Idiot's Handicap in five minutes. They can leave us out, though, eh?"
This went without saying. A run round the hall wasn't for old soldiers like them. This wretchedly taxing marathon trot was part of the Captain's basic routine, the principal item in his act, in fact. Captain Ratshelm stood in the center of the ring, while they all trotted round him for at least fifteen minutes on end.
To avoid this, Cadets Mösler, Weber and Rednitz went up to Kramer, the cadet who at present held the post of section senior, and Mösler said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world: " Kramer, we'll see to the equipment—all right?"
“What, again?" demanded Kramer irritably. “All three of you? You three always want the cushy jobs! I won't stand for it indefinitely, you know; people will start asking questions."
“If that's all they start asking questions about," said Rednitz amiably,” you can count yourself lucky."
“Are you threatening me?" asked Kramer indignantly. He was head sergeant and wanted to be shown a certain amount of respect. If people only asked him for this sort of thing politely, he was almost certain to agree pleasantly enough. But the behavior of these three cadets was beginning to look very much like blackmail. “You look out!" he muttered. “These hints of yours will land you in trouble. You can't prove anything—Lieutenant Barkow died a completely natural death."
“It depends on how you look at it," said Weber. “Death is always the most natural thing in the world, one way or another."
“We’ll have a talk about it some time," announced Mösler with a grin. “To-day we just want to spare you any unpleasantness—and we're the only people who can. For if we don't look after the sports equipment you can be sure you'll be down a medicine ball."
Kramer was quite smart enough to realize what was being hinted at here. The three of them had obviously managed to hide a medicine ball away in such a way that only they could find it again. If he wanted to save himself a lot of trouble and embarrassment he had no alternative but to give in to them. He muttered an obscenity under his breath before giving the order: “Mösler, Weber and Rednitz are to see to the equipment."
Which meant that for these three the games period had ended before it had begun. It would have taken an inexperienced recruit less than ten minutes to collect and return the sports equipment, but since these were old soldiers, a good half-hour would be required. And by that time the circus performance would be over.
“Friends!” said Cadet Weber. “We must now discuss our plan of campaign—we've lots of time for it. I must say I can't get the idea of those women out of my head. I take it as a personal affront to my virility that these wretched little girls should be running around so pathetically dissatisfied."
“Let me have your attention a moment, fellows!" said Captain Ratshelm after looking at his watch. “We’ve just got time to sharpen up our wits a little, in accordance with the principle Mens sana in corpore sano, you know. You all understand what that means?"
There was hardly anyone who didn't understand what that meant. It meant that before his last great closing number, before the last communal exertion of the day, Captain Ratshelm intended to indulge in a little theoretical work. Noncommissioned officers might be content to know how a thing was done, but officers needed to know why it was done. It was to this end therefore that Captain Ratshelm collected his cadets around him in a semicircle and asked searchingly: “Why actually do we play games?"
“I often ask myself that!" whispered a cadet at the back.
Captain Ratshelm ignored this, chiefly because it never occurred to him that anyone would have dared to whisper in his presence. He gazed straight into the keen, eager faces of the cadets. For one of the slogans of the training school, laid down by the course commanders, stated that there were no questions to which an officer did not have an answer.
Ratshelm looked at Hochbauer with a momentary tingle of pleasure at the cadet's fine, upstanding appearance. His fine blue eyes, betraying both confidence and humility, radiated his respect for his commanding officer. Siegfried must have had something of the same look when his glance rested on Kriemhilde. And Hochbauer thrust his powerful, manly chin slightly forward, a gesture equivalent to the raised hand of the eager schoolboy denoting that he was burning to be asked.
“Well, Hochbauer?" asked the Captain. A shiver ran down the cadet's spine as he sprang to attention in exemplary fashion, looked his superior officer straight in the eye, and spoke out: “Games steel the body, sir, but a healthy body contains a healthy mind as well. Games make one versatile, and versatility is one of the finest qualities in the German character."
It was as if the answer had been turned out by a machine —curt, crisp and precise. In short, beyond reproach. Ratshelm was very pleased. He nodded and said: “Good, Hochbauer."
Hochbauer seemed to swell with pride and happiness, though his face remained admirably self-controlled. He stayed as rigid as ever, with the merest flicker of a smile playing about his lips. But his eyes radiated warmth. He bared his teeth slightly, almost imperceptibly. They too were splendid and he would have made an admirable toothpaste advertisement: Healthy teeth denote a healthy mind—officers prefer Blendol.
But Ratshelm continued his theoretical instruction with the question: " Are games an officer's concern?"
“Only in so far as his subordinates have to play them," whispered the cadet at the back.
But a cadet in front gave the required answer: "An officer is concerned with everything that promotes military efficiency, instills discipline and maintains and indeed develops a high standard of general fitness. Games are an excellent way of improving military discipline. A good officer organizes games and takes part in them himself; he has to set an example in everything."
Ratshelm decided that that would do. The excellent answers were fully up to the standard of the earlier performance. He had every reason to be content with this section of his and could only hope and pray that the successor of the late Lieutenant Barkow would prove worthy of them. Such first-rate human material deserved the greatest possible care.
Captain Ratshelm now gave orders for the run round the gym to begin, planning that it should last about twenty minutes. To guarantee a good steady pace he put Hochbauer in front, and, to prevent any weakening in the center, made Kramer, the section senior, bring up the rear. Off they trotted in this formation.
Letting his glance wander up from the cadets' legs to their faces, Ratshelm was surprised to find the correct expression of enthusiasm missing. In vain he searched for that fine eager glow of manly zest which should have distinguished the officers of the future, particularly those whose privilege it was to grow to their full stature under his tutelage.
But perhaps the sudden death of Lieutenant Barkow had depressed the cadets. It might have been, too, that the regrettably incomplete funeral ceremony of the early afternoon had made an unfavorable impression on them. Then there was the unpleasantness of the investigation being conducted by Judge-Advocate Wirrmann into the Barkow affair —an unavoidable procedure, perhaps, but one well calculated to bewilder them.
Thinking along these lines, Ratshelm found the situation deeply moving. Young men who had been selected to be officers, he told himself, needed to be shown the importance of esprit de corps in the circle to which they aspired. So, acting on a spontaneous impulse, he once again gathered H Section about him.
The
