I must make a confession to someone. I have wasted raw material which
is a substitute for something else indispensable for defeating the
Hun, and probably traitor is the right name for me. Let me explain.
Somewhere in Nutshire there is a place called Cotterham. It is one of
those little villages which somehow nobody expects to meet nowadays
outside the pages of a KATE GREENAWAY painting book. There is the
village green, with its pond and geese and absurdly pretty cottages
with gardens full of red bergamot and lads'-love, and a little
school where the children are still taught to curtsey and pull their
forelocks when the Squire goes by. And beyond the Green, at the end
of Plough Lane and after you have crossed Leg-o'-Mutton Common, you
come to Down Wood, and if you don't meet Little Red Riding-Hood on
the way or come on Snow White and her seven dwarfs, that is only
because you must have taken the wrong turning after you came through
the kissing-gate at the bottom of Lovers' Lane. I am a native of
Cotterham, and in my more reflective moments I wonder why such an
idyllic place should have produced anything so unromantic as myself,
His Majesty's Deputy Assistant Acting Inspector for All Sorts of
Unexpected Explosives. Cotterham still has a large place in my
affections, and it gave me a considerable shock the other day to get
a letter from the Squire, who is an old friend, asking me down for a
week-end, and adding, "You can do a little professional job for me
too. You really will be interested to see what splendid work is being
done here in your line of fire. The output is some of the best in the
district. But there has been trouble lately and the leaders of the two
biggest shifts were found to have appropriated a substantial part of
the output to their own uses. I shall rely on you to straighten things
out and suggest the right penalties."
So they were even making munitions in Cotterham. I conjured up visions
of interminable rows of huts, of thousands of overalled workers
swamping Plough Lane, trampling the Green brown, scaring the geese,
obliterating the immemorial shape of Leg-o'-Mutton Common by a
mushroom township, laying Down Wood low, and coming to me with some
miserable tale of petty pilfering for my adjustment. I must own I got
out of the train at Muddlehampstead and into the station fly feeling
distinctly low-spirited. It was some consolation to find that the
railway still stopped seven miles short of my village, though I
reflected gloomily that the place itself was doubtless a network of
light railways by this time. We bowled along in stately fashion up
Plough Lane and past Halfpenny Cross to the Manor House with its
thatched roof and Virginia-creeper all over the porch. The Squire
carried me off at once for the professional part of my visit, but we
fell to talking of fishing, which had been good, and cubbing, which
had been bad, and were on to Leg-o'-Mutton Common before I remembered
to speak of munitions.
"Not much sign of war here," I said with a relieved sigh. "I was
afraid they'd have spoilt the dear old heath for a certainty. Only
don't say it's Down Wood they've gone to, for that'd be more than I
could stand. I thought there were fairies there long after I ought
to have been a hard-headed young man of six, and if they've gone and
desecrated that wood with factories--"
The Squire smiled.
"I don't think I should worry. Amongst all your Unexpected Explosives
do you happen to condescend to have heard of the gentle horse-chestnut
and the school-children that collect them? Here are the two
delinquents I wrote to you about, and we've caught them in the act.
Just look at them wasting the precious things."
Two small boys were playing at conkers, two small boys with very
earnest faces and grubby clothes which never figured in KATE
GREENAWAY'S pictures, wasting precious material which five-and-thirty
other scholars were diligently collecting and stuffing into sacks. I
ought to have given them a lecture on patriotism--the army behind the
Army. But we each of us keep one childish passion untamed, even if we
are unromantic old bachelors, and I, His Majesty's Deputy Assistant
Acting Inspector for All Sorts of Unexpected Explosives and his very
loyal subject, who have lived for nearly half-a-century of Octobers in
London town--I borrowed the bigger conker and systematically and in
deadly earnest I fought and defeated the other small boy.
They say that treason never succeeds; so perhaps I can't be a traitor
after all.
* * * * *