“Oh, yes, I think we could, Sir,” I should explain. “As I said to Stone, ‘we owe a duty to the State as well as to ourselves, and it would be very selfish if we went to Finland alone.’ It’s our duty as citizens, Sir, to think, not in terms of the individual, but of the community.”
Almost an echo of the Colonel’s own sentiments as expressed in his most recent jeremiad. How benignly he would beam on us, how he would recognise in us the objectification of his ideal.
“I’m very glad, very gratified indeed that you should feel like that,” he would have said. “It’s the right spirit, the sooner you start the class the better.”
We should have risen to go, but at the door we should have turned back.
“I’m sorry to trouble you again, Sir,” I should say, “but there is just one little point. It’ll mean a great deal of work for Stone and myself. We shall have no grammar or anything.”
“Of course, Waugh, I can quite see that.”
“And there’s very little spare time with these queues and things.”
“Oh, but I think we shall be able to manage that,” Colonel Westcott would say. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t both be given Priority Passes. It’s a very unselfish work, I’ll see about it. I think it’ll be all right.”
And within two days our names would appear on the already lengthening list of privileged persons.
And then what would happen? The Finnish class would follow the course of all our studies in the Offiziergefangenenlager, Mainz. Upwards of thirty would attend the initial lecture. Within a week this number would have sunken within the teens, from which it would gradually recede to the comfortable proportions of five or six. For these few enthusiasts we should cater, and for their righteousness, as aforetime for Gomorrah’s, would be issued the divine dispensation—a yellow ticket.