It was wearing on the disposition to turn the leaves trying to find out how to ask somebody to pass the butter and find instead whole pages of parallel columns of translated sentences given over to such questions as "Where is the aunt of my stepfather's second cousin ?" As a rule a man does not go to Europe in time of war to look up his relatives by marriage.

He may even have gone there to avoid them.

War is terrible enough without lugging in all the remote kinsfolk a fellow has.

How much easier, then, to throw oneself on the superior educational qualifications of the German military machine.

Somebody was sure to have a linguistic life net there, rigged and ready for you to drop into.
It was so in this instance, as it has been so in many instances before and since.