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.