Part 8

"Jazz," being only a tender-hearted billy goat, could not claim exemption from remaining in the U.S.A., for, as everybody agreed, he was no earthly use, just "a poor, no-good goat." But "Jazz" did go aboard the transport, later an English railway train, next another ship and finally a French train until he arrived with the squadron at America's biggest air post in France. There I saw him the other day appreciatively licking devoted "Fuzzy's" hand.

It is not difficult to guess that "Jazz" is the mascot of "X" squadron, accepted by pilots and mechanics alike as talisman for good at some training camp back home. This office he has performed with exceptional skill from the day "Fuzzy" permitted him to "butt in" at the mechanics' mess.

"Fuzzy" and some of his pals slipped the goat into a sack and laid him down among the cold storage meat when the time came to help load the ship, taking care that the sack of live goat did not get into the refrigerator. When the ship was well out to sea, the sack was opened and "Jazz" crawled out blinking.

Even then "Fuzzy" was cautious. For the first days, he did not permit the animal to promenade indiscriminately, but subjected him to repeated scrubbings, following by perfume, toilet water and talcum powder. So when "Jazz" was really discovered, he smelt, but more like a barber shop than a goat. The ship's officers appreciated the joke and so did everyone else and soon "Jazz" became a favorite on deck. Repeatedly shampooed and perfumed, wearing a life-preserver, he moved about like a good sailor. But there was less joyful days ahead of him.

He did not exactly set foot on English soil as did his friends. He went ashore at an unmentionable port in a kit bag. In this he lay with the other bags, surrounded by a screen of men. "Jazz" was uncomfortable and said so in his goat way, but before he had uttered a full syllable his friends set up a cheer which drowned his voice.

This happened again and again. The first time, British transport officers at the port politely disregarded the Americans' demonstrations, but after the third time one of them exclaimed:

"Extraordinary, these Americans. Wonderful spirit."

And a little later when the men burst into an excessively loud hurrah to annihilate the voice of "Jazz" an elderly British colonel came over to them and inquired of a young American officer nearby:

"Splendid lungs your chaps have! But, really, what are they cheering for now?"

"Oh," returned the American, who very well knew why, "they're like that. Always cheering about something. Shall I stop it?"

"No, indeed! I think it's splendid."

So that adventure passed over nicely and "Jazz" went on in a "goods van" with the kit bags to another British sea port. After that there wasn't any further trouble.

---- WHERE LANGUAGE FAILS. ----

Remember along about examination time how you used to think Hades would be a good place for the professor?

Two Williams College graduates have had the pleasure of meeting their old French teacher in the nearest earthly approach to the Inferno--the trenches.

Officers now, the ex-students finally readied the battalion commander's post in a certain sector after a two-mile trudge from the rear through mud and ice water up to their hips.

A French interpreter met them at the door of the post.

"Yes, the major is in," he said, "but he won't see you till you shake hands with _me_."

Both officers thought they were face to face with a nut. Then, as they recognized their old teacher, two hands shot and grasped both of his.

"Well, I'll be darned--you haven't changed a bit!" was all the French they could remember.

---- HIS IS NOT A HAPPY LOT SAYS ARMY POSTAL CLERK ---- Works Eighteen Hours a Day and Has To Be Both a Directory of the A. E. F. and a Sherlock Holmes. ----

"Private Wolfe Tone Moriarity, Fighting Umpth, France."

The Army Postal Service clerk surveyed the battered envelope on the desk before him, pushed his worn Stetson back from a forehead the wrinkles in which resembled a much fought-over trench system, adjusted his glasses to his weary eyes, spat, and remarked:

"Easy! The 'Fighting Umpth' was changed over into the Steenhundred and Umpty-umpth, wasn't it? The last that was heard from them they were at Blankville-sur-Bum. Now they've moved to Bingville-le-somethingorother. Clerk! Shove this in Box 4-11-44!"

"Lieutenant Brown, care American Army, somewhere in France."

Again the Postal Service man, once-overed the envelope, purplish in hue, went through the motions of pushing back his hat, expectorated, and began:

Purple Paper a Clue.

"That's Lieutenant James Brown, I reckon. There's a lot of that name in the Medical Department, but hell! He's married. Nobody writes to him on purple paper. Then there's another one in the One Thousand, Nine-Hundred and Seventeenth Motor-Ammunition-Ration-Revictualling-Woodchopping Battalion. His'n allus writes to him on that kind of paper. I guess that's him, all right. Hey, feller, shove this in 88966543, will-ya? Thanks!"

From the rear of a line of scrapping, frantic mail orderlies, each one trying to corner all the packages marked "Tobacco" and "Chocolate" for his particular outfit, the reporter, by standing on a box marked "Fragile--This Side Up," was able to see the scene depicted above, and to hear, above the din, the Postal Clerk's momentous decisions.

Nothing like that had ever come into his ken before. He had seen Col. Roosevelt at work in his office, talking into two telephones, dictating to four stenographers, and writing a letter with each hand simultaneously. He had watched the President of the United States dispose of four Senators, eight Representatives, three Governors of States, seven Indian tribal chiefs and the German ambassador in exactly seven and a half minutes by the clock. But never, in all his experience, had he witnessed such concentration, such rapidity of execution, as that which the lean, worn man at the big desk possessed. It was better than watching a machine gun in action, with all stops out.

Worming his way up to the desk, the reporter started on his set speech. "Mr. Army Post Office Superintendent, will you consent to be interviewed for----" when he was summarily stopped by the wave of an ample hand and the booming of the P.S.'s voice.

"Want me to talk, do you, eh? Want to know what I do with my spare time? All right, son; just jump over that gang of pouch-robbers and come on inside. Here you----" this to the still combatant orderlies, at the same time throwing an armfull of mail and papers at them--"here's all the stuff for your outfits to-day. Divvy up among yourselves, and then breeze!--beat it!--allez!

"Now, then, you want to know what I do with my spare time? Well, I work eighteen hours a day in the office, and the other six I spend worrying whether or not I gipped some poor Buddy when I cashed his American money order in French paper currency. Like the saloons in Hoboken, we never close.

Really Busy at Christmas.

"That's just about the way it was, no kidding, during the Christmas rush. In about a month enough tobacco, chocolate, chewing gum, knit socks, mufflers, fruit cake, safety razors, lump sugar--to judge from the contents lists on the outside of the bundles--came through this office to stock the whole of France for the next year and a half. Now, though"--tossing a long, yellow envelope across the room into a numbered pigeonhole--"things have slackened up a bit. A week ago I had half an hour off to shave."

"Do the people back home cause you much bother by not addressing their letters correctly?" asked the reporter.

"N--no," replied the P.S. meditatively, "although I did get one the other day addressed to Private Ethan Allan of the 'American Revolutionary Force.' At first I was going to send it back to Vermont, after changing the private to Colonel, and have the D.A.R. see that it got somewhere near old Ethe's final resting place; but on second thought I guessed she--it's generally a she--meant the American Expeditionary Forces. So I went down about three or four regimental rosters, and finally I found the guy. Now he's probably wondering why he didn't get that letter in a month, instead of a month and a half, and cussing me out for the delay.

"The most trouble comes, though, from these birds what don't stay put. They come over here all right with one unit, and then they get transferred to some other. Then the unit is moved around, and the folks back in the States, not knowing about it, continue to send stuff to the old address. But generally we get 'em located in time."

A Rush After Pay Day.

"How about the mail from this side?" the reporter queried. "Do you think that the franking privilege causes the men to write more letters than they ordinarily would? Does sending their letters free pile things up for you?"

"I don't think so," the mail magnate responded, "because the lads are being kept so all-fired busy these days they don't honestly have time to write much. On the bundle proposition, though, we have an awful rush of stuff just after pay day, when it seems as if every man was bent on buying up all the lace handkerchiefs in the country to send to his girl.

"Oh, take it all in all, it's a great life if you don't weaken," the P.S. concluded. "I've been in the Government post office service for sixteen years, now, and I never had so much fun before. I do wish, though, that the boys would get stouter envelopes for their letters, because the ones they get from the Y.M.--and ninety-eight per cent. of the letters that go out from here are written on Y.M. stationery--are too flimsy to stand much manhandling, and when they get wet they're pretty much out of luck. Good-bye; drop in again some day when we're really busy!"

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[Cartoon: THEN AND NOW--WAR MAKES AN AWFUL DIFFERENCE--BY WALLGREN]

NO MORE CUSSING (--IT!) AT MULES ---- Order (--it!) Says That Animals are Sensitive as ----. ----

Cussing, as a fine art, is doomed in the Army.

Its foremost practitioners, the mule-skinners, are shorn of their deadliest weapon of offense and defense by a recent order which directs them to use honeyed words when addressing their feathery-eared charges, instead of employing the plain, direct United States to which the mules' painfully obvious hearing organs have hitherto been attuned.

Kindness, the order says in effect, will work wonders with the genus Missouri nightingale or Indiana canary; if spoken to with proper regard for his or her feelings, a mule will oftentimes go so far as to place his or her hoof in a driver's lap.

When one is able, with impunity, to tickle a mule behind the ear (either ear will do) one is adjudged proficient in interpreting the aesthetic aspirations of the beast; and all mule-skinners are exhorted to apply the ear-tickling proposition as a sort of acid test both as to the tractability of their charges and their own ability as mule-tamers. The application of this test, it is held, will keep the mule-skinners too fully occupied to be able to cuss or to care a cuss about cussing.

This Stuff is Out o' Date.

But, men of the Old Army, particularly those who have trained with mountain batteries, think of what is passing! Think of what the younger and more effete generation of mules is missing! No more beneath the starry flag will be heard such he-language as this:--

"Come on, Maud, you ---- Hoosier ----! Get a wiggle on your ---- good-for-nothing carcass! GIDDAP, Bill! You long-eared, flea-bitten, hay-demolishing, muddy-flanked, rock-ribbed ----, ---- I said it! GIDDAP!"

Or with the native product: "Depechez-vous, vous ----. Oh, h--l, I'm out of French! Say, Jimmy! What's the word for ----? Never mind; all mules understand ----! Hey there, you ----! Make tracks!"

Now, all is changed and such dulcet appeals to His Muleship as this are the order of the day:

"Get a gait on, Sapphira, you ----! Oh, hell, I forgot! Aw, c'me on now, old girl! We ain't got the whole morning t' waste! Be a sport, old lady! Forward ---- hoh!

"Say, for ----. Oh, hell--I mean Heaven! Dammit, I forgot again! You, Ananias, will you do me the esteemed favor to start the process? Will you condescend to lift at least one leg?"

But This Stuff Does the Job.

Ananias puts one hoof forward in experimental manner, then stops. About this time a brother mule-skinner enters, mouthing a corncob pipe. Says he to the first mule-skinner:

"Whattamatter, Jerry? Don't they budge? Livin' up to orders, be yeh? Aw, wee; way to talk to'm is third person--get me?--third person. None o' this crude 'you' and 'yeze' stuff--same as talking to the Skipper, y'know."

Jerry gets his mouth all fixed to say, "Aw, hell," recovers himself, and then begins: "Will the off animile kindly step at least two paces to the front?" (The mule starts to comply.) "I thank the off mule! Now, will the near mule kindly follow suit?" (It also starts to comply.) "Now, will both the near mule and the off mule be so good as to repeat the process, both pulling together, until requested to desist? Fine; off we go. Good Gawd--good Gawd!"

---- HOW GEORGE ADE SEES WAR. ---- Many Old Adages Must Be Revised If Germany Wins. ----

As his contribution to the National Security League's campaign of patriotism, George Ade has written a message to our young fighting men. "We must win this war," he contends, "or else revise all moral codes, rewrite all proverbs and adopt a brand new set of rules to govern conduct. If Germany is not licked to a standstill, we might as well begin to memorize and humbly accept the following:

"Dishonesty is the best policy.

"Be as mean as a skunk and you will be happy.

"Blessed are the child murderers, for they shall inherit the earth.

"Be sure you are right handy with fire-arms, then go ahead.

"An evil reputation is better than riches.

"Truth crushed to earth will not rise again if the crushing is done in a superior and efficient manner.

"Be virtuous and you will be miserable.

"Thrice armed is he who goes around picking quarrels.

"Might makes right.

"Hell on earth and hatred for all men.

"Do unto others as you suspect that they might do unto you if they ever got to be as disreputable as you are.

"God helps the man who helps himself to his neighbor's house and his field and his unprotected women.

"These don't sound right, do they?

"The old ones that we learned first of all are not yet out of date.

"Suppose we don't revise them."

---- GLORIFIED. ---- (With apologies to the late Sir W. S. Gilbert.) ----

When I was a lad I served a term In a military school--how it made me squirm! I wore a shako, and a lot of braid. And I startled fire horses when on dress parade; But they took all glory away from me As a second lieut. a-wearing of my plain O. D.

When I went to college, I was gayly clad In a sporty costume made of shepherd's plaid; I tried pink neckties and vermillion socks, And when I went out walking, I set back the clocks. But when I took Uncle Sam's degree I was nothing but a second lieut. in plain O. D.

In business, too, I made quite a splurge In a nobby garment made of ultra-serge; With rings and watchfob and a stickpin, too, I could show all the dandies of the town a few-- So think what a comedown 'twas for me As a second lieut. a-wearing of my plain O. D.

But now, however, they have gone so far As to place on my shoulderstrap a neat gold bar, And they've sewn a dido on my overcoat, Which, while it lends distinction, nearly gets my goat; So now, at last, you can plainly see I'm a second lieut. no longer clad in plain O. D.!

I'm proud, believe me, of those new gold bars-- I wouldn't swap 'em for the General's stars; And the little stripe upon my blouse's sleeve Means that nevermore for splendor shall my young soul grieve,-- For bars and braid, you can plainly see, Make an awful lot of difference on plain O. D.!

---- THE PASSING OF THE CAMPAIGN HAT. ----

"The campaign hat is going; 'twill soon be _tres passe_-- The winds of war got under it and blew it far away; The General (he who owned it) cussed, as Generals sometimes do: "Get us," he cried, "a hat to stick; with this blank kind I'm through!" His orderly picked up the hat, all battered, torn and frayed, "Quite right," he ruminated, "you won't do for parade; Yet, good old lid, you've got your place--perhaps not over here, But there are regions in the States that hold your memory dear."

"The shadow of your ugly shape has blacked the Western plains; It brought relief to border towns all soaked with tropic rains; The sight of you, at column's head, made redskins turn and flee,-- O'er barren land you've led the van that fights for Liberty. The Filipino knows you; his protection you have meant, And the wily Pancho Villa never dared to try and dent The contour of your homely crown or chip your wobbly brim,-- You, old chapeau, spelt business; and that left no room for him!

"From far Alaska's ice-bound coast to Porto Rico's strand, You've kept the sun and rain and sleet from Uncle Sam'yal's band; You've stood for no blame nonsense, and you've brooked no talking back, And cleaner towns and cities fair have sprung up in your track. You--what's the use?--you've been there since the days of 'Ninety-Eight-- You've weathered twenty years of squalls--and now you get the gate! But you're too good a soldier, old dip, to cuss or cry; So--(there he heaved it into space)--goodby, old hat; goodby!"

---- OVER THE TOP THREE WAYS. ---- Feet, Tank and Plane Tried by this U. S. Officer--Ready for Next. ----

If they ever invent a new way of going over the top, there's one American officer who will probably be on hand to try the new wrinkle. The French Government has decorated him with the Croix de Guerre for going over the sacks in every way known to date.

First, he went over with the French infantry in an attack last spring. Though detailed as an observer, and not required to take too many chances, the officer was one of the first wave to cross No Man's Land. He stayed with his unit until the objective was gained, and when it had to fall back before a heavy counter-attack he fell back fighting with it.

Some weeks later he went over the top in a tank. He followed that trip a few days later by an aeroplane observation flight. For the greater part of an afternoon the plane cruised up and down a German sector watching the effect of big French shells on concrete defences.

The Boche anti-aircraft guns made it warm for the American flier, but he was still an enthusiastic aviator when the plane came to a successful landing on its own field at dusk.

---- WHERE HE GETS OFF. ----

(A sample letter).

France, January, 1918.

I. Rookum, Gents' Tailor, U. S. A.

"Dear Sir:--

"Your interesting advertisement of spring styles for young men, knobby clothes for business wear, and so forth, just received.

"While I appreciate your thinking of me, I am glad to say I have changed my tailor, and will not require your services until peace is declared.

"U. S. & Co. are now supplying me with some very nifty suitings of khaki, which I find best adapted to my present line of business. They don't get shiny in the seat of the trousers--for the simple reason that I never have time to sit down.

"They are also supplying me with headwear, their latest in that line being a derby-like affair with a stiff steel crown, which affords me better protection against the elements and the shrapnel than anything any civilian hatter has furnished me.

"Thanking you for past favors, and hoping to see you on the dock when the transport pulls in a couple of years from now, I remain,

"Yours truly, "I. Don't Needum, Pvt., A. E. F."

---- TWO SAMARITANS IN SKIRTS. ---- In the Modern Parable, They Aid a Poilu Chauffeur. ----

The woman motorcar driver has made her appearance in the zone of the army. A few of them are driving big motor trucks for the Y.M.C.A. and are making good at the job.

During a recent heavy snowstorm, two trucks driven by young women were sliding along a winding road carrying supplies to a hut from a depot when they came upon a big French lorry stalled in a ditch. The French soldier in charge was tinkering with the engine, having stalled it while trying to pull into the road again. He wasn't having much success.

Both the women, garbed in short skirts, high and heavy leather boots, and woolen caps that pulled down well over their ears, climbed down from their seats and between them first managed to get the engine in the stalled lorry started, and then one of them took her place behind the wheel and by skilful manoeuvring brought all four wheels to the road.

The Frenchman stood to one side during the whole of the operation and watched the women with astonishment.

WELLS FARGO & CO.

4 RUE SCRIBE, PARIS

Head Office: 51 Broadway, NEW YORK

Take pleasure in announcing to the

AMERICAN AND BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCES

that the great French Bank, the

SOCIETE GENERALE

has very kindly agreed to act as

WELLS FARGO'S CORRESPONDENT THROUGHOUT FRANCE

Cable and mail transfers of money to all parts of America may be made through Wells Fargo by calling at the Societe Generale.