Welsh Journals

IT is exactly four years since Hans came first to the Welsh College, and as I gaze on his photo a neat little snap' taken one day on his return from a pull in the College boat-I find myself wondcring what he is now doing. Is he among the thousands who have fallen on the Belgian frontier or in the frozen swamps of Poland? Or is he, a wounded here, proudly displaying an Iron Cross in the little Bavarian village where was his home ? Perhaps he is still singing Die Wacht am Rhein, singing it now, may be, in his big gruff tones, not as he sang it in those days gone by, what time he thumped the big mahogany table in the sitting-room, but joining in a aunp fire chorus, or enlivening the tense moments of waiting and watching in the trenches, whilst the shells scream overhead or the monotonous whirr of the Taubes floats down from above. He came to us, I remember, from Paris, where he had spent some months at the Sorbonne. About his lectures he spoke little, nay, scarcely at all. But the life of Paris, the crowds, the gaiety, the panorama of its street and boulevards, the Seine and its bridges even his lethargic conversation sparkled as he recalled those golden days when he had fleeted the time carelessly. He was big and fat and slow of movement, but he used to laugh at his own fatness and take such pride in his girth measurements that we laughed, too, at him and with him, so infectious was his enjoyment of himself. He was tickled to death when we nicknamed him Falstaff, and swore 'twas a good jest and that he would remember it for ever. I wonder if he ever thinks of those days. Supper was the event of the day. I do not know why. I have never been in Germany and know nothing of the household timetable there. Anyhow, in the morning you would find Hans jovial, in the afternoon a trifle stolid, but at the evening meal he was good nature itself. Humour oozed from him, laughter seemed to trickle forth and he radiated so jolly an atmosphere that those of us who so often supped with him would not have missed it for the world. How he enjoyed the grub How he smacked his lips How loudly burst forth the roars of laughter when we swoie we could see him swelling wisibly' as Sam Weller would put it. And then he would break out with a snatch of a student song, sometimes a rollicking, dashing drinking song,- Wein, weib und Gesang as its theme sometimes the plaintive strains of one of his old folk-songs which we too learned to love and-it is not high treason to confess-remember. That was only four years ago: but it seems centuries since Hans' deep voice roared out his glorious Studentcnucder and we with one HANS accord took up the chorus and shouted it out again and again until the landlady came with mild apologies and requests for diminuendos. And now my wildest imaginations cannot picture the Hans of those mad evenings in a spiked helmet. We used often to ask him his views on Great Britain and Germany, for most of us were keen students of high politics, and those days were full days with wars and rumours of wars and European crises and Guildhall speeches almost every month. But Hans would not say much. He either did not think about it or did not wish to speak his thoughts. Often he would mock, but always in a good humour- ed way, the Officers' Training Corps and say it wa; playing at soldiers and that the goose-step would have made men of them. But I cannot recall any reference of his to the veiled antagonism that even then was revealing itself, or even any hint that he had given the least thought to the complex and profound differences in national character and national ambitions, to the crooked and tortuous international policy of the Fatherland of which he was so proud, to the naked ugliness of the brutish militarism of which apparently he could only see the gaudy trappings, the flashing sabres, the silver helmets, the ceremonial rubbish, to all the stealthy, unswerving purpose which was destined to let loose on Europe, nay on the world, the cruel dogs of war. Of course not. This is all from the Briton's point of view, and if one could now read the thoughts of Hans, no doubt one would find misgivings and perplexities and perhaps amazement at the astonishing duplicity of the mad British who had upset the cut and dried abstract schemes of the German philosophers, those kindly bespectacled men who would purge and refine the world with blood and iron and, having banished such gross impurities as British love of freedom and the pledged word, and French regard for honour and the unwritten moral law, would heal its wounds by the heaven-sent balm of Teutonic culture, and Teu- tonic dominion, whereby alone the peoples of the free democracies, poor deluded fools! would find their true destiny. Perhaps Hans did think a little, a very little, about these things. Perhaps after all behind that solid bulk, and that hearty ringing laugh there was the soul of the idealist, who saw the Eagle floating unchallenged over every sea and many lands. Perhaps Hans too, like so many of the leaders of his people, lived to think. I cannot tell. But it certainly perplexes me when I think of him in a spiked helmet. I ask myself often what are his thoughts about the country where he spent so many happy months.