The children had all been examined, and one lad stood alone; he had no
card and no one could place him. Then he confessed that he was a
stowaway who had been too old to join the batch, and had boarded the
train quietly at Vienna. Mrs. Ensor, the secretary of the Famine Area
Committee, proved herself a sport by declaring that she would take him
to England. The good Dutch folk also rose to the occasion, and went
out and bought him a pair of short trousers.
In the afternoon I sat down beside a few boys. And then I did a fatal
thing. A boy dropped his pencil and I picked it up, threw it over the
house . . . and then produced it from another lad's pocket. That did
it. In two seconds I had a hundred children round me roaring at me.
An Austrian lady explained that they were calling me a magician and
asking for more. I blushingly told her to explain to them that it was
my only trick. Sighs of disgust followed, and I was on the point of
losing my popularity when I hastily got the lady to explain to them
that I had a better talent . . . I could make anyone laugh merely by
looking at him. Fifty of them at once challenged me to begin, and I
had a great time. One lad beat me, but then he had toothache, a
blistered heel, and was homesick.
After a time I asked them to sing to me, and they sang sweet folk songs
of their home. They were delightful singers, and the boys sang as
eagerly and as well as the girls. In England boys usually hate
singing. I marvelled at their all knowing the same songs, and one of
the girls explained to me that in Austria every school has the same
songs; more than that, every school has the same class-books, and if
two children living a hundred miles apart meet on the street they can
say to each other: "I'm at page 67 of my Geography. What page are you
at?"
They demanded a song from me, and I sang _Now is the Month of Maying_,
and, by special request, _Tipperary_. Then I asked them to sing their
National Anthem, and the lady began it, but the children did not follow
her. At my look of surprise the lady said: "They cannot sing it
because now they feel that they have no Austria left to sing about."
A man's voice sounded from inside the building, and they rushed
indoors, for it was the voice of their beloved Ministry of Health
doctor, who had brought them from Vienna, and they all loved him. They
forgot me at once and left me . . . all but one. Little Hansi put her
wee hand in mine and snuggled closer . . . and that's why I love her so
very much.
On Tuesday morning they all took up their packs, and we set off for
England via the Maas boat and station. We packed into carriages and
set off. There was no water on the train, but we laughed and said:
"We'll be in Flushing in two hours! We are a special!" We were. We
left the Maas station at one o'clock, and we travelled until three.
Then we drew up . . . and found we were back at the Maas station.
Where we had been I don't know, but it was the biggest mystery of my
life. Well, we crawled along past picturesque villages where women
with white caps and red arms smiled on us and gave us water to drink.
And at eight o'clock we reached Flushing all very weary and extremely
dirty. The kiddies had a good meal set out on white tablecloths, and
the doctor and I had the best Pilsener of our lives. We handed over
the kiddies to the ship stewards and the fresh escort from England, and
retired to rest.
I awoke at six and found that all the children were on deck, and the
bad English boy almost in the water, for his heels were off the ground
and his head far down towards the water. He was looking for fish, he
said. None of the children had seen the sea before, but I think they
were too tired to be excited about it. They did become excited when
they saw the cliffs of Dover.
Much to my annoyance a gentleman had been teaching them _God Save the
King_ on the way over. I was annoyed because I knew it was a piece of
jingoism meant for the journalists at Folkestone. When we drew up at
the pier, sure enough the gentleman struck up the tune, and the kiddies
sang it. But the girls who could speak English sang _God Save YOUR
Gracious King_. I thought it a beautiful touch; the finest piece of
good taste I have ever come across.
I didn't like the well-dressed ladies who came bossing around at
Folkestone. Frankly I was jealous. As I was leading the children off
the steamer, one of them touched me on the arm and asked me to make way
for the children. And I smiled to see that the women in rich dresses
managed somehow to get in front of the camera.
We took the children to Sandwich by rail and then to a camp by motor
lorry. It was a tiresome job loading and unloading the lorry, but
after six trips I found that every child was in camp. I went off to
have a wash and some tea, and then, glowing with self-satisfaction at
all I had done, I lit a cigar and walked outside. A gentleman passed
me.
"Are you a worker?" he demanded.
"I--er--I suppose I am--in a way," I said modestly.
"Well, don't you think you might find something to do?" he asked.
"There's plenty to do, you know."
Then for the first time in my life I understood the old Mons Ribbon men
who used to annihilate the recruit with the terse phrase: "Afore you
came up!"
The pressmen passed by, a dozen of them with the stowaway in their
midst. Presently they posed him and a dozen cameras snapped while a
cinema burred. And next day the papers told a romantic story; the
stowaway had crept into the train at Vienna, and, foodless, had hid
until he arrived in Rotterdam. Then darkly he had crept on board the
ship and had been discovered at Folkestone. Also when next day I saw
in the pictorial papers a photograph of a boy violinist playing to his
chums, I was not very much surprised to find the title of the photo
was: _The Stowaway Entertains His Companions_. As a matter of fact,
the fiddler wasn't the stowaway at all, but this incident makes me
think hard about history. If a Fleet Street reporter changes one boy
into another, why, we may be all wrong in our history. Henry VIII. may
only have had one wife, and the reporter who interviewed him may have
had so much sack to drink that his vision along with the journalistic
touch may have manufactured the other five. The tale of King Harold
being shot through the eye at the Battle of Hastings may have arisen
from a reporter's using the figurative expression that William the
Conqueror "put his eye out." Nor, after reading the account of the
landing of the Austrian children, can I believe the tale of the
minstrel Taillifer who sprang into the water to lead the Normans in
landing. And as for the time-honoured phrases, "Take away that
bauble!" and "England expects every man to do his duty," I don't
believe they were ever uttered--not now.
I am not singling out journalists as special misreporters. Not one of
us can report an incident truly. There is a good example of this truth
in Swift's _Psychology and Everyday Life_, just published. Swift
prepared a stunt as a test for his adult class. In the midst of a
serious lecture two men and two women students created a disturbance
outside in the lobby, then they burst into the room. One held a banana
pistol-wise at another's head. Swift dropped a toy bomb, and one of
the students staggered back crying: "I'm shot!"
One student dropped a parcel containing a brick, and all yelled and
made much noise. The class was seriously alarmed until they were
assured that the whole affair was a put-up job. Each student was asked
to write an account of what had happened, and the result of their
attempts is so astounding that the reader becomes uncertain whether any
witness in a law-court ever tells the truth. Few, if any, students
could identify one of the wranglers; every account said that the banana
was a real pistol; only one or two saw the brick drop. The strangest
thing was that many were quite sure of the identity of the actors . . .
and one or two of the accounts named students who had long since left
the college. I write from memory, but the facts were as arresting as
the ones I have given.
This makes one uneasy about the methods the police adopt to identify a
prisoner. If I saw a man shoot another in Piccadilly, it is a thousand
to one chance that I should not be able to identify him later. Yet
many a man has been hanged on identification.
But I meant to finish my account of the Austrian kiddies. The time
came when I had to leave them and return to London. I set out to find
my Hansi to say good-bye to her. I saw her in the distance . . . and
then I ran away, for I hate saying good-bye.
I liked those kiddies, dear wee souls, just as sweet as any English
kiddies, but then children have no nationality; they are lovable for
they all belong to the Never Never Land. Barrie proved himself a
genius when he created Peter Pan, for Peter symbolises man's highest
wish--to become a little child and never grow up. "Genius," he says,
"is the power of being a boy again at will." It is true in his case.
Yet this kind of genius is retrospective; it is a regression. The
genius who will help man to look forward instead of backward must not
return to boyhood; he must go forward to superman. To put it
psychologically, Barrie's genius comes from the unconscious, but what
the world needs is a man whose genius will come from the
superconscious, the divine.