SOME REFLECTIONS OF AN ALIEN ENEMY. THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN BEING
AND FEELING AN ENGLISHMAN. BY A. CzacH. AFTER having lived in England long enough to have practically forgotten my Czech origin and to have come to feel to all intents and purposes an Englishman, it is not surprising that the term "alien enemy" did not at ones seem to concern me personally. In the interval between the declaration of war on Austria and the already existing state of war with Germany, it scarcely occurred to me to view the position of German subjects as a mere forecast of my own possibly imminent fate. To what extent I instinctively identified myself with the cause of England (incidentally, after all, though not explicitly, the cause of my own nation) may be seen from the fact that, at first, I felt even less lenient to German subjects than Englishmen themselves.
The fact that I myself was taken for a spy even before my becoming legally an alien enemy ought to have struck me as a piece of poetic justice : he who digs a pit for another should himself fall in it I But now I felt violently indignant. Could not the slightly intoxicated fellow who misconstrued the preoccupation involved in my leisurely act of making a cigarette, punctuated by a few dreamy glances at the beautiful valley stretching away to the right of the high road, into an act of sketching a plan of some unknown strategical import- ance—could he not see that a spy could never find a home in my body, however foreign its appearance P However, back to the police station of the town I had just left behind, on my return home a few miles away, I had to go. And on the whole, who knows P but for this incident, my feeling too much of an Englishman might have made me entirely overlook the necessity for registering myself.
Certainly the consequences of an apparent attempt at evading registration would have been the shortest way—if we confine ourselves, that is, to the purely theoretical aspect of the matter—of curing me of the undue excess of my English sympathies. Nevertheless, the spirit of the war took care to give the shock of my being taken for a spy a more enduring form. If this war is to establish duly the principle of nationality. I must be made to realize that to feel an Englishman is one thing and to be one quite another. The five miles limit involved no change in my mode of life, seeing that for years I have been living almost the life of a recluse. Accordingly, the decree went forth that alien enemies must be rounded up ! And that this is, indeed, just as efficient as, though somewhat more roundabout than, the originally suggested way of making an alien enemy I had an ample opportunity to realize, subjectively and objectively, during my internment. The only reason that I still manage to keep alive my English sympathies must be sought apparently in the fact that I was released somewhat too soon.
Not that the treatment was worse than could be expected in the circumstances. In any case, as regards physical comfort, even the worst possible alien enemy camp would have seemed like heaven to the rank-and-file in the trenches. No, the process of gradual cooling of the original exuberant enthusiasm for England would not have been arrested even though we—speaking of those sharing my sentiments—had been lodged and fed in a first-class hotel. After all, even the best treatment could not have effaced the real import of our simply being there we smarted under the consciousness that our honesty, the greatest treasure of a self-respecting man, was in question. The fact of having been suddenly snatched away from our homes and their sweet ties, their labours and rewards, at a moment's notice (in some cases handcuffed!), and for an apparently quite indefinite period, without any further reason except that of not having been born in England, presented itself to us in the light of a monstrous injustice. The never-ending question was: Here we are by England's Might, but by what Right ? And after having fully sided with England prituarily on account of her stand against
the German doctrine of Might being the only Right, what wonder that our directly personal experience of the utterly crushing import of this doctrine at her hands was becoming too great a strain on our loyal attitude to her? As is well known, unrequited lore begets hatred ; and we, most of us, were sincerely attached to England, our second Motherland.
What I most regret having lost is my previous unawareness of there being any difference between me and Englishmen. In saying we, I used to mean we English people ; somehow or other I find myself now compelled to distinguish between me, a foreigner, and you, English people. Quite proper that it should been; yet at the same time I feel as though I had lost my birthright. The disappearance of my instinctive sense of identity with my fellow-men, qnite irrespective of their nationality, fills me with sadness. An invisible, yet for all that quite tangible, barrier seems to have arisen around me. I shrink from meeting you lest I be taken for a spy ! Occasionally my thoughts flit back to what I am now at last compelled to acknowledge as my own country; to that charm- ing valley in far-away Moravia, the scene of my childish woes and joys. There at least no one could cast in my teeth the fact of not having been born there—a reproach so easily made by people who, just because they never had to leave their own country, remain unaware of the pang of pain they are thoughtlessly, but none the less cruelly, inflicting on those who, like myself, can only vainly sigh for their lost home. Only sigh for, after having finally settled in a foreign—if foreign it needs must be—country; after having adopted its customs, formed a heartfelt union with one of its daughters, learned even to think in its tongue, and done one's best to deserve the right of living and dying there—bow can one really think of returning, as it is pat, items? This returning would amount to going into exile! Yet, alas I the country one has come to love even deeper than the country of one's child- hood insists on remaining only a step-motherland.
Yes, home, sweet home; but—where is my home ?
FRANCIS SEDLI.N,
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