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. On the second occasion, after waiting
in an ante-room full of bearded and be-spectacled monsters such as haunt
the British Museum Library, I was summoned before a board of reverend
elders, who put me through a catechism, drowsy but prolonged, as to my
qualifications and antecedents. It was a systematic affair. Could I
decipher German manuscripts? Let them show me their toughest one, I
said. No! It was merely a pro forma question; they had enough German
translators on the staff. So the interrogation went on. They were going
to make sure of their man, in whom, I must say, they took little
interest save when they learnt that he had passed a Civil Service
examination in Russian and another in International Law. At that
moment--though I may be mistaken--they seemed to prick up their ears.
Not long afterwards I was allowed to depart, with the assurance that I
might hear further.

Their inquiries into my attainments and references must have given