A SERBIAN OFFICER PRISONER OF WAR
One officer was Secretary for the English section; another was Assistant Secretary, while there were a number of Committeemen whose labours were not over-arduous. Two or three of us attended to the distribution of food to the needy; two or three to the doling out of clothing to the nude. Then there were the masters of music; pianists, violinists, and at least one ’cellist; the dramatic entertainers under the “O.C. Theatres”; and a group of choristers who in chapel every Sunday evening at evensong did lustily raise their voices in “Magnificat” and “Nunc Dimittis”; partly, it must be confessed, that the Lord might let His servants remain in peace!
A REHEARSAL.
A Debating Society was formed, whose primary object, when the secrets of men’s hearts are laid bare, will probably prove to have been the providing of permanencies for the President and the Secretary. At these meetings, by the way, we gravely discussed problems so original as the Reconstitution of the Lords; the Influence of the Press; Classical or Modern Education in Public Schools; and with equal gravity on a more irresponsible evening the profound question, “Should bald heads be buttered?” To the best of my recollection we arrived at the conclusion that they should at least be boiled.
A French Captain, who in civil life was a wine merchant, gave a lecture on the wines and vineyards of France, the designing of a series of drawings and maps illustrative of which permitted me to pass out of my captivity for a spell, and wander in the pleasant region of the Gironde.
These were our only feasible ways of escape at Carlsruhe. A bird might flutter past the window of my chamber with a sharp little flight of song. At once I was out and away with it, not necessarily to the magnificences and splendours, but perhaps to almost penurious patches and spaces on the outskirts of the dour old town of my nativity, where pavement and grass-plot touch, and where, amid the lamp-posts and the telegraph poles, there are familiar trees to be recognized and loved—where, indeed, one may lift to the lips and kiss the hem of Nature’s somewhat bedraggled skirt. And still—“You can’t get out!” said the starling.
One morning, lying alongside him in my cot, I remarked to a fellow-prisoner, “You look very happy.” To which, being well versed in the Scriptures, he immediately retorted, “I am happy in all things saving these bonds!”