Part 5

But he said he was sick of the atmosphere in the diner. We asked for l’addition and argued over who should pay it. I won, and when he had been given his change we returned to our own car, where mademoiselle demonstrated her fear of my expected outbreak by going to sleep.

We turned our attention to the scenery, the most striking feature of which was the abundance of boche prisoners at work in the fields.

“Lucky stiffs!” said the captain. “The war is over for them if they can just manage not to escape, and I guess there’s no difficulty about that. Better food than the soldiers, a soft job, and a bed to sleep in. And wages besides. Every private in the Fritz army would surrender if the officers hadn’t given them a lot of bunk about the way German prisoners are treated. They make them believe we cut off their feet and ears and give them one peanut and a glass of water every two weeks.”

Paris hove into view, and we quarreled about the girl. The fair thing, we decided, would be to turn over her and her baggage to a porter and wish her many happy returns of the day. We were spared this painful duty, however, for when she awoke she treated both of us as strangers. And the gentleman who attended to her baggage was not a porter, but a French aviator, waiting on the station platform for that very purpose.

“She’ll tell him,” guessed the captain, “that an American soldier and half Indian tried to flirt with her on the train, but she froze them out.”

Captain Jones stuck with me till my exit ticket was procured, a chore that ate up over an hour. Then we climbed into a dreadnought and came to this hotel, where I sat right down and versified as follows:

TO AN AMERICAN SOLDIER

_If you don’t like the nickname Sammy, If it’s not all a nickname should be, You can pick out Pat or Mike, Whatever name you like-- It won’t make no difference to me. Want a Thomas or Harry or Dick name? Dost prefer to be called Joe or Lou? You’ve a right to your choice of a nickname; Oh, Mr. Yank, it’s up to you._

V

MY ADVENTURES AT THE BRITISH FRONT

_Monday, September 3. Paris._

In this morning’s mail was a letter from Somewhere in London, replying favorably to my request to go to the British front. I was directed to take the letter to the assistant provost marshal, who would slip me a pass and inform me as to the details of the trip.

At the A. P. M.’s I was given the pass and with it “an undertaking to be signed by all intending visitors to the front.” There are ten rules in the undertaking, and some of them are going to be hard to obey. For example:

“I understand that it is impossible to arrange for me to see relatives serving with the fighting forces.”

“I will not visit the enemy front during the present war.”

But No. 6 is the tough one:

“In no circumstances will I deliver a political or electioneering speech to troops.”

I must pray for strength to resist natural impulses along this line.

Wednesday morning, said the A. P. M., would be our starting time. And he told us when and where to take the train--“us” because I am to be accompanied by a regular correspondent, one who carries a cane and everything.

Mr. Gibbons, the regular correspondent, informs me I must wear a uniform, and to-morrow morning I am to try on his extra one, which he has kindly offered.

Another chore scheduled for to-morrow is the squaring of myself with the boss of the French Maison de la Presse, who invited me to visit the devastated territory Thursday and Friday. The invitation was accepted, but the British and French dates conflict, and I would rather see one real, live front than any number of broken-down barns and boched trees.

_Tuesday, September 4. Paris._

I reported, after the French idea of breakfast, at the Maison de la Presse. This is situate on the fourth floor of a building equipped with an elevator that proves the fallacy of the proverb “What goes up must come down.” You can dimly see it at the top of the shaft, and no amount of button pushing or rope pulling budges it.

During the long climb I rehearsed the speech of apology and condolence framed last night, and wondered whether monsieur would be game and try to smile or break down completely or fly into a rage. He was game, and he not only tried to smile, but succeeded. And his smile was in perfect simulation of relief. These French are wonderful actors.

I returned thence to Mr. Gibbons’ room for my fitting. His extra uniform consisted of a British officer’s coat and riding breeches, puttees and shoes. Cap and khaki shirt I had to go out and purchase. The store I first selected was a gyp joint and wanted twenty-seven francs for a cap. I went to another store and got exactly the same thing for twenty-six. A careful shopper can save a lot of money in Paris.

Provided with cap and shirt, the latter costing a franc less than the former, I went to a secluded spot and tried on the outfit, Mr. Gibbons assisting. We managed the puttees in thirty-five minutes. It is said that a man working alone can don them in an hour, provided he is experienced.

“You look,” Mr. Gibbons remarked when I was fully dressed, “as if you had been poured into it.”

But I felt as if I hadn’t said “when” quite soon enough. Mr. Gibbons and I differ in two important particulars--knee joints--and though I tried to seem perfectly comfortable, my knees were fairly groaning to be free of the breeches and out in the open fields.

“Wear it the rest of the day and get used to it,” advised Mr. Gibbons.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to rumple it all up. I want to keep it neat for to-morrow.” And against his protest I tore myself out and resumed my humble Chicago garb.

It’s no wonder regular correspondents and British officers are obliged to wear canes. The wonder is that they don’t use crutches.

We leave at nine to-morrow morning. This means that myself and puttees will have to get up at four.

_Wednesday, September 5. With the British._

The major has a very good sense of the fitness of things. The room where I’m writing, by candlelight, is the best guest room in our château and was once occupied by the queen.

The rules of the household call for the dousing of down-stairs glims at eleven o’clock. After that you may either remain down there in total darkness or come up here and bask in the brilliant rays of a candle. You should, I presume, be sleepy enough to go right to bed, but you’re afraid you might forget something if you put off the day’s record till to-morrow.

I overslept myself, as they say, and had to get Mr. Gibbons to help with the puttees. The lower part of the breeches, I found, could be loosened just enough to make the knee area inhabitable.

[Illustration: “You look as if you had been poured into it”]

We skipped breakfast and reached the station in a taxi without hitting anything. It was fifteen minutes before train time, but there wasn’t a vacant seat in the train. A few of the seats were occupied by poilus, and the rest by poilus’ parcels and newspapers. A Frenchman always gets to a nine o’clock train by seven-thirty. He picks one seat for himself and one or two on each side of him for his impedimenta. This usually insures him privacy and plenty of room, for it is considered an overt act even to pick up a magazine and sit in its place. Mr. Gibbons and I walked from one end of the train to the other and half-way back again without any one’s taking a hint. We climbed into a carriage just as she started to move. There were six seats and three occupants. We inquired whether all the seats were reserved, and were given to understand that they were, the owners of three having gone to a mythical dining-car.

We went into the aisle and found standing room among the Australians and Canadians returning from their leave. One of the former, a young, red-headed, scrappy-looking captain, smiled sympathetically and broke open a conversation. I was glad of it, for it gave me an opportunity of further study of the language. I am a glutton for languages, and the whole day has been a feast. We have listened to six different kinds--Australian, Canadian, British, French, Chinese and Harvard. I have acquired an almost perfect understanding of British, Australian and Canadian, which are somewhat similar, and of Harvard, which I studied a little back home. French and Chinese I find more difficult, and I doubt that any one could master either inside of a month or so.

The red-headed captain remarked on the crowded condition of the trine. That is Australian as well as British for train. The Canadian is like our word, and the French is spelled the same, but is pronounced as if a goat were saying it. Lack of space prevents the publication of the Chinese term.

One of the captain’s best pals, he told us, had just been severely wounded. He was a gime one, though even smaller than the captain. The captain recalled one night when he, the pal, took prisoner a boche lieutenant who stood over six feet. Fritz was asked whether he spoke English. He shook his head. He was asked whether he spoke French. He lost his temper and, in English, called the entire continent of Australia a bad name. The captain’s little pal then marched him off to the proper authority, to be questioned in English. On the way the captain’s little pal made him take off his helmet and give it to him. This was as punishment for what Fritz had said about Australia.

Before the proper authority Fritz was as sweet-tempered as a bloody bear. This puzzled the proper authority, for making a boche prisoner is doing him a big favor.

“What iles you?” asked the authority when Fritz had refused to reply to any of a dozen questions. “You ine’t the first bloody boche officer we’ve tiken.”

Then Fritz bared his grievance. He didn’t mind, he said, being a prisoner. The size of his captor was the thing that galled. “And for Gott’s sake,” he added, “make him give back my helmet.”

The proper authority turned to the captain’s little pal. “He’s your prisoner,” he said. “What do you want to do with the helmet?”

“Keep it, sir,” said the captain’s little pal.

And it will be used back in Australia some day to illustrate the story, which by that time will doubtless have more trimmings.

“But how about Fritz?” I asked. “When he gets home and tells the same story, he’ll have nothing with which to prove it.”

“He ine’t agoin’ to tell the sime story.”

We were welcomed at our destination by a captain, another regular correspondent, and two good English cars. The captain said he was expecting another guest on this train, a Harvard professor on research work bent.

“I have no idea what he looks like,” said the captain.

“I have,” said Mr. Gibbons and I in concert, but it went over the top.

The professor appeared at length, and we were all whisked some thirty kilometers to a luncheon worth having. Afterward we were taken to the Chinese camp. Chinatown, we’ll call it, is where the Chink laborers are mobilized when they first arrive and kept until their various specialties are discovered. Then each is assigned to the job he can do best. I was told I mustn’t mention the number of Chinamen now in France, but I can say, in their own language, it’s a biggee lottee.

They wear a uniform that consists of blue overalls, a blue coat, and no shirt whatever, which, I think, is bad advertising for their national trade. They brought shirts with them, it seems, but are more comfy without.

The minimum wage is three francs a day. Two-thirds of what they earn is paid them here, the other third given to their families in China. The system of hiring is unique. No names are used, probably because most Chinks have Sam Lee as a monniker, and the paymaster would get all mixed up with an army of Sam Lees. They are numbered and their finger prints are taken by an agent in China. He sends these identification marks to the camp here, and when the Chinks arrive they are checked up by a finger-print expert from Scotland Yard. This gentleman said there had been several cases where the Chinaman landing here was a ringer, some “friend” back home having signed up and then coaxed the ringer to come in his place, believing, apparently, that the plot would not be detected and that his profit would be the one-third share of the wage that is paid in China. The ringer’s family would be done out of its pittance, but that, of course, would make no difference to the ringer’s friend. The finger-print system serves not only to prevent the success of cute little schemes like that, but also to amuse the Chinks, who are as proud of their prints as if they had designed them.

We went into the general store, which is conducted by a Britisher. The Chinese had just had a pay-day and were wild to spend. One of them said he wanted a razor. The proprietor produced one in a case, and the Chink handed over his money without even looking at the tool. Another wanted a hat. The prop. gave him a straw with a band that was all colors of the rainbow. The Chinaman paid for it and took it away without troubling to see whether it fitted.

A block or so from the store we ran across two Chinks who had been naughty. Each was in a stock, a pasteboard affair on which was inscribed, in Chinese, the nature of his offense. One of them had been guilty of drinking water out of a fire bucket. The other had drunk something else out of a bottle--drunk too much of it, in fact. They looked utterly wretched, and our guide told us the punishment was the most severe that could be given: that a Chinaman’s pride was his most vulnerable spot.

The gent who had quenched his thirst from the fire bucket was sentenced to wear his stock a whole day. He of the stew was on the last lap of a week’s term.

We talked with one of the Lee family through an interpreter. We asked him if he knew that the United States was in the war against Germany. He replied, No, but he had heard that France was.

Just before we left the settlement a British plane flew over it. A Chink who was walking with us evidently mistook it for a Hun machine, for he looked up and said: “Bloody boche!”

From Chinatown we were driven to the American Visitors’ Château, where gentlemen and correspondents from the United States are entertained. It’s a real château, with a moat and everything. The major is our host. The major has seen most of his service in India and China.

He said he was glad to meet us, which I doubt. The new arrivals, Mr. Gibbons, the Harvard professor and myself, were shown our rooms and informed that dinner would occur at eight o’clock. Before dinner we were plied with cocktails made by our friend, the captain. The ingredients, I believe, were ether, arsenic and carbolic acid in quantities not quite sufficient to cause death.

Eleven of us gathered around the festal board. There were the major and his aids, three British captains, one with a monocle. There was the Harvard professor, and the head of a certain American philanthropical organization, and his secretary. And then there were us, me and Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O’Flaherty and Mr. Somner, upstarts in the so-called journalistic world.

The dinner was over the eighteen-course course, the majority of the courses being liquid. I wanted to smoke between the fish and the sherry, but Mr. O’Flaherty whispered to me that it wasn’t done till the port had been served.

Mention was made of the Chinese camp, and there ensued a linguistic battle between the major and the Harvard professor. The latter explained the theory of the Chinese language. He made it as clear as mud. In the Chinese language, he said, every letter was a word, and the basis of every word was a picture. For example, if you wanted to say “my brother,” you drew a picture of your brother in your mind and then expressed it in a word, such as woof or whang. If you wanted a cigar, you thought of smoke and said “puff” or “blow,” but you said it in Chinese.

Mr. Gibbons broke up the battle of China by asking the major whether I might not be allowed to accompany him and Mr. O’Flaherty and one of the captains on their perilous venture to-morrow night. They are going to spend the night in a Canadian first-line trench.

“I’m sorry,” said the major, “but the arrangement has been made for only three.”

I choked back tears of disappointment.

The major has wished on me for to-morrow a trip through the reconquered territory. My companions are to be the captain with the monocle, the Harvard professor, the philanthropist, and the philanthropist’s secretary. We are to start off at eight o’clock. Perhaps I can manage to oversleep.

_Thursday, September 6. With the British._

I did manage it, and the car had left when I got down-stairs. Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O’Flaherty were still here, and the three of us made another effort to get me invited to the party to-night. The major wouldn’t fall for it.

Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O’Flaherty motored to an artillery school, the understanding being that they were to be met at six this evening by one of our captains and taken to the trench. I was left here alone with the major.

We lunched together, and he called my attention to the mural decorations in the dining-room. It’s a rural mural, and in the foreground a young lady is milking a cow. She is twice as big as the cow and is seated in the longitude of the cow’s head. She reaches her objective with arms that would make Jess Willard jealous. In another area a lamb is conversing with its father and a couple of squirrels which are larger than either lamb or parent. In the lower right-hand corner is an ox with its tongue in a tin can, and the can is labeled Ox Tongue for fear some one wouldn’t see the point. Other figures in the pictures are dogs, foxes and chickens of remarkable size and hue.

“We had a French painter here a few days ago,” said the major. “I purposely seated him where he could look at this picture. He took one look, then asked me to change his seat.”

The major inquired whether I had noticed the picture of the château which decorates the doors of our automobiles.

“When you go out to-morrow,” he said, “you’ll observe that none of the army cars is without its symbol. An artillery car has its picture of a gun. Then there are different symbols for the different divisions. I saw one the other day with three interrogation marks painted on it. I inquired what they meant and was told the car belonged to the Watts division. Do you see why?”

I admitted that I did.

“Well, I didn’t,” said the major, “not till it was explained. It’s rather stupid, I think.”

This afternoon an American captain, anonymous of course, called on us. He is stopping at G. H. Q., which is short for General Headquarters, his job being to study the British strategic methods. He and the major discussed the differences between Americans and Englishmen.

“The chief difference is in temperature,” said the captain. “You fellows are about as warm as a glacier. In America I go up to a man and say: ‘My name is Captain So-an-So.’ He replies: ‘Mine is Colonel Such-and-Such.’ Then we shake hands and talk. But if I go to an Englishman and say: ‘My name is Captain So-and-So,’ he says: ‘Oh!’ So I’m embarrassed to death and can’t talk.”

“’Strawnary!” said the major.

At tea time a courier brought us the tidings that there’d been an air raid last Sunday at a certain hospital base.

“The boche always does his dirty work on Sunday,” remarked the American captain. “It’s queer, too, because that’s the day that’s supposed to be kept holy, and I don’t see how the Kaiser squares himself with his friend Gott.”

I laughed, but the major managed to remain calm.

The American captain departed after tea, and the major and I sat and bored each other till the Harvard professor and his illustrious companions returned. They told me I missed a very interesting trip. That’s the kind of trip one usually misses.

At dinner we resumed our enlightening discussion of Chinese, but it was interrupted when the major was called to the telephone. The message was from the captain who was supposed to meet Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O’Flaherty and take them to the trenches to spend the night. The captain reported that his machine had broken down with magneto trouble and he’d been unable to keep his appointment. He requested that the major have Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O’Flaherty located and brought home.

This was done. The disappointed correspondents blew in shortly before closing time and confided to me their suspicion that the trouble with the captain’s machine had not been magneto, but (the censor cut out a good line here).

To-morrow we are to be shown the main British training school and the hospital bases.

_Friday, September 7. With the British._

We left the château at nine and reached the training camp an hour later.

We saw a squad of ineligibles drilling, boys under military age who had run away from home to get into the Big Game. Their parents had informed the authorities of their ineligibility, and the authorities had refused to enroll them. The boys had refused to go back home, and the arrangement is that they are to remain here and drill till they are old enough to fight. Some of them are as much as three years shy of the limit.

The drill is made as entertaining as possible. The instructor uses a variation of our “Simon says: ‘Thumbs up’.” “O’Grady” sits in for Simon. For example, the instructor says: “O’Grady says: ‘Right dress.’ Left dress.” The youth who “left dresses” without O’Grady’s say-so is sent to the awkward squad in disgrace.

Out of a bunch of approximately two hundred only two went through the drill perfectly. The other one hundred and ninety-eight underestimated the importance of O’Grady and sheepishly stepped out of line. The two perfectos looked as pleased as peacocks.