Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, July 25, 1917

Excerpt

HOW TO CURE THE BOSCH.

"Yes, I seen a good bit o' the Bosch, one way and another, before he got me in the leg," said Corporal Digweed. "Eighteen months I had with 'im spiteful, and four months with 'im tame. Meaning by that four months guarding German prisoners."

"And what do you think of him at the end of it?" I asked.

Digweed leant back with a heavily judicial air.

"Some o' these Peace blighters seem to think he's a little angel, basin' their opinion, I suppose, on something I must 'a' missed during my time out. On the other hand there's a tidy few thinks that one German left will spoil the earth. Now me, I holds they're both wrong. The second's nearer than what the first is, I don't deny. But a incident what occurred in that Prisoners' Camp set me thinking that you might make something o' Fritz yet, if you only had the time and the patience.

"We had a batch of prisoners come in what I saw at once was a different brand to the usual. There wasn't that—well, that distressin' lack o' humility that you mostly finds showin' itself after we've had them a week or two. There seemed about 'em almost a sort o' willingness to learn that put 'em in a class by themselves. I sez to the interpreter, 'There's something odd about that lot. You find out what it is;' which he does. And what do you think it was? They was convicts. All men in for a long term, what had served five years and more o' their sentences and was let out to fight.

"It seemed to me at first the rummiest thing that ever I see. But I've thought it over and thought it over, and now it's as clear as day. When the Bosch is kept in a watertight compartment for a bit, he gets back to being more or less of a human being. His whole trouble's really through being surrounded by other Bosches. They get tellin' each other what a great nation they are, and how they was born to inherit the earth, and that it's only forestalling nature a bit to go and take it now, and so on—each going one better than the last. They keep on contaminatin' one another till what do you get? Why, me and you spending our old age a-teaching of 'em humility.

"Now, with these 'ere convicts it was another story. 'Stead o' keep talkin' about German culture and what rotters all the rest o' the world was, their heads had plenty o' time to cool while they picked their oakum or what not—resultin' in quite a fairly decent lot o' men, as I say. Yes, it's very interesting and instructive. I believe it's the solution of the question, 'How to cure the Bosch,' I do. If you could keep 'em all apart from each other for five years you'd find they'd be quite different. I daresay they wouldn't mind it so much either."

"If I was a Bosch I should be thankful," I said. "But wouldn't there be difficulties about this segregation?"

Digweed waved them aside.

"There's always difficulties," he said. "But you mark my words, that's the thing to do. It would help it along, too, to give 'em the right sort of books and papers to read. Why, if you worked the thing properly, they might mostly be cured in two years or two and a half."

I shook my head....