THE SCANDAL.
ON THE RHINE.
II.
There is an expression here which I expect will shortly become as familiar as "Na poo," and that is, "Hoot up!" When I first beard our mild and gently-mannered Carfax employ it as a vigorous word of command to a civilian in this small German village, I thought he had gone a little mad. For no good military purpose, it seemed to me, could possibly be served by demanding an imitation of an owl at eleven o'clock on a wintry morning. It argued a perverted sense of humour at least; and in truth I had been expecting a slight lapse from the paths of sanity on the part of our Mr. Carfax for some time. For, you see, he is a pivotal man who cannot get away until others arrive to replace the pivots, and it is difficult to persuade him that all is for the best. But he informed me that "Hoot up" had nothing whatever to do with, the night-cries of owls or any other kind of bird, but was in fact the idiotic way in which the natives of this country pronounce "Hut ab" (Hat off).
Now you realise what horrid Huns we are. Civilians are obliged to take off their hats to British officers—a very grim business. In reality, except that we are the hated English, it makes very little difference to the Bosch, for the innkeeper here says that orders concerning the taking off of hats to all and sundry became so stringent in 1918 that the local postman was constantly interrupted in his duties to answer the salutes of people who wished to be on the safe side.
Bosches who have really fought for their country do not object to "Hoot-upping." They of course are the first to realise that inhabitants of occupied countries were forced by them to "hoot up," and that therefore there is a certain justice now in the retaliation. Anyway, from these people the procedure does not greatly interest us; but the overdressed Bosch profiteer, fat and muttony—to hoot him up in his own village! Really, you know, in some ways the War has been worth while.