The Prisoners of Mainz

by Alec Waugh

And then we led in Stone.

He sat on the edge of the table nearest to the captain; his huge head of hair was flung back in a wild profusion, his shirt was open at the throat, he looked for all the world like a second Byron. And for the space of an hour he lectured on the higher life. As a testimony to the potency of the Rhine vintage, it was without parallel. It was a noble exposition.

He began with Schopenhauer; the jargon of metaphysics reeled into anacolutha: the absolute, the negation of the will; the thing in itself; phenomena, and the real. The mind was dazed with the conflicting theories of causation, and after each sounding peroration he recited in a crooning monotone the less cheerful musings of the Shropshire Lad; while we, entering into his mood, gazed up at him with enraptured eyes, murmuring: “Delightful! Oh, delightful!”

Captain Frobisher fidgeted nervously on his form, he moved first to one extremity, then to another. Periodically he attempted a conversation with his companion; but every time he began, Stone broke into a state of fervour more than usually impassioned, and Frobisher’s attention was irresistibly drawn towards this strange creature who had emerged suddenly out of a world he did not know. Stone realised his traditional conception of the romantic poet, the long-haired, sprawling, effervescent creature that he had never seen, but that he had been told the war had killed. And here into the very centre of Mainz, into this home of militarism, was introduced the loathsome atmosphere of Paris and the Café Royal, this unpleasant reincarnation of the hectic nineties.

For an hour he stood it, and then Stone arrived at the point to which all his previous eloquence had led. “I don’t know,” he said, “I have thought it out for a long time, but I am still uncertain as to which of all the collective emotions has done most harm, has wrought most damage to the suffering individual. Once I thought it was religion, religion with its bigotry and ritual, its confessional and chains; but during the last four years I have been sorely tempted—sorely tempted, my dear Waugh—to believe that of all the evils that can befall a community, there is none worse than the scourge of Patriotism.”

It was the limit, beyond which even the endurance of a soldier could not pass. Captain Frobisher threw at Stone one glance charged with distrust, and strode from the room. He never entered it again; and the “authors, architects and other students” were able to return to earth, and become once more respectable citizens.

Of the architects and other students we saw very little. Occasionally a linguist would drift in with a conversation grammar and a notebook, and sometimes a financier would draw up tables of expenditure and loss, but on the whole the Alcove was the property of “Wordsmiths.”

There were about five of us in all, and as soon as appel was over we used to proceed towards the billiard-room laden with pens and paper. At this early hour there were usually not more than three of us, as Tarrant and Stone preferred to take breakfast at a later hour; but Milton Hayes was invariably to be found there, embellishing lyrics, or putting the final touches to his musical comedy, and in the intervals of production expounding his latest æsthetic theories.

A vivid contrast was presented by Tarrant and Stone. With popular taste they were both equally unconcerned. Relative merit interested them not at all; their standards were deep-laid and inelastic.

Tarrant usually appeared in the Alcove at about one o’clock, and observed a ritual that would with any one else have savoured of affectation, but was with him perfectly natural. Nature had endowed him with generous proportions, more built for comfort than for speed; and he accentuated the natural roll of his gait by his strange footwear. A pair of field boots had been abbreviated into shoes by the camp cobbler in such a way as to admit of the insertion of two fingers between the leather and the instep. To keep them on his feet as he walked, Tarrant had to resort to a straddle that was one of the features of camp life. And as he entered he bulked largely in the door of the Alcove, marvellously shod, carrying under one arm a dictionary, a notebook and a Thesaurus, and over the other a cardigan waistcoat and a green velvet scarf.