followed the sentence for which he deserves immortality.
“It’s my scheme and I like it. I know you’ll like it too.”
He had out-tartarined Tartarin. Caricature in one human frame could go no further.
§ 2
The Pitt League fared as might have been expected. It was born and christened amid much enthusiasm. The whole camp found itself enrolled under some branch or other, elaborate programmes were devised. The walls of the theatre were covered with notices. Every Wednesday the heads of each branch met in what was called the Parliament of the Pitt League, of which Colonel Westcott was Prime Minister. This gave the required semblance of unity and collective patriotism. A few field officers and senior captains found that a certain amount of work had devolved upon their shoulders, but the life of the average subaltern continued undisturbed. In practice no one is a collectivist, unless it is likely to prove to his advantage. No one wants to be a cog in any machine that does not produce tangible results; and though the camp gave the Pitt League its sympathy and encouragement, it did not see its way to further any interests not its own. The Colonel, however, was quite content with his work. He was Prime Minister of his own Parliament, and everywhere his eyes were confronted with tabulated evidence of his enterprise.
“A very different camp,” he would say to himself. “There is now a purpose and an end ... a thorough change of attitude, and,” he would proudly add, “it is all my doing.”
From this energy, however, there did spring two incidental results: one touched me personally, the other only in as far as I was a member of the general community. The former was that I discovered my name on the syllabus of the Home Affairs branch as a future lecturer on Social Reform, a privilege which was deferred weekly with considerable ingenuity until the signing of the Armistice absolved me from my promise; the other was the inauguration of the Priority Pass.