Part 3

The boy, after a hearty bawling out by the driver and two gendarmes, was carted to a police station. They’ll hardly keep him in jail, though. Matteawan is the proper place for a boy who attempts bicycling on the streets of Paris.

_Thursday, August 23. Paris._

One of several differences between an American and a Frenchman is that an American tries to understand a Frenchman’s English and a Frenchman tries not to understand an American’s French.

To-day I wanted to go from somewhere to the Hotel Continental.

“Hotel Con-tin-ent-al,” I said to the driver.

He shook his head. I repeated. He shook his head again. This went on till I had pronounced the name five times and he had shaken his head that often. I said it the sixth time just as I had said it the other five.

“Oh-h-h!” shouted the driver, his face lighting up. “Hotel Con-tin-ent-al!”

And there wasn’t a particle of difference between his version and mine.

There was excitement in our village last night. At twenty-three-thirty o’clock, as we Parisians say, began a chorus of screaming sirens, the warning signal of an air raid. Those of us living in up-stairs rooms experienced a sudden craving for a home Somewhere in the Basement, and in gratifying it didn’t stop to use the elevator. The majority taking part in the Great Descent wore pajamas or their female relatives, sometimes called chemises de nuit. A few, of which I was one, were still attired for the day, and we went outdoors and looked up.

A regular flock of planes was, you might say, planely visible, but there was no fight in the air and no dropping of bombs on our fair city. The birdmen soared round a while in a perfectly friendly manner and then retired to their nests. The sirens were stilled and we all went up-stairs, the majority, mentioned above, grateful for the war-time lack of lights.

It seems that a Frenchman, returning from his day’s toil, forgot to flash his password, which is a red tail-light, or something. And the patrol took him for a boche and gave chase. Fortunately for himself, he glimpsed his pursuers in time and turned on the required signal.

To-day there has been a big demand for first-floor rooms.

_Friday, August 24. Paris._

An American major--it is interdict by the censor to mention the names of any officers save General Sibert and General Pershing--asked a friend in London to buy him an automobile and ship it here for his use. The Londoner was able, after much difficulty, to purchase one of those things that grow so rapidly in Detroit. He packed it up and mailed it to Le Havre. From there it had to be driven to Paris.

The major had never learned to drive this particular brand. In fact, his proportions are such that not even a shoehorn could coax him into the helmsman’s seat. He asked me to go up and get it for him. I declined on grounds of neutrality. That was a week ago.

Well, yesterday one Mr. Kiley, who has been over here some time in the ambulance service, came back to town with the car and four flat tires, which, evidently, were far past the draft age when the sale was made in London. Mr. Kiley helped himself to a stimulant and then told me about his trip.

He reached Le Havre last Saturday afternoon. He had in his pockets no papers except an order for the car. He had been in Le Havre about two minutes when a gentleman attacked him from behind with a tap on the shoulder. The gentleman pulled back his coat lapel and flashed a star bearing the insignia of the British Intelligence Department. He was curious as to Mr. Kiley’s name and business. Mr. Kiley told him. Then he wanted to see Mr. Kiley’s papers. Mr. Kiley showed him the order for the car.

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” said the officer. “I’d advise you to leave town.”

“Give me just an hour,” pleaded Mr. Kiley, “just time enough to get the car and get out.”

“All right,” said the officer, “and be sure it’s only an hour.”

Mr. Kiley hastened to where the car was reposing, displayed the order, and started joyously to wind her up. He cranked and he cranked and he cranked. Nothing doing. He gave her a push downhill and tried to throw her into speed. Nothing doing. It occurred to him that something must be the matter. A thorough examination resulted in a correct diagnosis. There was no gas.

Next to getting a drink of ice-water in Paris, the hardest job for a stranger is buying gasoline in any French town. Mr. Kiley was turned down five times before eighteen o’clock, when all the garages closed for the day.

He registered at a hotel and went into the café for dinner. He was just picking up the carte du jour when his friend, the officer, horned in.

“Mr. Kiley,” says this guy, “you have been in town more than an hour.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Kiley. “But I’ve had trouble. I found my car, but I can’t run it because there’s no essence.”

“I think you’d better leave town,” said the officer.

“If you don’t mind,” said Mr. Kiley, “I’ll leave early in the morning.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you left right now,” said he.

There followed a long discussion and a cross-examination even crosser than mine in Bordeaux. Mr. Kiley revealed his whole family history and won the right to stay overnight, provided he remained indoors and departed from town first thing in the morning.

But France is like America in that Saturday is usually succeeded by Sunday, and when Mr. Kiley arose from his hotel bed and resumed his search for gas he found every garage in town shut up tight. As I remember the United States, garages do not keep holy the Sabbath Day nor any other day. Over here, however, everything closes on Sunday except churches, theaters and saloons.

Mr. Kiley took in the situation and returned to his room to hide. Shortly before midi there was a knock at his door and a new officer appeared.

“You seem to like our town, Mr. Kiley,” said he.

“I’ll leave it as soon as I can get away,” said Mr. Kiley.

“No doubt,” replied the officer. “But I believe you will be here a long while.”

Mr. Kiley tried to look calm.

“Bone,” he said in perfectly good French.

“For the present,” said the officer, “you must not leave the hotel. Later on we’ll talk things over.”

In the café on Sunday night Mr. Kiley met an American and told him his troubles. The American had a car of his own in Le Havre and plenty of gasoline. He would be glad to give Mr. Kiley enough to start him on his way.

“But I can’t go,” said Mr. Kiley, “till I’ve fixed it with the police. I’ll have to look for them.”

He didn’t have far to look. No. 2 was in the lobby.

“Yes,” said No. 2, “you can leave town if you leave quick. There must be no more foolishness. The only thing that saves you from arrest is your uniform.”

Mr. Kiley left town and left quick, and, aside from his four blow-outs, had an uneventful trip to Paris.

But what if I had taken that assignment--I with no uniform except one willed me by the Chicago Cubs? O Boy!

_Saturday, August 25. Paris._

On advice of counsel I went to Colonel Anonymous of the American General Staff and besought him to fix it so that I might get to one of our camps without further stalling. Colonel Anonymous said it was all right with him and telephoned to Major Noname, who seemed to have authority in affaires journalistic.

Major Noname, fortunately, is a baseball fan. I told him what I did know, and lots that I didn’t know about our national pastime, and the reward was an American press pass to the infantry camp, S. in F.

I am going in a horseless carriage with Joe and Howard, fellow conspirators in the so-called journalistic game, and the start is to be made early Monday morning. Joe is going to drive his own car, and I hope he knows how.

_Dimanche, 26 Août. Paris._

Yesterday was Saturday, and everybody had had a hot bath and felt like doing something. Three of us decided to take in the highly recommended show at Les Ambassadeurs.

A member of the Theatrical Geographic Society met us in the foyer and showed us a map of the playhouse. From it we were supposed to pick our seats. We chose three that, on paper, were in the sixth row in the center aisle. Our usher, female, led us to three which were in the tenth row, off to one side. Our usher stuck round as if she expected something. I was the party with the seat checks, and she got nothing. I was ignorant of the rules of the game. But not for long. Pretty soon in came three of the World’s Greatest Fighters, alias Canadian soldiers, and sat down behind us. Their usher was more persistent than mine.

“What do you want?” demanded one who seemed to be the financial leader. “I already gave you a franc.”

“Un franc pour trois?” said the lady in horror.

“Yes, and that’s enough,” said the Canuck. “Aller!” he added in perfect Canadian.

“Je ne comprend pas,” said the lady.

“Go to the devil then!” said the Canadian in perfect Portuguese.

The lady went somewhere, but whether to the proper destination I do not know.

“I wonder how much they charge to get out,” wondered the Canadian.

Along about the middle of the show our own usher popped up before me and held out her right hand, at the same time exhibiting both teeth in an ingratiating smile. I shook the proffered hand. She withdrew her teeth.

“Non, non, non, non,” she said.

I asked her what she voulez-voued. She was coy.

“Do you want a tip?” I inquired in plain Michigan.

Both teeth reappeared. A dental curiosity drove me to hand her three francs. I had not underestimated.

In the second act a very nice-looking lady sang _A Broken Doll_ in plain Thirty-ninth Street. The stage chorus tried to help her out on the second refrain, but, with all due modesty, I must say that it was the Canadians and I who earned the vociferous encore.

_Lundi, 27 Août. Paris._

The first batch of laundry was back when I returned from the theater Saturday night. Collars were done up in a neat package, tied with baby-blue ribbon. They looked just as when I had sent them out except that there was a high, shiny polish over the soiled spots. As for handkerchiefs, let us follow the British communiqué style:

“Eleven of our handkerchiefs went over the Blanchisserie lines. Two came back. Nine are missing.”

Some practical joker suggested that I go out yesterday afternoon and watch a baseball game between a Canadian team and a club from the American Red Cross. St. Cloud was the battle ground. You pronounce St. Cloud exactly as it is not spelled.

A taxi man took us out there by way of Kansas City and El Paso, and during the forty minutes’ trip he was in high speed at least one minute. We bumped into a ceremony of awards. French soldiers to the number of two hundred were being given the Croix de Guerre.

The ceremony over, we crossed the race track and got on to the baseball field. There was an hour of badly needed practise, and then the two belligerents went at each other in a so-called ball game. It was stopped at the end of the eighth inning on account of rain, eight innings too late.

The rain, I am told, was long overdue, and we may expect gobs of it between now and then.

I am writing this early Monday morning, and early Monday morning is when we were supposed to start for the American camp. But there seems to be a difference of opinion over the meaning of the French adverb “early.”

_Tuesday, August 28. Somewhere in France._

“Early” proved to be half past ten yesterday morning. Joe drove us to the city limits, and there we had to pause. According to this year’s rules, ye automobilist pauses at the limits, has his gasoline measured, and then goes on. Returning to town, he has to pay a tax on the added amount of gasoline he brings, or something like that.

We were allowed to go out of town, and some thirty yards beyond the limits we found a garage. There we filled up with essence. Howard did the cranking, which is a necessity with all French cars, and away we went.

It was raining and it was cold. Joe and Howard were in the front seat, Joe driving and Howard studying the road map. I was in the back seat, catching cold.

“We’ll go right ahead,” said Joe, “to Such and Such a Place, and there we’ll stop and have lunch.”

Well, we stopped in Such and Such a Place, but it was not from a desire of lunch. It was because we were compelled to stop.

“Let’s see your papers,” said the stopper in French.

The stoppees, in English, displayed their passes to the American camp. The stopper didn’t know whether they were good or not. He asked us to wait a moment and disappeared out of the rain. We waited several moments. Finally there appeared another stopper, who read carefully our passes and told us they were no good and that we would have to loom up at the City Hall.

We went there, with Joe and Howard in the front seat and an officer and I in the back, me still catching cold, especially in the feet.

In the City Hall were French officers attired in all colors of the French army, which made the colors of the rainbow look like Simon Pure White. Our crime, it seems, was in not having an automobile pass on a red card. Or maybe it was blue. One of the thirty gentlemen in charge said we would have to wait till he telephoned back to Paris. Knowing the French telephone system, we inquired whether we might go across the street and eat. We were told we might.

We went across the street and ate, and it was a good meal, with meat, on a day which was meatless in Paris. A subaltern interrupted the orgy and said we were wanted back in the City Hall. Back there the startling information was that no telephonic satisfaction had been obtained. We asked whether we might go back to the café. There was no objection. We played pitch. French soldiers by scores came up and looked on. Joe thought, sub rosa, that it would be a grand idea to startle ’em. So we played pitch for one hundred francs a hand, it being tacitly understood that the money didn’t go. But we certainly had them excited.

Between pitch games in which thousands of francs were apparently lost and won, we visited, on summons, the City Hall five or six times. Every time there was the same heavy barrage of français.

Entered, finally, an English-speaking gent who said we might leave the city provided we went straight back to Paris.

“We’d much prefer,” said Joe, “to go on to where we were going.”

“You have the choice,” was the reply, “of returning to Paris or remaining here, in jail.”

Paris sounded the more attractive. They gave us back our car and away we went. It was after twenty o’clock, and it was pitch dark, and it was cold, and it was raining. And the man who had made the machine had forgotten to equip it with headlights.

A little before midnight, on the downhill main street of a village, we saw ahead of us a wagon. It was two feet ahead of us. There being nothing else to do we banged into it. Then we stopped. The driver of the wagon sat suddenly down in the middle of the street and apologized. We all got out to see whether any damage had been done to the car. The only wounds discernible in the darkness were a smashed radiator and a bent axle.

“It’s lucky this happened in a town,” said I. “We can probably find a hotel.”

“We’re not going to look for one,” said Joe. “We’re going to drive to Paris.”

We got back in and, to our amazement, the darn thing started. There was plenty of headlight now, for the whole hood was ablaze. All lit up like a church, we went on our mad career until our conveyance dropped dead, overcome by the heat. This was four miles from a town that will be famous in the histories of this war.

“I guess we’re through,” said Joe. “One of us will have to stay with the car and see that nothing is stolen. The other two can go back to town and find a bed.”

By a vote of two to one, Howard was elected to stay with the car. He was the youngest.

Joe and I hiked our four miles in silence. The town was as brilliantly lighted as a cemetery and apparently void of inmates. We groped for an hour in a vain search for a hostelry. At length we gave up and resolved to sleep on the huge cathedral’s front porch. We were ascending the steps when a door opened and a human being stood before us.

“Arrested again,” thought I.

But the human being turned out to be not a copper, but a priest.

“Bon soir, monsieur,” said Joe. “Voulez-vous show us où we can find a hotel?”

He led us across the street to a place we had doped out as the high school. He rapped on the door with his foot. In a few moments an aged lady, dressed for the night, appeared. There was a rapid exchange of français, after which we thanked the priest and were taken through a courtyard and up-stairs to our room. We said a prayer for Howard and went to sleep, and I had a nightmare. I dreamed of a porterhouse steak.

This morning we decided it wouldn’t be clubby to have breakfast before we had rescued Howard and the car. We went to a garage which was equipped with a beautiful lady, but no automobiles nor tow-ropes. We found a livery stable that had every thing but a horse. We commandeered a young man’s delivery cart from in front of a grocery store and drove out to the scene of our car’s demise. Howard and the corpse were still there. Howard thought it would be a good idea to go to the nearest farm-house and rent a horse and a rope from the proprietor. The proprietor was very ignorant. He couldn’t understand our French. But in his employ was a German prisoner who could talk his own language and ours and the funny one that is prevalent round here. He explained our wants to the farmer and there ensued a few moments of haggling over price. We finally rented two horses and a rope for fifty francs and dragged the car back to town. From the looks of it, in daylight, I would say the economical course would have been to leave it out there in the road and keep the fifty francs.

The garage man says, in English, that he can make the necessary “reparations” in three weeks. So far as I’m concerned, he can devote three years to the job. Hereafter I’ll do my cross-country flitting about on a train.

It’s on one now, Paris bound, that I’m writing. There is nothing to do but write, for Howard is getting the sleep he missed last night and Joe is too angry to talk. He has spoken one sentence since we got up this morning.

“This is a queer war,” he said.

IV

FINALLY I GET TO THE AMERICAN CAMP; WHAT I FIND THERE

_Thursday, August 30. At an American Camp._

Me and a regular American correspondent, Mr. Bazin, who has been here since before the war, but is still good-natured, took the train from Paris this morning and reached our destination shortly after lunch time. This is one of a string of villages in which the main body of the Expeditionary Forces are billeted.

We were met at the train by one of the correspondents’ cars, a regular he-man of a car from home, with eight cylinders and everything. Each correspondent rents a seat in one of the machines at a cost of sixty dollars a week. For this trifling sum he may be driven anywhere he wants to go along the line.

The correspondents have a tough life. They are quartered in a good--judged by French standards--hotel, and are not what you could call overworked. There is nothing to write about, and if you wrote about it you probably couldn’t get it through.

Mr. Corey, one of these slaves, invited me to accompany him to an infantry billet, some eighteen miles distant. We sailed along over the perfect roads at an average speed of about sixty, slowing up in the villages to dodge a harmless course among the cows, chickens and children, all of whom use the middle of Main Street for their playground.

We passed an occasional soldier, but it was a nice clear day, and the large majority were out in the fields and hills rehearsing. Our boys, I’m told, are getting quite a workout. Usually they leave their billets at seven in the morning, walk from six to twelve miles to a drill ground, and work till half past four in the afternoon. Then they take the long hike “home” and wonder how soon supper will be ready. Frequently, however, there is practise in night trench warfare, and then the grind continues till ten or eleven o’clock. The work is hard, but so, by this time, are the boys.

The captain on whom we called said he was glad to meet me, which is the first time that has happened in France. We asked him whether there was any news. He said yes, that the Salvation Army had established headquarters in the camp.

“I’m glad,” he remarked, “that they’ve decided to go in on our side. It may influence the Kaiser’s friend Gott.”

The chief need of the soldiers, he went on, was amusement. The Salvation Army’s and Y. M. C. A.’s efforts were appreciated, but continual rations of soup and meat palled at times, and a little salad and dessert, in the form of Charlie Chaplin or the Follies, would make life more bearable.

“Some American theatrical producer,” said the captain, “could win our undying gratitude by shipping over a stock company with a small repertory of shows, with music, and _girls_. I believe he’d find it profitable too. When the boys get paid they don’t know what to do with their money. There’s nothing to spend it on in these parts.”

The captain invited us to dinner, but we had a previous date with members of the Censorship Bureau. These entertained us with stories which I voluntarily delete. From their hotel we returned to our own, held a brief song service in the correspondents’ mess, and called it a day.

_Friday, August 31. At an American Camp._

“Would you like to meet General Sibert?” asked Mr. Corey.

General Sibert’s name is one of the two that may be mentioned.

I said I would, and we left after breakfast for the next village, where headquarters is situate. In the outer office were some clerks and a colonel. The latter could never be accused of excessive cordiality.

“The general is busy,” he said.

“How long will he be busy?” inquired Mr. Corey.

“I have no idea,” said the colonel.

Mr. Corey and I felt we would be warmer outdoors, so we climbed back in our car and asked our sergeant-driver to take us to the nearest training grounds. Here an infantry regiment was going through simple drill, and calisthentics which were far from simple.

The nearest captain approached, smiled pleasantly and asked what he could do for us. We introduced ourselves.

“Correspondents, eh?” he said.

“Well, then, you can do something for us--make the newspapers and magazines quit calling us Sammies. We’ve never done anything to deserve a name like that.”

“What’s the matter with it?” we inquired.

“Everything!” said the captain. “It doesn’t fit, it sounds childish, and we just naturally hate it.”

We asked him whether there was an acceptable substitute.

“I don’t know of any,” he said. “In due time we’ll wish one on ourselves that will have pep and sound real. Meanwhile call us Julias, Howards--anything you like, except Sammies.”

We promised to do our best for him, and he was grateful enough to invite us to his mess for lunch.

This young man--he looks about twenty-nine--hasn’t been to his home, somewhere out West, since he left West Point, six years ago. He hasn’t seen a show in six years. Mexico and the Philippines have kept him busy. His promotion from lieutenant to captain is very recent, and he still wears only one stripe. “I suppose I’ll be a major before I get the other,” he said. “A man can hardly keep up with his rank these days.”

He called our attention to the physical condition of his men.

“You’ve got to be in the pink to go through those exercises without yelling for help,” he said. “These fellas couldn’t have done it a month ago. Now they seldom get tired, though the hours are pretty stiff. To-day is a cinch. It’s pay-day, and there’s a muster soon after lunch. So most of us will get a half holiday and nobody’ll object.”