Esprit de Corps Read Online Free Page A

that at some time in the remotest past Mr. Tope had been in love with Bessie but he “had never Spoken”; perhaps he had fallen in love with both sisters simultaneously and had been unable to decide which to marry. At all events he sat in the “den” busy with the world news; every morning he called on me for advice. “We want the Herald to play its full part in the war effort,” he never failed to assure me gravely. “We are all in this together.” There was little I could do for him.
    At times I could not help feeling that the Herald was more trouble than it was worth. References, for example, to “Hitler’s nauseating inversion—the rocket-bomb” brought an immediate visit of protest from Herr Schpünk the German chargé, dictionary in hand, while the early stages of the war were greeted with BRITAIN DROPS BIGGEST EVER BOOB ON BERLIN. This caused mild specuulation as to whom this personage might be. Attempts, moreover, to provide serious and authoritative articles for the Herald written by members of the Embassy shared the same fate. Spalding, the commercial attaché who was trying to negotiate on behalf of the British Mining Industry, wrote a painstaking survey of the wood resources of Serbia which appeared under the startling banner BRITAIN TO BUY SERBIAN TIT-PROPS, while the the military attaché who was rash enough to contribute a short strategic survey of Suez found that the phrase “Canal Zone” was printed without a “C” throughout. There was nothing one could do. “One feels so desperately ashamed,” said Polk-Mowbray, “with all the resources of culture and so on that we have—that a British newspaper abroad should put out such disgusting gibberish. After all, it’s semi-official, the Council has subsidized it specially to spread the British Way of Life.… It’s not good enough.”
    But there was nothing much we could do. The Herald lurched from one extravagance to the next. Finally in the columns of Theatre Gossip there occurred a series of what Antrobus called Utter Disasters. The reader may be left to imagine what the Serbian compositors would be capable of doing to a witty urbane and deeply considered review of the 100,000th performance of Charley’s Aunt.
    The Herald expired with the invasion of Yugoslavia and the sisters were evacuated to Egypt where they performed prodigies of valour in nursing refugees. With the return to Belgrade, however, they found a suspicious Communist régime in power which ignored all their requests for permission to refloat the Herald. They brought their sorrows to the Embassy, where Polk-Mowbray received them with a stagey but absent-minded sympathy. He agreed to plead with Tito, but of course he never did. “If they start that paper up again,” he told his Chancery darkly, “I shall resign.” “They’d make a laughing stork out of you, sir,” said Spalding. (The pre-war mission had been returned almost unchanged.)
    Mr. Tope also returned and to everyone’s surprise had Spoken and had been accepted by Bessie; he was now comparatively affluent and was holding the post which in the old days used to be known as Neuter’s Correspondent—aptly or not who can say?
    â€œWell, I think the issue was very well compounded by getting the old girls an M.B.E. each for distinguished services to the British Way of Life. I’ll never forget the investiture with Bessie and Enid in tears and Mr. Tope swallowing like a toad. And all the headlines Spalding wrote for some future issue of the Herald: ‘Sister Roasted in Punk Champage after solemn investitute’.”
    â€œIt’s all very well to laugh,” said Antrobus severely, “but a whole generation of Serbs have had their English gouged and mauled by the Herald. Believe me, old man, only yesterday I had a letter from young Babic, you remember him?”
    â€œOf