Then I found that I required a better selection of technical works of all sorts. Engineers, especially, want engineering books and journals; it is a rest to the fighting man to pursue his peace-time interests or studies at the front. Nothing, one can well imagine, takes him out of khaki quicker; and that is what his books are for, nor will he shut them a worse soldier. Of devotional works, as I may have hinted, we opened with a fair number; this was increased later by a strong consignment from Tottenham Court Road. But it was impossible to be too strong on that side--with a Division of Jocks in the sector!
'It's the only subject that interests me,' said a tight-lipped Scottish Rifleman, quite simply, on the third day. He was not a man I would have surrendered to with much confidence on a dark night, but he had brought back a book called _The Fact of Christ_, and he wanted something else in the same category. Just then there was nothing; but with imbecile temerity I did say we had a number of 'religious novels' by a lady of great eminence. 'I'm no a believer in _her_,' was his only reply. I can still see his grim ghost of a smile. Himmel help the Hun who sees it first!
The young man vanished for his sixteen days, and in his absence came the bale of theology from Tottenham Court Road.
'Now I've got something for you,' said I when I saw his keen face again; and lifted off its shelf Dr. Norman Macleod's most weighty tome. I cannot check the Parisian typist who rendered the title _Caraid nan Gaidherl_; the subject, however, was the only one that interested the Scottish Rifleman, and I took the tongue for his very own. My mistake!
'But that'll be in Gaelic,' said he, without opening the book. 'I have never studied Gaelic, though a Highlander born. Now, had it been Hebrew,' and he really smiled, 'I micht have managed!'
I saw he might; for obviously he had been a theological student when he felt it incumbent upon him (especially as such) to play a Jock's part in the Holy War. I saw, too, that his smile was shy and gentle in its depths, only grim on top. I think, after all, he would have given his last cigarette to a prisoner of anything like his own manhood.
But there was one worse failure than any deficiency on our shelves, and that, alas! was my own poor dear New Book Table. I had not looked after it as I ought, and neither had my friend and fellow-worker; in my eagerness to keep our respective departments ideally distinct, this fancy one had fallen between two stools. Several of the new books were missing before we actually missed one; then we took nightly stock, and with mortifying results. At last it could go on no longer, and the new books were replaced by old bound volumes of magazines, more difficult to deport. But I was determined to have it out with the hut; and I chose the next Sunday evening service, in the course of which I made it a rule to have my say about things in general, for the delicate duty.