We discussed Intelligence Work a branch of War Service as to which I am apt to be prejudiced. To my indefensible delight. Hunter excelled himself at giving my own views voice over the pudding. Never did I hear an indictment more sweeping. He spoke of the reading of people's letters, the bluffing of unhappy natives. He hinted darkly at dark methods of persuasion. He hammered in the debasing futility of the whole spy system, our own and the other side's. He ended with schoolboy personalities about people he had met, some of our host's own agents. His remarks about them were unworthy of the eloquence that had gone before. Our host took it all in very kindly part. He was a man of deeds rather than of words.
'I never thought I'd come so low as I did to-day,' he admitted. 'You heard of the German who got away with his wife and kids in canoes. I was turning over one of the kids' money-boxes. Just five rupees or so in it. But I'll try to get it back to the youngster. I never thought to come quite so low.'
I tackled him about a horrid practice he had admitted having recourse to. 'Torture, or torture-witchcraft possibly! It seems a hopeful way of eliciting true intelligence, not to speak of playing the game in any sort of British sense.' He hung his head penitently. He pleaded that this expedient had saved an execution only the other day. There had been none after all. Had there been, as had looked likely at one time, an innocent man would have died.
'Oh, why not be without reproach as well as without fear?' I pleaded.
'How am I to get truth from them? It's a usage of their own.' He was pleading back.
'Not that way.' I was inflexible in my scorn and horror, for I knew that I was right.
By this time we had about finished dinner. Soon we were outside
Hunter in a deck-chair, I on a box, my host on a looted camp-stool.
We smoked on under the stars.
We spoke of looting. The naval man scintillated about the conduct of the army at a raid on a neighboring town. I was with him most of the way.
'So they cleared away with their swags for fear of enemy reinforcements. And they had a report printed that the natives had looted the place. That put the lid on it,' he said. But then came purgatory for me. The Native Question cropped up. Our host was away just then, conferring about chits that his spies had brought in. Hunter fairly coruscated with cynicism, when it came to the Native Question. He had expressed very different views upon it the last time that I had met him (the day before at lunchtime). Now he expressed himself cured of any sneaking wish to treat natives with kindness rather than kiboko. His boy, to whom he had granted leave of absence, had not come back to his day, and the whole fabric of Native sympathies, so far as he was concerned, had crashed to the ground. Henceforth he would know how to treat natives, the way to have no trouble with them. Any other way was not worth while. I objected, but my objections were as little rocks over which his periods broke in foam.
They enhanced the effect. Our host came back and laughed a little, till he saw how little I was enjoying it. Then he rotted the orator on his lordly oblivion of one fact. Were there not limits to his experience of Africa? He himself avowed his sympathies with the African. If he had a hobby, it was natives. He wanted to win their trust for a great many reasons. It was worth while having it. He told a certain story and the talk diverged. It was quite sympathetic talk, from my point of view thenceforward, up till bed-time. We slept in that big room within, all three of us. I had brought next to no kit, and I had noted with some awe my naval friend's scorn of the ill-provided in the course of the evening. He had described how a Belgian he had shared a room with, lacked certain accessories of civilization. So I was in the mood now to feel my own deficiency. But the censor was not so very observant, and he seemed sleepy. Soon he was sleeping.