A SPORTSMAN AFTER ALL.

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 143, 17 June 1916, Page 16

A SPORTSMAN AFTER ALL.

The following amusing story is told

by Bishop Bury In an article on prisoners of war, which he contributed to the Nineteenth Century and After:—"ln one of the camps where combatants were imprisoned a new non-commissioned officer had been added to the staff. The first night that he came on duty, before turning off the light, he said, by way of asserting himself: 'Now, you English swine, you worse than dogs and cats, and farmyard fowls, the light is going out. and if I hear a sound after that you'll suffer for it, I can te]l yon,' and so on. There was an instant silence, which to an Englishman would have been at once suspicious, but which was to the German non-commissioned officer an intense satisfaction. After a moment or two a 1 dog was heard barking loudly at the bottom of the room, and the sergeant, angry and surprised, went down to find and turn it out, muttering,. 'Everyone knows dogs are not allowed.' As he drew near the place two or three cats mewed and spat at each other just behind him. Startled and furious he wheeled round to find nothing, but to hear; at that end of the room he had just left, the shrill crowing of a cock. Growing very hot and angry he looked suspiciously at the silent and still forms of the men on every side, when suddenly they all lifted their heads and began to cough violently. The noise must have been almost as nerve-trying as shrapnel! With his hands to his ears he strode back to the place he had left, and turning round, with heated face, waited. When the coughing at last ceased, and there was quiet, he said .in an almost choiring voice, 'Gentlemen,' I'm sorry I said what I did. Will you think no more of it? I have my duty to do. Let us work together, and perhaps, after all, we may be friends.l Anyone who knows tho average Englishman there would know how. that appeal would go home, and how the men would say to themselves. 'He's a sportsman after all,' and go contentedly off to sleep, and that after such a. start they would give their officer no more unnecessary trouble."