§ 1
In only one province did Colonel Westcott, our genial factotum, place a voluntary check upon his own activities. His sphere, he decided, was confined within the elastic boundaries of education, moral conduct and Pan-Saxon philosophy. And he accepted these limitations with the quiet resignation of one who owns three-quarters of the globe, and deems the remainder to be a land of frost and snow. In other hands he laid the responsibilities of the sports and entertainments committees. And for this reason, perhaps, they were the two most productive bodies.
For the average Gefangener, however, games were hard to get. Germany is not athletic in the sense that we are. Militarism has made muscular development the supreme good of all outdoor exercises, and in consequence the authorities thought they had sufficiently catered for our physical propensities by the erection of a horizontal bar, and the largess of some iron weights. Well, that is hardly our idea of sport; and as a nation I do not think we shall ever show much enthusiasm for Swedish drill, P.T., trapezes, and the various devices of a gymnasium, that leave so little room for individuality. The allegiance to a green field and a leather ball, small or big as the season demands, will not be shaken. And at Mainz there were neither green fields nor leather balls.
The gravel square was the only open space we had, and it was uncommonly hard to fall on. There was one football in the camp, belonging to an orderly, that was from time to time the centre of an exhilarating display. But it was a dangerous pastime; every game resulted in at least three injuries, and a scraped elbow was no joke in a country
devoid of medicine. Only the very daring played, and soon most of them were “crocked.”
For a month hockey enjoyed an ephemeral popularity, and a league was arranged, in which nearly every room entered a side. While they lasted those games were great fun, and they were capital exercise. But before very long all the sticks had been smashed, and all efforts to replace them were unavailing, and though a few individuals who had had sticks sent out from England were able to get an occasional game, for the great mass of us hockey ceased almost as soon as it had begun.
The only other game was tennis. As there is no rubber in Germany, this had to be delayed till the late summer, by which time balls and racquets had arrived from England. But what is one court among six hundred? Only a very limited section of the camp could play, and those whose abilities were slight did not feel themselves justified in engaging the court to the exclusion of their more able brethren. And the whole business really amounted to this: that although a newcomer to the camp would see the square at nearly all moments of the day occupied by some game or other, for the average Gefangener the athletic world did not exist. His sole form of exercise was the grey constitutional round the square; and just before the closing of the gates at night, it was as if a living tube was being moved round within the wire. Five hundred odd officers were walking in couples round a square, with a circumference of four hundred yards; words cannot give an impression which can only be caught in terms of paint. For the populace billiards was the one athletic outlet.