Explore "Escape and other essays" by A.C. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I saw in one of the daily illustrated papers the other day a little picture -- a snapshot from the front -- which filled me with a curious emotion. It was taken in some village behind the German lines. A handsome, upright boy of about seventeen, holding an accordion under his arm -- a wandering Russian minstrel, says the comment -- has been brought before a fat, elderly, Landsturm officer to be interrogated. The officer towers up, in a spiked helmet, holding his sword-hilt in one hand and field-glasses in the other, looking down at the boy truculently and fiercely. Another officer stands by smiling. The boy himself is gazing up, nervous and frightened, staring at his formidable captor, a peasant beside him, also looking agitated. There is nothing to indicate what happened, but I hope they let the boy go! The officer seemed to me to typify the tyranny of human aggressiveness, at its stupidest and ugliest.
The boy, graceful, appealing, harmless, appeared, I thought, to stand for the spirit of beauty, which wanders about the world, lost in its own dreams, and liable to be called sharply to account when it strays within the reach of human aggressiveness occupied in the congenial task of making havoc of the world's peaceful labours.