February 22, njiy 
LAND & WATER 
Herr Leutnant 
By Centurion 
15 
Centurion gave a pen portrait of a British Lieutenant 
in Land & Water two weeks ago. This is, so to speak, 
a companion sketch. Both have been drawn from life. 
THIS story is prehistoric. That is to say it 
belongs to a time before tlie fateful fourth of 
August, 1 91 4. To be precise, I think it was in 
the year 1906. I had gone to Wiesbaden for a 
cure for gastric trouble in a " Klinik " run by a doctor, 
one Herr Gothein, who boasted a European reputation 
for the treatment of such maladies. He was a Jew, short 
dark, stout, with enormous hands which when they 
massaged you kneaded you like dough. His head 
was shaped like a note of interrogation — a head of 
the type that is to be seen by the thousand in the 
ghettoes of Whitechapel and among the eschatological 
remains in the tombs of Memphis. 
The house was pleasantly situated on a slope leading 
up to the Taunus woods. It was of the usual type of the 
more pretentious German houses — staring white stucco 
ornamented with plaster Cupids with fat buttocks whose 
sensual figures adhered like parasites to the walls and 
balconies. It seemed to ha\c been designed by an 
erotic pastrycook rather than by an architect. A verandah 
ran along the front of it. 
The " klinik " — which in England would be called a 
private nursing home attached to a .specialist's practice- 
contained about forty patients, or guests as they pre- 
ferred to be called. It was fitted up with electric 
batteries, electric baths, pine baths, and the usual furni- 
ture of a nursing home, including an enormous number 
of wicker easy-chairs which lay in wait everywhere for 
the nialadc iviaginairc. a profitable type of patient which 
Herr Doktor Gothein did not altogether discourage pro- 
vided tliey paid a fat deposit. I studied the guests at 
dinner on the night of my arrival after I had studied the 
menu, which contained the usual " Suppe " and 
" Kalbsflcisch" together with a number of dishes which 
seemed designed, as perhaps they were, to accentuate 
gastric trouble rather than to alleviate it. They were 
grossly sweet and every dish was served in a little bog of 
thick gravy or thicker syrup. Upon these dishes the 
guests fell voraciously, lapping up their contents with 
loud gurgles, chuckles, and sounds suggestive of the 
emptying of a bath when the waste'-plug has been 
released. Occasionally they found time to grunt 
" Ausgezeichnet." 
The women did not attract me— except one. They 
had the usual florid complexions, hips that might have 
sat to Rubens for some of his grosser figures, hair of a 
bleached yellow, large hands and larger feet. But there 
was one who was both young and pretty. She sat next 
a big ungainly man with hands like porterhouse steaks, 
whom I judged, by the indifference with which he treated 
her, to be her husband. On the other side of her was an 
empty chair from which she glanced to the door at 
intervals. At such moments her husband in turn glanced 
at her. But most of his time he gave to his food. Having 
finished his soup he lubbed his hands complacently as 
though he were washing them with invisible soap, and 
seemed well pleased with himself. 
Suddenly the door opened and a chorus of voices 
shouted beatilically : " Ah-h Herr Leutnant!" A 
youngish man of about thirty, in mufti, entered, and 
clicking his heels together .bowed from the hips ex- 
aggeratedly. He had a small, rather conical head 
broader at the base of the skull than at the top, as though 
Nature had put \\\f, head on upside down, high cheek- 
bones, a sensual mouth under a moustache like chopped 
straw, horse-hke teeth which he displayed in a grin that 
was meant to be a smile, and rather prominent ears. It 
is a type you may see by the thousand in the Friedrich- 
strasse m Berlin. He sat down in the emptv chair to 
the left of the lady, and laid his liand on his heart and 
bowed hke a dancing-master. Th,. lady blushed, th(> 
husband scowled, the guests tittered and exchanged 
satirical glances. The lieutenant, having devoured 
his soup and wiped his moustache with his serviette, 
put his elbows on the; table and proceeded to talk .to 
Madam, who lowered her eyes under a gaze that made 
no pretence of not being ardent. The husband scowled 
the more, but a timely word thrown at him by the lieu- 
tenant, like a bone to a dog, almost restored his good 
humour, and when the lieutenant reached behind the 
lady's chair and slapped him on the back at some 
pleasantry, his good humour seemed convalescent and 
his gratification was obvious. After all, it is not every 
day that the commercial class, the Kaufleute, are slapped 
on the back by a lieutenant in the Kaiser's Own Regiment 
of Pomeranian Hussars. By the end of dinner they 
were apparently boon companions, and frequently 
exchanged disparaging remarks about women in general, 
dismissing the whole sex with " Ach ! nur die Damen 1 " 
The lieutenant seemed to have forgotten the lady, who 
sat marooned between them, but I noticed that she and 
the lieutenant exchanged furtive glances at times. 
The meal concluded, Herr Doktor Gothein rose, and 
with him the rest rose also, their faces shining with the 
oily dishes they had consumed. Everyone bowed to his 
neighbour and said " Mahlzeit ! " which is a kind of social • 
grace offered up to the god of the belly and is not un- 
charitably translated " A Good Feed to you ! " 
We adjourned to the terrace. It was a hot summer 
evening and the verandah was dimly lighted with Chinese 
lanterns. The husband sat on the right hand side of the 
lady, the Lieutenant on the left ; the rest of us were 
grouped round about. I began talking with Herr Doktor 
about Goethe ; he called for a volume of the Gedichte 
and said in German, " I will read some to you." The 
lady said, "Ach! reizcnd ! Lcscn Sic cin Licbeslied, 
Herr Doktor, Bitte ! " {" How charming ! Read us one 
of the love-songs, doctor, do please !" ) 
And the doctor, who like most Jews ' had a strong 
histrionic strain in him, was nothing loth, and with 
simian movements of his prognathous jaw, his eyebrows, 
and his disengaged left hand read in a sentimental voice 
the poem Ndhe des Gelieblen ("Near the Beloved.") ; 
* Ich bin bet dir ; du seiot auch noch so feme, 
Du bist mir nah ! 
The lady lay back in her easy-chair luxuriously, with her 
eyes on the roof of the verandah. The Lieutenant took 
his cigar out of his mouth, and, talking across her with 
ostentatious indifference, he remarked to the husband 
that love was a thing he had no use for, a sentiment with 
which the latter entirely identified himself. At times 
the husband went one better in the expression of these 
exalted sentiments, as though to show that he too moved 
in the best circles. But I noticed that as the doctor 
continued to read aloud, a rapt expression stole over 
the lady's face. Her left hand was hangihg limply over 
the side of the chair and in the obscurity I, who sat 
behind, suddenly saw another hand, large and muscular, 
stroking it stealthily. It was the Lieutenant's. 
Meanwhile, Herr Doktor continued to read melli- 
fiuously until, growing more and more sentimental, his 
voice grew husky and tears rolled down his cheeks. 
He was now reading Trost im Thrdnen." ("Trust in 
the midst of Tears.") He had just reached the lines— 
]Vnd liab'ich einsani audi gcwcint 
So isi's mein cigner Schmerz. 
when something brushed against his feet and he stopped. 
It was his dog, which had hitherto been lying by the 
side of the lady's chair, but had by this time apparently 
found the explorations of the Lieutenant's hand in his 
neighbourhood getting tirdsome. The guests began to 
talk loudly and the doctor, finding his mastery of his 
audience gone, kicked the dog heavily and in a voice still 
broken by histrionic emotion, called him a " verdammcrt 
hund." The dog limped away howling. 1 
The spell, such as it was, was brokcrt. I went to bed. 
The next day the Lieutenant accosted me. 
" Ein Englander, Ja ? " he said, 
" Yes," I said. 
" Ah ! Your King Edward is honorary colonel of our 
• ." I am with thee. Be thou ever so far, thou art near me." 
♦ '■ And if I have also wept alone, tlien ia my sorrow my own." 
