“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.  “There are some you’ll never cure,” I said.

“There’d be stubborn cases, I won’t deny.  And a few incurables, as you say.  But the first thing to do is to advertise the idea.  You make a speech about it, Sir.  When you’re proposing a vote of thanks to a Duchess for openin’ a bazaar, you bring it up.  I’ve heard people before now take that kind of opportunity to bring something forward what they’d got on their chest.”

“I’m not likely to get a chance like that,” I said; “but I’ll see if I can write an article about it.”

Whether Digweed will consider the article worthy of the subject I cannot say.  Perhaps the Editor of Punch is less fastidious.