How
was the thing done? How did they manage it, these young Jews, all
healthy-looking and of military age - how did they contrive to keep out
of the Army? Was there some secret society which protected them? Or were
they all so preposterously clever that the Old Country would straightway
evaporate into thin air unless they sat in some comfortable office,
while our own youngsters were being blown to pieces out yonder?
Mr. W - - , I regret to say, was not a good Oriental. He lacked the
Semite's pliability. He was graceful, but not gracious. A consequence,
doubtless, of having inhaled for some time past the rarefied atmosphere
of the Chief, and swallowed a few pokers during the process, his manner
towards me was freezingly non-committal - worthy of the best Anglo-Saxon
traditions.
Had I come a little earlier, he avowed, he might perhaps have been able
to squeeze me into one of his departments - thus spake this infant: "One
of my departments." As it was, he feared there was nothing doing;
nothing whatsoever; not just then. Tried the War Office?
I had.
I even visited, though only twice, an offshoot of that establishment in
Victoria Street near the Army and Navy Stores, where candidates for the
position of translator - quasi-confidential work and passable pay, five
pounds a week - were interviewed.
