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Chapter 5: Arrays

TRUE/FALSE

1. Each array element occupies an area in memory next to the others.

ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 144

2. All the variables in an array have the same name and data type.

ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 144

3. If you assume an array’s first subscript is 0, you will always be “off by one” in your array
manipulation.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 145

4. Subscript values can be negative integers in all languages.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 145

5. You cannot initialize array elements when you declare the array.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 145

6. In many languages, when you declare an array, a constant that represents the array size is
automatically created for you.

ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 154

7. The values stored in arrays should never be constants.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 154

8. When you create parallel arrays, each array must be of the same data type.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 158

9. The smaller the array, the more beneficial it becomes to exit the searching loop as soon as you find
what you’re looking for.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 162

10. As with a while loop, when you use a for loop, you must be careful to stay within array bounds.

ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 165

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. A(n) ____ is a contiguous series of variables in computer memory.

a. collection c. vector
b. matrix d. array
 ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 144

2. All the variables in an array are differentiated with special numbers called ____.
a. scripts c. elements
b. subscripts d. pointers
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 144

3. A(n) ____, also called an index, is a number that indicates the position of a particular item within an
array.
a. indicator c. subscript
b. element d. script
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 144

4. Each separate array variable is one ____ of the array.

a. element c. index
b. aspect d. member
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 144

5. The number of elements an array will hold is known as the ____ of the array.
a. bounds c. constraints
b. limits d. size
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 144

6. All array elements have the same ____ name.

a. group c. structure
b. target d. collection
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 144

7. Each individual element in an array has a unique ____ indicating how far away it is from the first
element.
a. indicator c. subscript
b. element d. script
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 144

8. Any array’s subscripts are always a ____ of integers.

a. group c. list
b. sequence d. range
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 144

9. Subscripts begin with a value of ____.

a. -1 c. 1
b. 0 d. the number of elements in the array
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 144

10. In most modern programming languages, the highest subscript you should use with an 8-element array
is ____ .
a. 6 c. 8
b. 7 d. 9
 ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 144-145

11. When declaring an array, depending on the syntax rules of the programming language you use, you
place the subscript within parentheses or ____ following the group name.
a. asterisks c. curly brackets
b. slashes d. square brackets
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 145

12. Most programming languages use a statement similar to the following to declare a three-element array
and assign values to it: ____
a. {20, 30, 40} = num someVals[3]
b. num someVals[3] = {someVals}
c. num someVals[] = 20, 30, 40
d. num someVals[3] = 20, 30, 40
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 145

13. What is TRUE about the following array?

num someVals[5] = 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
a. someVals[1] has the value of 1 c. There are 6 elements in this array.
b. someVals[1] has the value of 3 d. someVals[3] has the value of 3
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 145

14. The true benefit of an array lies in your ability to use a(n) ____ as a subscript to the array.
a. variable c. operator
b. table d. field
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 150

15. Learning to use arrays correctly can make many programming tasks far more ____ and professional.
a. confusing c. slick
b. efficient d. literal
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 154

16. When working with arrays, you can use ____ in two ways: to hold an array’s size and as the array
values.
a. structures c. constants
b. literals d. strings
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 154

17. Besides making your code easier to modify, using a ____ makes the code easier to understand.
a. constant c. named declaration
b. named constant d. named variable
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 154

18. When you search through a list from one end to the other, you are performing a ____ search.
a. linear c. quick
b. binary d. Google
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 157
19. A ____ is a variable that you set to indicate whether some event has occurred.
a. handler c. flag
b. rudder d. bug
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 157

20. Frequently, a flag holds a ____ value.

a. subscript c. string
b. true or false d. junk
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 157

21. In ____ arrays, each element in one array is associated with the element in the same relative position in
the other array.
a. parallel c. grouped
b. related d. combined
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 158

22. When you use parallel arrays, two or more arrays contain ____ data.
a. connected c. identical
b. equivalent d. related
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 159

23. When you use parallel arrays, a ____ relates the arrays.
a. link c. subscript
b. flag d. script
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 159

24. The relationship between an item’s number and its price is a(n) ____ relationship.
a. direct c. hidden
b. indirect d. clear
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 161

25. Leaving a loop as soon as a match is found improves the program’s ____.
a. indirect relationships c. simplicity
b. logic d. efficiency
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 162

26. A ____ search starts looking in the middle of a sorted list, and then determines whether it should
continue higher or lower.
a. linear c. graphic
b. quick d. binary
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 163

27. In Java, C++, and C#, the for loop looks like the following:
a. for(dep = 0; dep++; dep < SIZE)
b. for(dep > SIZE; dep = 0; dep++)
c. for(dep = 0; dep < SIZE; dep++)
d. for(dep = SIZE, dep > 0, dep++)
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 166
28. An element in an array is 3 bytes long and there are 10 elements in the array. How big is the array?
a. 30 bytes c. 3 bytes
b. 10 bytes d. Not enough information to determine
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 164

29. The ____ is a particularly convenient tool when working with arrays because you frequently need to
process every element of an array from beginning to end.
a. binary search c. for loop
b. range check d. parallel array
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 165

30. When you have a six element array and use subscript 6, your subscript is said to be out of ____.
a. bounds c. range
b. scope d. array
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 165

Case-Based Critical Thinking Questions

Case 1

You have just starting working at Quantum Company. As a new programmer, you have been asked to
review and correct various pseudocode.

31. The following pseudocode is not working correctly. How should the for loop be changed?
start
Declarations
num count = 0
num scores[6] = 0,0,0,0,0,0
num SIZE = 6
for count 0 to SIZE step
input entry
scores[count] = entry
endfor
stop

a. for count 0 to SIZE + 1 step 1

b. for count 0 to SIZE - 1 step 1
c. for count 0 to SIZE - 1 step
d. for count 0 to SIZE - 1 step -1
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 166 TOP: Critical Thinking

32. The following pseudocode is not working correctly. The code should total the array elements. What
code needs to be changed?
start
Declarations
num count = 0
num total = 0
num scores[6] = 2,4,6,8,10,12
while count < 6
total = total + scores
 count = count + 1
endwhile
stop

a. Change the while to:

while count < 7
b. move count = count + 1 after the endwhile
c. Change the total = to:
total = scores + scores[count]
d. Change the total = to:
total = total + scores[count]
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 153 TOP: Critical Thinking

33. You are working with parallel arrays to detemine the grade a student earns in a class. The student earns
a grade based on the following:

minimum points to earn an A is 900

minimum points to earn a B is 800
minimum points to earn a C is 700
minimum points to earn a D is 600
below 600 earns an F

The points array is defined as follows: num points[5] = 900,800,700,600,0

How should the grades array be defined?
a. num grades[5] = A,B,C,D,F
b. string grades[5] = “A”,”B”,”C”,”D”,”F”
c. num grades[5] = “A”,”B”,”C”,”D”,”F”
d. string grades[5] = “F”,”D”,”C”,”B”,”A”
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 158-162 TOP: Critical Thinking

34. The following pseudocode checks if an item number is valid:

start
Declarations
num sub = 0
num SIZE = 5
num VALID_ITEM [5] = 27,53,84,89,95
string foundIt = "N"
input item
while sub < SIZE
if item = VALID_ITEM[sub] then
foundIt = "Y"
endif
sub = sub +1
endwhile
if foundIt = "Y" then
output “Valid item number”
else
output “Invalid item number”
endif
stop

Which while loop makes this more efficient?

 a. while sub < SIZE AND foundIt = "N"
b. while sub < SIZE AND foundIt > "N"
c. while sub < SIZE AND foundIt = "Y"
d. The while loop is already efficient
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 163 TOP: Critical Thinking

35. The following pseudocode is not working correctly. What kind of error is this?
start
Declarations
num count = 0
num scores[6] = 0,0,0,0,0,0
num SIZE = 6
for count 0 to SIZE step 1
input entry
scores[count] = entry
endfor
stop
a. out of memory c. out of bounds
b. no match was found d. bounded
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 165 TOP: Critical Thinking

SHORT ANSWER

1. Write the pseudocode to define a five element array called “scores,” and then allow a user to enter 5
scores and store them in the array using a while loop.

ANS:
start
Declarations
num count = 0
num scores[5] = 0,0,0,0,0
while count < 5
input entry
scores[count] = entry
count = count + 1
endwhile
stop

PTS: 1 REF: 153 TOP: Critical Thinking

2. Write the pseudocode to define and initialize a four element array called “evens,” with even numbers
from 2 to 8, and then find the total of the values in the array using a while loop.

ANS:
start
Declarations
num count = 0
num total = 0
num scores[4] = 2,4,6,8
while count < 4
total = total + scores[count]
 count = count + 1
endwhile
stop

PTS: 1 REF: 153 TOP: Critical Thinking

3. Define and initialize an array that contains the names of the days of the week.

ANS:
string DAYS[7] = "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday",
"Saturday", "Sunday"

PTS: 1 REF: 154 TOP: Critical Thinking

4. Write the pseudocode to define a six element array called “scores,” and then allow a user to enter 6
scores and store them in the array using a for loop.

ANS:
start
Declarations
num count = 0
num scores[6] = 0,0,0,0,0,0
num SIZE = 6
for count 0 to SIZE - 1 step 1
input entry
scores[count] = entry
endfor
stop

PTS: 1 REF: 166 TOP: Critical Thinking

5. Write the pseudocode to define and initialize a five element array called “evens,” with even numbers
from 2 to 10, and then find the total of the values in the array using a for loop.

ANS:
start
Declarations
num count = 0
num evens[5] = 2,4,6,8,10
num SIZE = 5
for count 0 to SIZE - 1 step 1
total = total + evens[count]
count = count + 1
endfor
stop

PTS: 1 REF: 166 TOP: Critical Thinking

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sentry. It was a cold, rainy night, and their experience of guards at depôts
might well have led them to expect a certain lack of enterprise and
enthusiasm on the part of their warder. Nor were they disappointed.
It began to rain heavily, and after a few deprecatory glances at the
heavens, the sentry sat down in his box, and within a few moments
appeared to be unconscious of the external world. From the window of
Block I a rope made out of a blanket was immediately lowered, and the
colonel began his precarious descent.
And then the rain stopped.
The sentry, roused apparently by the sudden cessation of sound, blinked,
rubbed his eyes, and cast them heavenwards, and saw midway between
earth and sky a figure swinging from a rope. Well, he must have been
something of a philosopher, that sentry: he was in no way perturbed by the
apparition. He rose languidly to his feet, blew his whistle to summon the
guard, and waited patiently at the foot of the rope.
It must have been a very amusing spectacle. Very slowly and very
gingerly, hand under hand the colonel descended, and when he was within
reaching distance the sentry helped him very gently to the ground and
escorted him to the guardroom. The other

A GALLANT ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE.

[To face page 162.
conspirators, seeing the fate of their chief, hastened bedwards with all
possible speed, and when the orderly officer came round they imitated with
considerable ability the righteous indignation of a man who is woken up
after a three hours’ sleep.
This attempt was the signal for frequent and repeated excursions. The
lead once given, there were found many ready to follow it; and there was
considerable comfort in the assurance that the sentries had orders not to fire
unless they were charged. And so for the remainder of our captivity the
camp buzzed with rumours.
No one ever got away. Occasionally the first strand of netting was
penetrated, but nothing more; and it must have been a poor form of
amusement. For the desperadoes always chose a night of rain and wind in
the hope that the sentries might have sought consolation within their huts,
and it can have been no fun crawling on one’s stomach, over sodden gravel,
getting soaked and cold; and as the night of capture was always spent in the
guardroom, it was a sport that can have held out few inducements.
For the cowardly, however, it did add a spice and flavour to existence.
On these nights of danger we used to lie awake patiently listening. The
hours would drift by. Twelve o’clock, one o’clock, it looked as if they had
got away after all; and then, sure enough, would come the alarm, two
whistles would shriek loud above the drip of the rain, there would be a
scurry of feet; and then a few minutes later we would see the unfortunate
beings escorted to the cells.... We would do all we could for them; we
would clamber on to the window sill and would shout our condolences; and
these friendly wishes would on the next day as likely as not serve as an
excuse for the General to place upon us some further restriction, as
punishment for what he considered an unmannerly exhibition of
independence.
Of these bold bids for freedom none stood any very real chance of
success, and towards the end they became somewhat discredited, as they
involved certain inconveniences on those who had resigned themselves to
their fate. There would be additional roll-calls, and precautions. Whole
rooms were searched and ransacked, a most disagreeable proceeding. And
on one occasion the attempt was made from the theatre, which led to the
closing of that hall of pleasure during an entire morning while the complete
staging apparatus was overhauled, and examined. This caused genuine
annoyance, especially as the ravages of the soldiery delayed for three days a
performance that had been the centre of much curiosity and conjecture. And
this annoyance became almost indignation, when it transpired that this
herald of defiance had provisioned himself for his long journey with
nothing more substantial than a tin of skipper sardines, two oxo cubes, and
a tin of mustard. The general opinion was that if a man was “such a damned
fool as to carry that sort of stuff about with him, he had no right to try to
escape, upsetting arrangements and all.”
And on this type of sally the theatre incident rang down the curtain. But
under this category it is impossible to number the attempts of Colonel
Wright. His methods were very different; they were not showy; he did not
talk about what he was going to do. And as a result he very nearly
succeeded.
The chief ingenuity of the Scarlet Pimpernel lay, as far as I can
remember, in his grasp of the fact that it is the obvious that evades
suspicion. Sentries are on the lookout for an escape by night, but by day
they are off their guard. And working on this plan, both Colonel Wright’s
attempts were made by daylight. Indeed they were both so simple that in
cold blood they looked quite ridiculous. The first attempt failed completely,
and but for his later achievement, one might have been tempted to wonder
how the gallant colonel could have expected any different result.
Alone of the Pitt Escape League he literally did not progress a yard; not
one foot did he advance. In broad daylight he was arrested where he stood,
or rather, where he sat, for it was in that position that he was discovered.
The plan was not elaborate. Once a week a cart from the laundry came to
collect dirty linen from the camp and take it away to be cleaned. And to
keep a check on the returns, a British orderly always went with it. Colonel
Wright’s scheme was to impersonate the orderly, to get himself conducted
safely outside the gates, and once there to rely on his own speed and
ingenuity to effect an escape. It might have come off; there was an outside
chance, remote certainly, but still a chance; however, he was given no
opportunity of gauging his share of the two requisite abilities. It is true he
got into the cart and sat quietly in a far corner; but before even the harness
had begun to jingle, he had been recognised and arrested. A grey business,
but he was in no wise daunted. And within a few weeks he had his hand to
the wheel again.
 His second scheme was considerably more elaborate, but was none the
less sufficiently obvious. Zero hour was fixed for half-past five, and at five
o’clock in a far corner of the square preparations were begun for a boxing
match. Towels and chairs were set out, sponges and bowls of water
appeared, and two brawny Scotsmen shivered in greatcoats. There had been
no previous notice of this engagement, but interest was speedily kindled,
and within a quarter of an hour quite a large crowd had assembled. The
close of the opening round was the signal for a marked display of
enthusiasm. And it was in the middle of the second round that Colonel
Wright made his dash. No one noticed him. The sentries were absorbed in
the boxing, and those whose attentions showed signs of wandering were
engaged in conversation by two field officers who could speak German.
And Colonel Wright, clad in a suit of civilian clothes, cut through the wire
netting of the first entanglement, and dashed across the open. In a few
seconds he had swarmed over the second series and was out of sight. It was
a most daring and brilliant piece of work. All that remained for him now
was to lie till nightfall in the shadow of the wall. Then when it was dark he
could choose an auspicious moment and lower himself to the ground.
It was a plan that certainly deserved success, and as the hours passed we
began to hope that some one had at last got clean away. There was some
anxiety lest his absence should be spotted at roll-call, but when nine o’clock
came and went, we felt that all was well. And then just before ten o’clock
the two whistle blasts rang out. Colonel Wright had been retaken.
And if the story that we heard afterwards is true, chance was
outrageously unkind. He had waited till it was quite dark, and had carefully
watched for the moment when the beat of the outside sentry carried his
warders out of earshot. He had then lowered himself from the wall; and it
was here that his luck deserted him. For a couple of lovers had selected that
particular part of the battlements as a shelter for their amorous dalliance.
And the point at which Colonel Wright would have landed was removed
from them by scarcely a dozen yards. He was instantly detected. Yet, with a
very little luck, things might still have turned out favourably; for the man,
who seemed sufficiently intrigued with his partner, gave him only a cursory
glance and returned to the matter in hand; but the woman, with an eye to
advertisement, characteristic of her sex, gave expression to her feelings in a
series of piercing shrieks. Colonel Wright was instantly arrested.
 The sentries found on him a hundred marks of German money, and a
railway ticket to Frankfurt. And if he could only have got clear of the camp,
I believe he would have had little difficulty in getting to the frontier. For he
spoke German excellently and had friends in that part of the country. He
had also the nerve and ingenuity which alone could have rendered such a
feat possible. This the authorities must have realised; for a few days later he
was moved to another camp. What he did there, we do not know. But
rumour has it that on the journey he made three more attempts to break
away. And doubtless in a camp with fewer natural defences he would
sooner or later have succeeded in outwitting his captors.
But as regards Mainz the gloomy record of its impregnability still stands.
At one time or another it has been the temporary home of Russians, French
and English; all three have in their turn tried to escape, and all have failed.
After four years of warfare Mainz is still the inviolable citadel.
 CHAPTER XI

THE ALCOVE

Each week the Pitt League posted up on the walls of the theatre a notice
of the times and places of the various classes that were to be held. There
were some six rooms at the disposal of this enterprising society. There was
the attic at the top of Block I, a noisy room because the dramatic society
would probably be found rehearsing next door; then there was the theatre,
an impossible room; in the first place because it was too big, and in the
second because the scenic artists behind the curtain carried on a continual
dialogue to the tune of: “Where is that blue paint?” “Have you put up the
wings?” “Where the hell’s the hammer?” which dialogue the scene-shifters
accompanied with suitable crashes and landslides. It was a poor room for
study—the

THE BILLIARD ROOM AT MAINZ.

[To face page 172.

theatre; and then there was the field officers’ dining-room—that was not too
bad. But one window-pane was missing, and there was no heating
apparatus, and the orderlies were always wanting to lay the plates;
altogether there was not a superfluity of spare space; there was really only
one decent room—the Alcove—and that was for one hour of the day
allotted to the botanists and anatomists. For the rest of the time an agenda at
the bottom of the Pitt League poster announced that “the Alcove was
reserved for authors, architects and other students.”
The Alcove was a small room opening out of the billiard-room, and its
possession by the “authors, architects and other students” was a privilege
jealously guarded. Not that we ever resorted to force, the mere strength of
personality was sufficient. A few acid epigrams drove the intruders away
with the impression that after all there were lunatics in the camp. Only one
man stayed for more than an hour, and that was Captain Frobisher, a large,
fat man who was doubtless an excellent soldier, but who was not an
addition to a literary society that prided itself upon its exclusiveness. After
all, when one is searching for a lost rhyme, or trying to make an honest
scene sufficiently obscure to protect Canon Lyttelton’s delicate
susceptibilities, it is disconcerting to have to listen to a conversation of this
sort:—
“ ... And what do you think of the new offensive, Skipper?”
“Oh, we’ll wipe the swine off the face of the earth. I hope our men don’t
take too many prisoners. There’s only one sort of Hun that’s any use, and
that’s a dead one. Excreta, that’s all they are, excreta.... What I say is, smash
’em, and then when they’re down tread on ’em. That’s all they’re fit for. A
good Hun is a dead Hun.”
Of course such rhetoric is excellent in its place, and in the mouth of a
politician would appear as the supreme unction shed over the warring
banners of humanity. But there are times....
Frobisher must go. We all decided that. The only difficulty was that ...
well, even in confinement one must show respect to a senior officer. It
would have to be done with considerable tact; we could hardly approach
him ourselves. We supposed that if he really wanted, he could defend
himself on the ground that he was a student, a student of the philosophical
interpretation of a dozen cocktails. But yet he had to go. And finally Stone
undertook the job.
It took two bottles of Rhine wine to screw him up to the proper pitch, but
we got him there at last; and nobly did he fulfil our trust. It was an
unforgettable afternoon. Captain Frobisher was sitting at the middle table
discussing over a bottle of wine his schemes for the entire destruction of the
German race. The old saws were rolling smoothly from his tongue.
 “We must let them have it; what I say is, starve them out, bomb their
towns, confiscate their colonies; then make them pay right up to the hilt, a
crushing indemnity. They’d have done the same to us. An eye for an eye.
That’s the principle we must work on, a tooth for a tooth.” Even a patriotic
bishop could not have been more humanely vindictive.
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.
He flung his books noisily on the table and then proceeded to array
himself for the ardours of composition. He first of all divested himself of
his collar and tie, and wrapped round his throat the green velvet scarf, that
would have lain more appropriately as a stole on the shoulders of an
ecclesiastic than it did as a muffler on those of a Gefangener, engaged on a
psychological study of seduction. Tarrant then removed his tunic, disclosing
a woollen waistcoat, over which he proceeded to draw the second woollen
coat that he had brought with him. He explained that they brought him
physical ease.
“You see, old man,” he said, “it’s not much use my mind being free, if
my limbs are encased in even the loosest of military tunics.”
He then proceeded to work.
Every writer, of course, has his own particular foible, and Tarrant’s was
an appalling accuracy in gauging the exact number of words that he had
written. Most writers are quite content to add up the number of lines in a
page, then find the average number of words in a line and multiply. But
Tarrant would have none of these slipshod methods.
“On that principle,” he said, “I suppose you’d call a line a line whether it
goes right across the page or not?”
“Yes,” I confessed.
He gave a grunt of contempt.
“And then you say The Loom of Youth is 110,000 words long; why, half
the lines you call ten words long only consist of two words—‘Bloody Hell.’
That’s not the way to do things.”
And so Tarrant laboriously added up every word. It became quite a
mania with him. So much so, in fact, that he used to embark on long
discussions as to the derivation of amalgamated words, and whether “lunch-
time” should count as two or one. For his rough draft he kept beside him a
small slip of paper, on which at the end of each sentence he used to make
mathematical calculations, that reminded me of school cricket, the scoring
box, and the attempt to keep level with the tens.
Correction involved much labour. At the end of the sentence he might
have noted down 277 words. Then he would revise; half a clause consisting
of eight words would be omitted, and on the slip of paper down went 269.
Then a celibate noun called for an adjectival mate, and 270 was hoisted
amid applause. It was an amusing game, but it took up a great deal of time.
Very rarely did Tarrant produce more than 400 words as the result of three
hours’ work, and his absolute maximum for a day was 1100.
 “All great men work slowly,” he said. “Flaubert took seven years over
Madame Bovary, and I shall take only a year over this,” and with a sudden
sweep he flashed the discussion back on to his pet subject of words.
“You see, I’ve done 48,374 words, and there are three more chapters of
approximately 3000 words each. Now will that be enough?”
I told him that Mr. Grant Richards had stipulated in one of his weekly
advertisements, that if he liked a book, it could range between the limits of
45,000 and 200,000 words, and Tarrant once more returned peacefully to
his addition.

Stone, Tarrant’s constant companion through the tedium of eighteen

months’ imprisonment, was chiefly conspicuous for his conversation.
Nobody ever actually saw him writing, or had indeed read anything he had
written, but he always carried about with him a notebook, that gave the
impression that he had either just risen from his labours, or was merely
waiting the inspiration of the moment. As a scholar and a critic he was
easily the most brilliant of our little circle, and it was delightful to hear him
dethrone the idols of the twentieth century. He had very little use for any
critic since Pater, or any novelist since Sterne. Of the modern novelists he
maintained that the only two worth considering were H. H. Richardson and
Arnold Bennett, though to Gilbert Cannan he extended a hand of
deprecatory welcome. Wells was the chief target of his wit.
“I don’t know what to make of him,” he used to say. “Sometimes I think
we may almost excuse him on the ground that if he had not written the New
Machiavelli, Perkins and Mankind would not exist. But, really, as I read his
recent stuff, Marriage, The Soul of a Bishop, Joan and Peter, why, Max has
ceased to be the parodist of Wells, Wells has become the parodist of Max.”
As an actual “Wordsmith” Stone enjoyed a reputation something similar
to that of Theodore Watts. One felt that he had only to publish what he had
written, and he would receive world-wide recognition. In the notebook that
never left him, he was supposed to carry the key that should unlock his
heart. There lay two completed poems, and a tenth of a novel. But they
were quite illegible. None of us ever saw them. Occasionally when the
influence of Rhine wine had somewhat weakened the phenomenal barrier
that separated Stone’s mentality from the real world of his metaphysics, he
would promise to inscribe them for us in the morning in the full indelibility
of purple pencil. Once he even went so far as to recite one of them; but the
words came to us droningly sweet through a mist of inaudibility, and there
remains only the recollection of certain sounding words, a low murmur as
of a distant waterfall. In the morning all the promises were forgotten, and
sometimes I have been tempted to wonder whether those poems had any
real existence in the sphere of phenomena. Stone was so at the mercy of his
metaphysics, he indulged in expeditions into a world whither I had neither
the wish nor the ability to follow him, and perhaps he merely imagined
those two poems as some manifestation of that inexplicable “Thing-in-
itself” over which he was so concerned. Perhaps they had no counterpart in
that draggled notebook; and though it is quite possible that some day we
shall see those poems immortally enshrined in vellum, personally I rather
doubt it.
Those hours in the Alcove contain all I personally would wish to
remember of my captivity. It was a delightful room, with its white tables
and windows opening on the fowl-run; it was a perfect place in which to
write. The click of billiard balls, and the murmurous rise and fall of
inaudible conversations provided the ideal setting for thought. Personally I
can never write in a room that is quite silent; its isolation frightens me, and
through an open window I listen in vain for the indistinct noises of
humanity.
And then towards evening, when the labours of the day were ended, we
would sit together round a bottle of a villainous brand of Laubenheimer and
discuss the merits of Tchecov and de Maupassant. Long contests were
waged there on the vexed problems of æsthetics; the limits of dramatic art,
vers libre, the function of criticism. All these in their turn passed through
the sieve of dialectic. At times even captivity seemed a pleasant business, so
full of leisure was it, after the bustle of the months that had preceded it. And
no doubt years hence, when the rough outlines have become gently blurred
against a harmonious background, we shall cast a glamour over those lazy
days, and see in them a realisation of Bohemian dreams, of a Paris café and
Verlaine leaning over a white table-cloth declaiming his lovely valedictory
lines. And perhaps Time, that great alchemist, may even go so far as to
transmute that foul white wine into the purest absinthe. We shall think of
Dowson and the Cheshire Cheese, of the Rhymers’ Club and the delightful
artifice of the nineties, and we shall claim companionship with those brave
innovators to whom a finished work of art was a sufficient recompense for
their weariness. But within it was not really like that; and as Pater has said,
no doubt that ideal period of artistic endeavour has never had any existence
outside the imagination of the dreamer, sick with a sort of far-away
nostalgia, a vague longing for wider prospects and less narrowing horizons.
Every generation has flung its eyes backwards over the past, and thought “if
it had only been then that we had lived—then, when the values of life were
still clear and simple,” and round certain names and ages there has been
woven in consequence the thin gossamer of Romance, and the artist has
found comfort in his conception of a world that has been passed by. From
these backward glances and averted faces has emerged much that will never
pass—Thais and Salambo, Henry Esmond and Marius the Epicurean.
During the last three years I have often wished that I had been born
thirty years earlier, at a time when the influence of French literature was
making itself so keenly felt, and when Verlaine was the light about the
young men’s feet. It is a glamorous world that we catch glimpses of through
the opening doors of Mr. George Moore’s confessions. But I suppose that
really it would not have been so very wonderful after all, and that those
delicate creatures whose feet moved through Symons’s verse to a continual
rustle of silk and cambric, were probably the most tawdry of grisettes, and
those Paris cafés and the many-coloured glasses of liqueur, they were very
much like the Alcove, I expect; and the Alcove is a place where no one
would wish to sojourn indefinitely.
But we shall always look back at it with some affection. We spent there
many happy hours, and there the weariness of captivity was relieved by the
human comradeship that alone makes life endurable. We shall not easily
forget how, when the billiard-room was closed for the night, we used to step
out into the square, just as the sunset was flooding it with an amber haze,
and walk beneath the chestnuts, prolonging the conversations of the
afternoon, until the cracked bell and waking lights drove us back to the
barracks. I shall never forget those evenings. Probably never before was the
citadel—that home of militarism—the scene of so much artistic discussion;
and it may be that in after days our ghosts will linger round those memorial
places, and that on some quiet evening two tenuous and ungainly forms will
be seen swinging down the avenue beneath the chestnuts—

“Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacée,”

and the sentries of some Jäger regiment will catch the sound of thin voices
floating across the night. They will be still arguing over the same old
questions, those two foolish ghosts, those questions whose solution the rest
of the world has long since decided to ignore.
“But look here now, honestly, surely Brooke is not too bad; listen to this
...” and the faint words of “Mamua” would be borne over last year’s leaves.
But the elder ghost would shake his head; and a thin reedy voice would
pipe—
“No, it won’t do, old man, won’t do, only a whispering gallery.” And
they would pass on, still arguing, still differing, and still, apparently, very
good friends.
And the two German sentries would look at one another sympathetically.
“Kriegs-gefangeners, Fritz,” one would say, “captured in the great war.
There were a lot of ’em here, and those two, you’ll always see them walkin’
up and down there talking the most awful rot, all about poetry and things.
Poor fellows! probably a little wrong in the head, they were, a bit maddish
you know; they look a bit that way.”
And it is not for me to deny it.
 CHAPTER XII

HOW WE AMUSED OURSELVES

§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
 OUR PRISON SQUARE.
[To face page 194.

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.
 And as the two chief resources of the average subaltern are athletics and
the theatre, this suppression of one channel, diverted to the stage the entire
enthusiasm of the camp. Of course each of us thinks his own little part of
the world the best: our school, our company, our battalion, they seem to
each individual one of us perfect

“FIVE HUNDRED ODD OFFICERS WALKING ROUND THE SQUARE.”

[To face page 196.

and unique. It is only natural that we should think the P.O.W. Theatre,
Mainz, the absolute Alhambra of the Gefangenenlagers. However bad our
shows had been we should have thought them supreme. But really,
considering that every costume had to be improvised, every piece of
scenery painted on flimsy paper, and that female attire was unpurchasable, I
do not think that its shows could have been better staged. Certainly the
scenic effects towards the end of our captivity were better than anything one
would have seen at a provincial pantomime, though that is in itself hardly a
recommendation.
Programmes began modestly enough in the days of soup and sauerkraut.
We were hungry then and had little spare vitality. But a concert party was
formed that called itself the “Pows,” and which gave performances every
Saturday. There were many difficulties, the chief one being an entire lack of
revue music. In order to get a song the aid of many had to be invoked. A
committee of six would sit round a table trying to remember the words of
“We’ve got a little Cottage” or “When Paderewski plays.” Each person
remembered a stray line or phrase, and gradually like a jigsaw puzzle the
fabric was completed. And then the music had to be written, and luckily the
“Pows” possessed in Aubrey Dowdon a musical director who could write
music as fast as he could write a letter. He scored the parts, and the
musician strummed them out. The result was a most amusing vaudeville
performance. There were some excellent voices, romantic and humorous;
Aubrey Dowdon was himself no mean vocalist, and there was Milton
Hayes.
Indeed it is hard not to make the account of those early performances a
mere chronicle of Milton Hayes. He was the supreme humorist. All he had
to do was to stand on the stage and smile, and the audience was happy. It
was a wonderful smile, that unconscious innocent affair that only childhood
is supposed to know. And to watch Hayes perform was like watching a
child play with bricks. It was as if he were making his jokes simply for his
own pleasure, building up his toy palace of fun, and then turning to his
audience to ask them how they liked it. A small stage and a small room give
scope for a far deeper intimacy than is possible in the large proscenium of a
London hall, where the artist can see before him only a dull blur of faces
through the dusk. At Mainz Milton Hayes could see and, as it were, speak to
each individual present, and before he had been on the stage five minutes
one felt as if he were an old friend that one had known all one’s life. He
caught the true spirit of intimacy, the kindredship with his audience, that is
the whole secret of the music-hall profession.

During the first two months the programme did not change much. There
would be always some slight variety in a new stunt by Hayes, a new tune by
Dowdon, or a topical sketch. But the old numbers continually cropped up.
“The Money Moon” and “When you’re a long way from Home”—these
never left us. Still, they received a hearty welcome. The audience in an
Offiziergefangenenlager is not too captious. It goes not to criticise but to be
amused. And so for the first two months the “Pows” continued to entertain
us every Saturday. After a while the stress of private composition caused
Milton Hayes to drop out more or less, but the company went on with an
undiminished vigour. And then suddenly a rumour went round the camp
that a rival company was being formed, and that in a fortnight’s time the
“Shivers” would start their continental tour.
 The general good being the one standard by which to judge any
collective innovation, the enterprise of the “Shivers” must be considered the
greatest benefit the camp received. Competition roused the ambition of the
“Pows.” Each party swore to outdo the other. There ensued a race of
progressive excellence. Each performance was produced with a more lavish
outlay of the public funds; each time the curtain rose a deeper gasp paid
homage to scenic artists; and the composers ceased to rely for their material
on the work of other men. They began to write their own songs and their
own music; the old ragtime and coon melodies disappeared, and instead we
had original airs and topical numbers. And here the “Pows” had a great
advantage, for their musical director, who in these pages shelters himself
beneath the pseudonym of Aubrey Dowdon, had a gift for libretto that we
soon expect to see on the playbills of the Alhambra, and his company
finally beat all records with a musical operetta entitled The Girl on the
Stairs. All the songs were original, and it was marvellously staged. There
were eastern grottos, and the gleam of white shoulders through the dusk.
There was a long serenade to the Jehlum River girl, in which brown tanned
slaves prostrated themselves before the half-naked form of a sylph arrayed
in veils. There were humour and naughtiness, horseplay and burlesque. It
was a triumph of impromptu and ingenuity, after which the activities of the
“Shivers” fell woefully flat.
From the psychological standpoint the professional jealousy of those
weeks of hectic rivalry provided food for much deliberation. The rivalry
once definitely acknowledged, the camp did its best to foment contention.
The manager of the “Shivers” would be told that, unless he was careful, he
would be absolutely washed out by the “Pows,” and the same story was
carried to Dowdon. There were few things more amusing than to sit behind
either party during a rival performance. They would simulate great
enthusiasm, but all the time they would be exchanging shy and nervous
glances. There would be whispers of—
“Do you think it’s good?”
“Rather cheap that, isn’t it?”
“What a chestnut!”
And if the piece did make a hit, what colossal “wind-up,” what profound
trepidation! And with what eager haste was the next show rehearsed. From
the point of view of the public, this was entirely excellent. We got excellent
shows, for there is no goad like jealousy.
But competition is a dangerous tool, and I often used to wonder where
all this frenzy would end, and to what point it was leading. It had got
beyond the well-defined limits of a good-humoured race. If it had been a
case of nations, it is quite plain what the result would have been.
Competition would have become contention, jealousy would have bred
hatred, and there would have been a war, of which the real issue would have
been, shall we say, the prop-box. But of course the companies themselves
would not have fought; they had started the war, that would have been
enough for them. And the ordinary Gefangener, who had quite
unconsciously fanned this flame, by scratching at the sore place and
aggravating the little itch, would find himself enrolled under one standard
or the other, and involved in a war of which he was the unwitting cause.
And he would be told—well, what would he be told? That he was
fighting for a prop-box? That would never do. There might come a time
when he would not consider a prop-box worth the surrender of his liberty.
No, the manager would have to find some striking and impersonal cause,
“not for passion, or for power.” A theme must be found fitting for high
oratory, a framework constructed that would bear the weight of many
sounding phrases. Let the poor Gefangener believe that he is fighting for
the freedom of the English stage; let the old catchwords rip, “Art against
Vulgarity,” “The Drama against the Vaudeville,” “Shakespeare against A
Little Bit of Fluff.” And then....
But fortunately we were not nations armed with a pulpit and a Press, we
were simply prisoners of war, and this competition produced some very
delightful entertainment. But all the same, I still wonder where things
would have ended, if we had stayed there much longer. We were riding for a
smash. We had exhausted our limited resources; for one man cannot
compose, stage and produce a new musical comedy every fortnight, and the
rivalry of the two parties had developed at such an alarming pace that we
were faced with the prospect of a return to “The Money Moon,” when
Milton Hayes returned to the stage, and, in his own phrase, “let loose the
light that set the vault of heaven on fire.”

§2
 For some weeks Milton Hayes had been living the retired life of an
author, architect or other student. For he had found the effort of repeated
performances in an unnatural atmosphere a very real strain on his nerves.
“No Sanatogen,” he said, “that’s what does it. I can’t act without
Sanatogen. I used to try champagne once, but it left me like a rag
afterwards. Sanatogen’s the stuff.”
As a traveller in this commodity he would have made quite a hit. He
never wearied of singing its praises, and we used to ask him why he did not
forward to the firm one of those credentials that begin, “Since using your
admirable tonic....”
“Why don’t you try it, Milton?” we used to say. “It would be a jolly
good advertisement. ‘Milton Hayes, the author of the Green Eye, says....’
You’d have your name placarded all over the kingdom.”
But he would none of it.
“No,” he said, “that’s far too obvious. Any beginner tries that stunt, or
men that are ‘has beens.’ I might invent a mixture. But no, not the other
thing. It’s not the sort of publicity one wants.”
But whatever commercial advantage Sanatogen may have lacked as an
advertising agent, its absence in Hayes’s life certainly affected his nerves. It
is a compound that he found palatable only in milk, and even condensed
milk was a rare commodity. The result was that Milton Hayes joined the
band of Wordsmiths in the Alcove, and spent his time working on his lyrics
and on a musical comedy.
This programme satisfied him well enough for a couple of months. In
France he had spent much of his time organising concert parties, and in his
heart of hearts he was not sorry to be quit for a time of grease paints and the
greenroom. But it could not last; and within a short time he was longing for
fresh worlds to conquer. And, at the suggestion of a friend, he altered and
abbreviated his musical comedy into a farcical libretto calculated to run for
about a hundred minutes. This composition he laid in all good faith before
the Entertainments Committee, suggesting that he should choose his cast
from the pick of the “Pows” and the “Shivers,” and should himself produce
the show. It was a simple proposal; but he had not calculated upon the
extent to which professional rivalry had imprisoned the dramatic activities
of the camp.
 While all the world slept momentous things had happened. A scheme of
regulations had been drawn up for the guidance of the managing directors,
which in a way resembled the qualifications of League Football. To prevent
poaching it had been decided that, once a performer had figured on the
playbills of one company, he could not transfer his allegiance elsewhere. No
assistance was to be given by one party to another; only the piano, the
orchestra and the prop-box were common property. There was a sort of
trade boycott afoot in which only neutral waters were free from tariff.
And then into this world of regulated commerce Milton Hayes entered
like the bold bad buccaneer of Romance, demanding free ports and free
transport, the very pirate of legality.
Well, what the committee’s opinion on this subject was, we can only
conjecture. What it did is a matter of common knowledge. It absolutely
refused to lend its support: why, we can but guess. Perhaps they were a little
piqued at the infrequency of Hayes’s appearance on the vaudeville stage;
perhaps they had advanced so far into the land of tabulated orders that they
could see no safe withdrawal. Perhaps.... But it is unfair to impute motives
to any one. One can merely state facts, and register one’s personal opinion
that collectively humanity is rather stupid, and that if committees are
allowed a free hand, they usually do manage to mess things up somehow;
and that the conclusions at which they arrive do not at all represent the
opinions of those individuals framing them.
I remember that some four and a half years ago I received a sufficiently
severe beating from the School’s Games Committee, on the ground that I
had played roughly in a house match; and that within a week six of the
seven members of that committee had apologised to me in person for their
assault. This, as a testimonial to my moral worth, was no doubt comforting;
but as an alleviation for the pain of those fourteen strokes, it was an
inadequate recompense. And the treatment of Milton was not very different.
The committee, which consisted of ten officers, refused him their
support; but each individual member of the community considered it a
grave injustice, and one and all they came up to Hayes with apologies to the
tune of—
“Awfully sorry, old man, about this show of yours. I wish we could have
helped you. I’d love to myself, only the committee won’t let me. Beastly
nuisance I call it, a man isn’t his own master any longer. Awfully sorry, old
man.”
By the time the tenth member had expressed a similar regret, Milton
Hayes began to wonder whether the committee was a blind force, with a
will independent of its component parts. He was naturally gratified to
receive so many sympathetic condolences, but they did not materially assist
him in his task of finding a company to produce his libretto. However, he
beat the by-ways and hedges, and finally amassed a nondescript
community, which for want of a better name he called the “Buckshees.”
The company numbered thirty-two, and was supported by voluntary
contribution. The “Pows” and the “Shivers” had drawn within their folds
the pick of the vocalists and humorists; two dramatic societies had gleaned
after them. The remaining stubble was a sorry sight, and as an insignificant
member of that distinguished caste, I must confess that I viewed the first
mustering of the “Buckshees” with an eye of profound misgiving. All of
them were strangers to one another; and though it is easy to talk of flowers
“that blow unseen,” in a community such as a prison camp one is usually
aware pretty early of those whom the Fates have endowed with talents.
There had been little selection. Affairs had taken a course something like
this. Hayes had been walking across the square when he had been accosted
by a total stranger.
“I say, Hayes,” he would say, “you are getting up a show or something,
aren’t you?”
“Yes; like a part in it?”
“Well, that’s what I really came up for.”
“Done any acting?”
“Oh, not much, you know, a few charades.”
“Well, what do you fancy?”
“Low comedy.”
“Right, then I’ll put you down for the drunken slaveboy. First rehearsal
to-morrow at ten in the lecture hall; thanks so much. Cheerioh.”
And so the “Buckshees” were formed.
But the difficulties did not lie merely in the calibre of the artists. There
was the staging, the scenery, the music. Hayes had written the songs, but
who was to score the melodies? The versatile Dowdon had promised to
overrule the committee and orchestrate the parts, but what of the piano? For
the only two musicians had been collared by the “Pows” and the “Shivers.”
There were, of course, numerous strummers, but there was no composer.
And it was amusing to watch the way Hayes set to work.
First of all he would write the lyric, and beat out a rhythm. He would
then go and recite his composition to one Radcliffe, who could play the
piano, but could not score a part; Radcliffe would get the drift of Hayes’s
idea, and would in the course of hours compose a harmony of sorts, which
he would play to his friend Gladstone, who could score a part but could not
play a piano. Gladstone would jot down the notes; and behold a finished
song, the result of a sort of Progressive Whist.
The troubles of staging were less difficult. The experts had, it is true,
been already commandeered by the other societies. But a serviceable
quartet of carpenters was discovered, and some decorative artists procured.
All these arrangements Hayes left in charge of others. He knew the art of
delegating responsibility, and he certainly had his hands full with his cast.
For he relied for his success on vitality, innovations, and the quality which
he always dubbed as “punch.” He did not ask for elaborate scenery. He
knew he could not expect to equal effect of The Girl on the Stairs. He
simply demanded an adequate setting. He would do the rest.

§3
With a company endowed with mediocre ability Hayes did wonders. He
decided to have a beauty chorus, and with curses and entreaties he beat
sixteen ungainly males into a semblance of the charm and delicacy of an
Empire revue. It suffered a great deal, that chorus; it was cursed, and
excommunicated. It was made a target for all the unmentionable swears. If
it had been composed of girls, it would have spent half its time in tears. But
eventually it emerged, in all its nudity, a machine. There was a big
joyboard, running well into the auditorium; and on this it affected all the
airs and graces of the courtesan. It cajoled and pleaded; it undulated with
emotion. It swayed to each breath of melody, and it was not too unpleasant
a sight, for Hayes had wisely transported it to an Eastern
 OUR LEADING LADY.
[To face page 214.

island, to a harem, and the kindly veils of Ethiopian modesty. Through a

mist of white calico it was impossible to discern the razored roughness of a
cheek, and the unrazored blackness of an upper lip. The chorus was a
triumph.
And the same tribute must be accorded to the leading ladies. Nature had
provided them with pleasing features. Under Hayes’s tuition they learnt the
art of the glad eye and the droop of the lower lip. To see those beauties was
to be back again in the gay world of colour and revue. A breath of
femininity quivered about the rough-cast masculinity of Mainz. So much
so, indeed, that on the night of the first performance a distinguished field
officer, who had drunk deeply not only of romance, was observed chasing
round the corridor behind the flying feet of an inclement Venus, and
murmuring between his gasps, “Don’t call me Major, call me Jim”; and
even the most hardened misogynists were not unconscious of a thrill when
“Leola,” the daughter of the Hesperides, tripped down the joyboard, and
sang with outspread, enticing arms, that beckoned to the audience—

“Come to Sonalia with me.”

 The plot of the play was extravagantly simple. The curtain went up,
revealing a harassed author searching among his papers for a hidden plot.
The show was billed to start at two o’clock, but the play was lost, what
should he do? And then the machinery of Romance began. An Arabic
inscription gave the key. “Why should they not wish for the plot?” Faith
would remove mountains, and Faith caused to emerge from the back of the
stage a green-faced being, who called himself “The King of Wishland.”
From then onwards it was plain sailing: the barrier between the
phenomenal and the real was torn aside, and we were in the world of fancy.
And it was no surprise when this obliging monarch produced a strange
device which he called a “thoughtoscope,” through which could be
observed the hurried arrival from New York of the Financier who was to
find a plot. Through this mendacious lens we saw him cross from Halifax to
London. He was in an aeroplane, he was over Holland, he was coming
down the Rhine, he had landed in Mainz, and look, amid gigantic
enthusiasm the gates of the theatre were flung open and Milton Hayes,
disguised as Silas P. Hawkshaw, was observed charging across the square,
waving a stick and a suitcase.
What followed was sheer joy. The company rose to the occasion. With
perfect equanimity we received the news that, in order to find the plot, we
should have to be transported to Wishland. In Silas P. Hawkshaw we placed
a blind unquestioning trust, and before we knew where we were, the curtain
was down, and the chorus was regaling the audience, while the scene-
shifters did their noble work.
When next the curtain rose it revealed a tropical island splashed in
sunshine. Through a vista of palms gleamed the azure stretches of some
ultimate shoreless sea. But no one would have willingly set sail. The island
was too full of charm. There were singing girls and dancing girls, a sultan’s
harem, and an American bar, and the story lost itself in a riot of intrigue.
The plot abandoned all coherence. It was a fairy dream, in which a magic
ring changed hands innumerable times, involving disastrous loves and
deserted widows.
And through all this medley of incidents Hayes wandered, first in one
garb, then in another. As a Scotsman he swallowed whisky, as a Welshman
took two wives, as a padre wandered into a harem, and as “Leda was the
mother of Helen of Troy, and all this was to him but as the sound of lyres
and flutes.” It was for him a great triumph, and perhaps the most supreme
moment was, when he proffered marriage to a much-married widow, and
suggested that they should spend their holiday in a bungalow, in a duet of
which the first verse is too good to be forgotten—

LIEUT. MILTON HAYES, M.C. AS SILAS P. HAWKSHAW.

[To face page 218.

“He. How’d you like a Bungalow for two, dear?

She. How’d you like to furnish it complete?
He. It would be a cosy nest, dear.
Like the grey home in the west, dear.
She. And on Sunday I should let you cook the meat,
He. We’d have a little bedroom made for two, dear,
She. A little bed, a little chair or so;
He. And in a month or two, it maybe,
We should have a little baby
Both. Grand piano in our Bungalow.”

There were four more verses, in the main topical, and the play ran its
way through the complete gamut of upheavals, matrimonial and domestic.
It was impossible to tell who was allied to whom. It was a complete and
utter socialism, and even the great Plato himself would have been satisfied
with that community of wives.
But it had to end; and, to carry the spirit of burlesque to its conclusion,
we finished with a pantomime procession. The chorus came on, as choruses
always do, in couples beating time with their heels. And in their hands they
brandished banners on which were inscribed the names nearest to the
northern heart, “Preston,” “Wigan,” “Johnnie Walker,” “Steve Bloomer.”
Then the protagonists appeared, each with an appropriate tag, the lovers
with a curtsey and a bow—

“And so through every kind of weather

We two will always cling together.”

The gay lady still naughtily impenitent—

“Although I haven’t chanced to find a feller,

I crave your pity; pity poor Finella.”

The evil genie of the piece, his brows wrinkled with gloom—
“You see my work I never shirk,
For I’ve done all the dirty work.”

And, last of all, Milton Hayes with a wand, a simper and a skirt—

“Without my aid where would poor Jack have been?

So please reward the little fairy queen.”

And after that was sung once again the opening chorus, and the curtain was
rung down on the most enjoyable show of the P.O.W. Theatre, Mainz,
which by a strange and lucky coincidence also happened to be the last. For
within a day or two the armistice was signed, and the companies and
committees were scattered. It remains now for Milton Hayes to give once
more to London audiences the pleasure that he gave to us. But because
sentiment lies so near to the human heart, I think his association with the
“Buckshees” will recall to Milton Hayes more pleasant memories than
those of his other and perhaps more universal successes. At a time when life
was grey and tedious, he provided us with interest, with employment and
amusement. We can only hope that he enjoyed himself as much as we did.
 CHAPTER XIII

ARMISTICE DAYS

§1
Since my return, so many people have asked me whether prisoners of
war had any idea of the turn affairs were taking during the autumn, that it
would be as well to state here exactly what our sources of information were.
There were only two papers printed in English, the Anti-Northcliffe Times
and the Continental Times. The former I never saw, and it cannot have had a
very large circulation. But the Continental Times, which appeared three
times a week, was to be found in every room in the camp. It was the most
mendacious chronicle. It was printed at Berlin, and was published solely for
British prisoners of war; a more foolish production can hardly be imagined.
Its views, political and military, changed with each day’s tidings, and its
chief object was to impress on British prisoners the relative innocence of
Germany and perfidy of the Entente. But it was so badly done that it can
never have achieved its ends. It was far too violent, and so obviously
partial. Its only interesting features were the reproductions from the English
weeklies of articles by men like Ivor Brown and Bertrand Russell; once
they even paid me the doubtful honour of a quotation, a tribute considerably
enhanced by the appearance of the poem under the name of Siegfried
Sassoon.
But no one took the Continental Times seriously, and the paper that we
relied on for our news was the Frankfurter Zeitung, the representative organ
of the Rhine towns. There were two issues daily. The morning one
contained the Alliance communiqués, and the evening one the Entente. Like
all other German papers, it was under the strictest censorship of the military
bureaucrats, but it maintained nevertheless an extraordinary impartiality. It
rarely indulged in heroics, and except for a little “hot air” on March 22nd it
kept its head remarkably well. It is, of course, the most moderate paper in
the country, and the Berliner Tageblatt is considerably more hectic. But the
Frankfurter Zeitung was, certainly during the period of my captivity, more
restrained than any British daily publication. It can be most fittingly
compared, in tone though not in politics, with our sixpenny weekly papers
whose appeal is to the educated classes.
From this paper we could get a pretty fair idea of how things were going;
but even without the paper we should have been prepared for the debacle of
November. For we could see what the papers do not show—and that is the
psychology of the people. For so long their hopes had been buoyed up by
the expectations of immediate victories in the field; they had been told that
the March offensive would most surely bring them this peace; and on this
belief had rested their entire faith. For this they had maintained a war that
was crippling them. They had endured sufferings greater than those of
either France or England. Their casualties had been colossal, the civilian
population had been starved. But yet they had hung on, because they had
been told that victory would bring them peace; and then Foch attacked;
their expectations were overthrown; the Entente were still fresh and ready
to fight. There was talk of unlimited resources, and Germany was faced
with the prospect of a long and harassing war that could end only in
exhaustion and reverse; and that the German people were not prepared to
endure.
For there will always come a point at which the individual will refuse to
have his interests sacrificed for a collective abstraction with which he has
not identified himself. Mankind in the mass has neither mind nor memory,
and can be swayed and blinded by a clever politician; it can be led to the
brink of folly without realising what road it follows. Collectively it is
capable of injustice which in an individual it would never countenance; but
sooner or later the collective emotion yields before the personal demand,
and the individual asks himself, “Why am I doing this? Am I benefiting
from it; and if I am not benefiting from it, who is?” For, of course, by even
the most successful war the position of the individual is not improved. The
indemnities and confiscations that the treaty brings never cover the
expenses and privations previously entailed. And collective honour is
perishable stuff. But as long as the war is successful, the politicians are able
to persuade the people that they are actually gaining something from it.
They can say, “We have got this island and that; here our frontier has been
pushed forwards, and in return for that small concession, look, behold an
indemnity.” And because mankind has neither mind nor memory it is
prepared to forget the millions of pounds that had to be spent first, and the
quantity of blood that had to be spilt.
That is when the war is successful; but when defeat looms near,
whatever the courtly ministers may urge, the individual will contrast in his
own mind the ravages, that another two years of warfare will entail, with
the possible emoluments that may lie at the end of them. He will say to
himself, “It is reasonable to expect that, by fighting for another two years,
we may eventually get better terms than we should get now, if we signed a
peace. But to me personally, is the difference sufficient to warrant the
sufferings of a protracted war?” And the answer, as often as not, is “No.”
That is, as far as one can judge, the sort of argument that presented itself to
the individual German in the weeks following Foch’s resumption of the
attack. And in determining the forces that went to the framing of that “no,”
the most important thing to realise is that Germany was actually starving.
That this is so, a certain portion of the Press has, during the last month,
attempted to deny; and it is rumoured that the armies of occupation have
found the German towns well stocked with food. If this last report is true, I
do not profess to be able to explain it; but of one thing there can be no
doubt, while we were prisoners in Mainz the German people there were not
merely hungry, they were starving. It is true that meat was obtainable in
restaurants, but only at a price so high as to be well beyond the means of
even the moderately wealthy. A dinner, consisting of a plate of soup and a
plate of meat and vegetables, would in places cost as much as twelve to
fifteen marks, and the majority of men and women had to exist entirely on
their rations. Of many of the necessaries of life it was impossible to get
enough, especially in the case of butter and milk and cheese. Of meat there
was very little, and flour could only be bought at an exorbitant price. The
bread ration was small, and eggs were rarely obtainable. Potatoes alone
were plentiful, and two years of such a diet had considerably lowered the
nation’s vitality.
In times of sickness this weakness produced heavy fatalities, especially
among the children. A German father even went to the lengths of offering
an English officer a hundred marks for a shilling packet of chocolate to give
to his son who was sick. And all the children born during the last two years
are miserably weak and puny; some of them even having no nails on their
toes and fingers.
 “You are not a father, so you will not understand,” a German soldier said
to me. “But it is a most terrible thing to watch, as I have watched during the
last four years, a little boy growing weaker and paler month after month;
and I can tell you that when I look at my little boy, all that I want is that this
war should end, I do not care how.”
And it is only natural that the individual parent should feel like this, and
I do not think that in England we quite realise all that Germany has
suffered. I remember one morning after the signing of the armistice that
some small boys of about seven years old climbed up the outside of the
citadel, and asked us for some food. We gave them a few biscuits; they were
very hard and dry, but I have never seen such excitement and joy on a
child’s face before. It was a most pathetic sight. A child of that age cannot
feign an emotion, and those children were absolutely starving.
And the knowledge that this was so must have had a very saddening
effect on the German soldier at the front. For one of the very few
consolations that were granted to a British soldier in the line was the
certainty that his wife and family were well and safe. But the German
soldier must have been faced continually with the thought that, whatever
sufferings he might himself endure, he could not protect those he loved
from the hunger that was crushing them, and for him those long cold nights
and lonely watches must have been unrelieved by any gleam of hope.
It is not natural that any nation should bear such hardships for an instant
longer than they appeared absolutely needful, and when it became quite
clear that the Entente had not only survived the March offensive, but had
emerged from it with undiminished powers, the Germans began to agitate
for an instant peace. At the beginning they were not aware of their
weakness in the field, and when the first armistice note was sent the terms
expected were very light.
“We shall probably have to evacuate France and Belgium,” they said,
“and perhaps Italy and Palestine. That’s all the guarantee that will be
required.”
And at this point, as far as we could gather, there was very little
animosity against the Kaiser.
“Of course,” they said, “this sort of thing must not happen again. We
shall have to tie him down a good deal. Ministers will have to be
responsible to the Reichstag and not to him. That should ensure us.”