Part 9
Deposit accounts with Wells Fargo, Paris, may be opened at the Societe Generale.
SOCIETE GENERALE has Branches at:--
AMIENS CHALONS-SUR-MARNE LA ROCHELLE SAINT NAZAIRE ANGERS CHATEAUROUX LIMOGES SAUMUR ARCACHON CHAUMONT MIRECOURT TOUL AUXONNE DIJON NANTES TOURS BAR-LE-DUC EPINAL NEUFCHATEAU TROYES BESANCON FONTAINEBLEAU NEVERS VALREAS BORDEAUX IS-SUR-TILLE RENNES VIERZON BOURGES ISSOUDUN ROMORANTIN and many others. BREST LANGRES ROUEN
Circulars giving full explanation of WELLS FARGO'S Banking Facilities in France may be obtained at the Branches of the Societe Generale.
---- TO FLASH THE HOUR BY ARMY WIRES. ---- New A. E. F. Lines Will Insure U. S. Well-Set Time Pieces. ----
Correct time is now being transmitted to the A. E. F. over its own system of telegraph lines. Formerly field wireless stations each day at a certain hour picked from the air figures flashed from Paris by which the clocks of the array were synchronized. This method did not insure absolute accuracy.
Each day at eleven o'clock a simultaneous signal is sent to every station so that through the existing zone, and at the front as well, clocks and watches show the same time. This synchronization is desirable under present conditions and it is an absolute necessity with troops at the front when, for instance, orders may specify that some operation is to be carried out at one point at a certain time and another operation at another point at another time. The success of both operations may depend upon whether they are launched on the second.
Miles upon miles of telegraph wires strung on poles labeled "U. S. A." now stretch through France. They may be found running to base ports, zigzagging through the instruction zone over hills, through a valley, along a roadside. On some of the poles there are double cross-beams supporting in many cases as many as ten wires. There is a complete system of operators and central exchanges as well as a considerable force of linemen and repairmen, quite a number of whom worked for telephone and telegraph companies in the United States before the war began. The "service" leaves little, if anything, to be desired.
---- HOW THEY SPOT US. ----
"Madame, where in this town can one get a drink, _s'il vous plait_?"
"Ah! I can see that M. l'Americain comes from the State of Maine!"
---- TRY POTATO BUGS IN BOMBS. ---- An Ohio Man's Suggestion on How to Win the War. ----
The war will soon be over. An Ohio man will end it. He has suggested to U.S. Marine Corps officials in Washington that they direct their aviators to drop potato bugs over Germany. He declares there are no potato bugs in the Kaiser's realm, and since the "spud" is absolutely essential to Germany's economic welfare, the dropping of "Murphy destroyers" over the Rhine country would quickly terminate hostilities. Simple, isn't it? Marine Corps officials think so.
A BRITISH BANK CONDUCTED ON BRITISH LINES.
LLOYDS BANK (FRANCE) & NATIONAL PROVINCIAL BANK (FRANCE) LIMITED.
3, PLACE DE L'OPERA, PARIS.
General Banking Business. Foreign Exchange and Transfers.
{BIARRITZ: 10, Place de la Liberte. Branches {BORDEAUX: 23, Allees de Chartres. {HAVRE: 1, Rue de la Bourse. {NICE: 6, Jardin du Roi Albert Premier.
LONDON OFFICE: 60, LOMBARD STREET, E.C.3.
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY UNION IN EUROPE 8, RUE DE RICHELIEU, PARIS (Royal Palace Hotel)
OBJECTS--The general object of the Union is to meet the needs of American university and college men and their friends who are in Europe for military or other service in the cause of the Allies.
It provides at moderate cost a home with the privileges of a simple club for these men when passing through Paris on a furlough.
It aids institutions, parents or friends to secure information about college men, reporting on casualties, visiting the sick and wounded, giving advice, and in general serving as means of communication between those at home and their relatives in service.
MEMBERSHIP--The Union is supported by annual fees paid by the colleges and universities of America, all the students and alumni of which, whether graduates or not, are thereby entitled, WITHOUT PAYMENT OF ANY DUES, to the general privileges of the Union, and may call upon the Union in person or by mail to render them any reasonable service.
HEADQUARTERS--On October 20, 1917, the Union took over as its Paris headquarters the Royal Palace Hotel, of which it has the exclusive use. This centrally located hotel is one block from the Louvre and the Palais Royal station of the Metro., from which all parts of the city may be reached quickly and cheaply.
PRIVILEGES--The Union offers at reasonable rates both single and double bed-rooms, with or without bath. There is hot and cold running water in all rooms, which are well heated. Room reservations should be made in advance whenever possible, as only 100 men can be accommodated. The restaurant serves excellent meals both to roomers and to transients.
The Lounge Room is supplied with all the leading American newspapers, magazines and college publications. The rapidly growing Library on the first floor provides fiction and serious reading, both French and English, as well as a large number of valuable reference books on the war and other subjects.
Stationery is provided in the Writing Room on the ground floor. A Canteen in the Lobby carries cigarettes and tobacco, toilet articles, candies, and a variety of other useful things. An Information Bureau is maintained in the Union Offices on the Entresol.
Frequent entertainments and concerts are given. Afternoon tea is served every Saturday, at which some American lady acts as hostess.
REGISTRATION--The Union keeps an accurate index of all men who register at its Paris headquarters or at its London Branch, 16, Pall Mall East, S.W.1. It is anxious to get in touch with all college and university men in Europe, who are therefore urged to register by MAIL, giving name, college, class, European address and name and address of nearest relative at home.
---- AMERICA'S BEST MEDICOS AT WORK FOR THE A. E. F. ---- Incomes of Specialists in the Overseas Command Would Total Enough to Pay off the National Debt. ----
If the incomes of all the well-known American specialists who have come to France to look after the health of the A.E.F. troops were lumped together they would be enough to pay off the national debt of the country and then leave sufficient to satisfy a camp store-keeper.
This is no pipe dream or a simple newspaper yarn, but the plain truth. Some of the medicos from the United States have given up earnings of such big figures they should only be mentioned kneeling. Where they gathered in half a million at home yearly, they are accepting a major's three thousand and service allowance, in order to see that Bill Jones from Kankakee or Sam Smith from Pleasantville has the proper treatment for warts in his stomach or barnacles on his thinking apparatus.
In addition to separating themselves from large wads of coin and all the comforts of home, they have brought over the staffs of their various hospitals, who know all their funny ways of operating, from how best to cut a man loose from his appendix to painless extraction of the bankroll. They have also brought along all their collections of patent knives and scissors, the only thing they left behind being the doctors' bills that would take a year's service as a doughboy to meet the first instalment.
A Fear to Forget.
Nearly everyone has an ingrowing objection to going to a hospital, or acknowledging he must take the count for an illness, because of fear as to what treatment he may draw.
Forget it!
The Amexforce hospitals are not built along those lines, nor are the nurses sweet young things of fifty odd summers who hand out tracts with the morning's milk or make kittenish love to a lad who may be tied down to a bed or too weak to run away. And the doctors are not owlish-looking creatures with whiskers that would make a goat die of envy and sick-room manners that would scare a Mental Scientist into catalepsy. They are real human beings who understand the troubles of mankind from nostalgia (professional name for homesickness) down to enlargement of the coco (unprofessional name for the swelled head) and are doing everything in their power to make a little easier the big game we are playing to a showdown with the Kaiser.
It's human nature to hate to go to the doctor. But if the boys would only realize that if they would take their smaller troubles to the "docs" they could easily prevent them from becoming more serious ones, it would save a lot of useless suffering. Of course, that doesn't apply to treatment for the wounded, but the Army Chief Surgeon is trying his darndest to make that as perfect as possible.
A Hospital of 20,000 Beds.
In the first place, adequate hospital facilities have been arranged for. One hospital alone has a capacity for 20,000 beds. At an emergency call, the hospitals can handle twenty per cent. of the whole Amexforce. To begin with the trenches, the Medical Department has introduced a sort of folding litter that can go around corners without having to make a man who's hit get out and walk around the bends. When he gets to the dressing station or collecting hospital, motor ambulances are ready to take him back to the evacuating hospital, where the women nurses take their chances with the men, eight to ten miles behind the line.
Once his case is looked into there, he continues under the charge of that hospital chief until he gets well or is sent home. If he's moved to another hospital his record and register go with him, so that the new hospital knows immediately he was invalided for a piece of shell in his leg, and no flurried or overworked surgeon tries to operate on him for inflammation of the intestines.
From beginning to end, the best specialists in the whole of the Union are at the disposal of any one who's unfortunate enough to get hurt. If it's eyes, ears, throat, abdomen, shell shock, mental derangement, or no matter what, one of the biggest men from home is on the job. They are not correspondence school surgeons, either.
Some of the Experts.
Maybe one of these is from your own home town and you know him by name or reputation: George E. Brewer, New York; George W. Crile, Cleveland; Henry Cushing, Boston, the brain specialist, who knows every cell in the think tank and just how it works and operates; F. A. Washburn, Boston; Samuel Lloyd, New York; C. L. Gibson, New York; R. H. Harte, Philadelphia; F. A. Besley, Chicago; Angus McLean, Detroit; Charles H. Peck, New York; John M. T. Finney, of Johns Hopkins, Baltimore; F. T. Murphy, St. Louis; M. Clinton, Buffalo; R. T. Miller, Pittsburgh; C. R. Clark, Youngstown, O.; E. D. Clark, Indianapolis; B. R. Shurley, Detroit; Joseph E. Flynn, Yale Medical.
If that isn't enough, associated with each of these men are other doctors whose ability is pretty well known all over the States. For instance, Dr. Lloyd, of New York, has with him Dr. McKernon, also of the big town, one of the best ear specialists in the country. If a shell goes off too near you and the eardrum suffers, Dr. McKernon will be on the job to find out if he can't make a new one.
A man who has just come over from Baltimore said the Army had practically cleaned out Johns Hopkins University there, which produces more good doctors to the square inch than France does fleas. So when it comes to sorting out the cases, the men with the bad listeners won't be sent to the throat specialist, nor the chap with a wounded eye made a candidate for the brainstorm man.
The Army's Big Eye Man.
Cases of eye wounds or troubles are handled by a doctor who probably knows more about the eye than any one man in America, Dr. George de Schweinitz, of Philadelphia, who has transplanted his whole sanitarium to France in order that no man of the Amexforce may be deprived of his sight where there is one chance in a million of saving it. With that in view, the chances of coming out of this mess with both eyes are exceptionally good. Statistics from both French and British armies show that of all the wounded they have had, only one man in 1,200 is blinded. If they had had the organization of the American medical force, the chance would probably have been reduced to one man in 2,500.
No one pretends to say that our hospitals make sickness or wounds a pleasure, but be assured of one thing. If anything happens to you, you'll be well looked after in them by the world's leading medical and surgical authorities.
---- A PLEA TO THE CENSOR. ----
"Say," said a short, bow-legged corporal the other day, "I wanta send three pictures home to the folks, but I dunnoo how I can get it across. These censorship rules say all you can send is pictures of yourself without background that might indicate the whereabouts of the studio or other strategic information. These ain't pictures of myself, nothing like it. Wait till I tell you.
"I'm going to entitle this series 'Rapid Transit in France.' I took 'em with a little pocket camera. There's one I took up at the port where we landed--first picture I took in France, it was. It shows one of these two-wheeled carts, with three animals hitched to it. One is a horse, one is a dog, and in the middle there's a great big old cow, and an old French feller in a blue nightshirt sittin' in the road milkin' the cow.
"Then there's another I took over at ---- (the town where general headquarters are situated) of the 'bus that goes down to the station to meet trains. You won't believe this unless you've seen it, but that 'bus is hitched up to a horse an' a camel, a regular camel like you see in a circus--come from Morocco, they tell me, and looks as if he had gone as long as it is camels can go without a drink, or chow, either.
"The last one's a prize. I took it in one of those villages up the line. It's a young kid in a soldier's coat down to his knees walking down the main street with a stick in his hand driving a sled, and what do you guess is hitched to the sled? By gosh, a big fat goose, and nothing else. The kid's steerin' the goose with the stick, and the goose's lookin' around with that fool goose look, just like the picture you see of that Crown Prince.
"Say, what do you think those folks with their automobiles and subways and everything would make of that? It sure would open their eyes. Travel's a great thing for a man," said the corporal.
---- WHAT SAILOR INGRAM DID. ----
Neither Casablanca nor Horatius at the bridge surpassed in heroism young Osmond Kelly Ingram, who threw overboard the explosives on the American destroyer Cassin in order that the German submarine's torpedo should not detonate them and destroy his ship--and gave his life for his comrades and his country in doing so. Ingram sought danger instead of fleeing it. He might have saved his life without discredit. But he did not think of his life--or if he thought of it, he knew that he was deliberately sacrificing it. And he acted with instant resolution.
To his courage and his quickness is due the fact that Ingram's was the only life lost in the German attack on the Cassin. That result he foresaw and welcomed. He knew how to take death as his portion without an instant's hesitation. He was of the breed of heroes, and his name will be borne forever on the nation's roll of honor.--Boston Transcript.
---- THE ROAD WAS OPEN. ----
France's wonderful highways which saved her in this war are as crooked as a jig saw puzzle, but there are excellent maps which show every road in the country. Up near the fighting front, however, the new military roads are as broad and as good as some of the old highways which have survived since the days of the Romans and more than a map is needed if you want to remain in France.
A few days ago two American newspaper correspondents were travelling from one French city to another, the shortest course, according to the same excellent maps, taking them close back of the French lines. All day there had been a blinding snow, it was deep and loose on the ground, and the car was going as fast as possible for safety.
Temporary wooden signs at cross roads showed the direction of different camps. The road plunged through a forest, occasionally they passed a soldier plodding through the snow, then emerged along the base of a ridge honeycombed with dug-outs and bombproofs on its sheltered side. It was plain that they were close to the front. Soldiers peered from doorways at the car skidding through the swirling snow; then the huts ceased. For a mile the correspondents ran behind a flapping wall of canvas camouflage, with barbwire entanglements on the other side of the road. The map indicated they were on the right road.
Then they came to a barbwire affair like a turnstile lying on its side in the middle of the road, and stopped. They could not see a hundred feet through the fog and snow, but could hear the muffled boom of nearby cannon. The map showed only three kilometers ahead the main highway to the city they were headed for. They did not know that the German trenches were only two kilometers ahead and that the snow was the only reason the Boche had not seen them and favored them with a shot. Two French officers came along and in his best French one of the correspondents asked if they could get through on that road.
"Yes, if you speak German," was the answer with a laugh and in excellent English.
---- THERE'S A REASON. ----
"For Pete's sake, Ed, quit tryin' to pick your teeth with your fork! Mind your manners, man!"
"Aw, go easy, Mike; how'n'ell am I goin' to buy a toothpick, with wood so expensive in France?"
---- SEA SLANG PUZZLES POILU. ---- Trips on an Idiom and His Pride Takes a Fall. ----
Among the idiomatic terms adopted by United States Marines everywhere, the expression "shove off" is used more frequently than any other. In the sea-soldier lingo, if a Marine goes home on furlough, leaves his camp or garrison or goes anywhere, he "shoves off."
A story comes from France of a Marine who had been acting as orderly for a lieutenant. The officer sent him on an errand, and when he returned the lieutenant was nowhere about. A poilu, who happened to be loitering in the vicinity, was questioned by the Marine:
"Have you seen the lieutenant?"
"Oui, monsieur, oui," replied the poilu, proud of his newly acquired Marine Corps English, "he have--what you call--pushed over."
---- HOW ABOUT THEM? ----
Things that make all the difference in the world:--
A letter from ---- (fill in name to suit yourself.)
A real soap-and-hot-water bath.
A real shave.
Dry feet.
American tobacco.
"Good work!" from the skipper.
A home-town paper less than a month old.
"Seconds" on coffee--when it's made right.
Pay-day.
---- YANKEE AVIATORS PLAY IN LUCK ---- Dead Engine Sneezes and Picks Up after a 2,000 Meter Drop. ---- SKY FULL OF CREAM PUFFS. ---- Observer Who Fails to Surround Something Hot Faints From the Cold. ----
Those were American boys who dodged Boche air patrols, laughed at anti-aircraft guns and spattered bombs upon Rombach and Ludwigshafen far behind the Boche lines.
One of them used to be a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Joseph Wilson, of Wheeling, W. Va., another is Bud Lehr, of Albion, Neb., who played center on a basketball team that won the State championship. The others are Charles Kinsolving and Charles Kerwood, of Philadelphia, and George Kyle, of Portland, Ore. They are corporals in a French flying squadron situated within an hour's flight of an American infantry training camp.
Seated around the rough mess table in their popotte--a tiny building stuck away on a ledge of rock under a cliff--they told all about the bombing of the railroad stations and ammunition factories at Rombach and Ludwigshafen.
"The old Boche almost got me that time," said Lehr, lifting the oil cloth table cover to knock wood. "The engine of my boat died on me just over Rombach. I pulled everything in sight and kicked every lever I couldn't see. Nothing doing; anti-aircraft shells bursting right on a level with me. We began to drop. I turned around to the observer and pulled a sea-sick grin.
A Sneeze Spelled Joy.
"'It's all off, kid,' he said. 'Looks like we're through.'
"We dropped from 5,000 meters to 3,000. Then the engine sneezed, coughed and took up again. My heart and the boat came up 2,000 meters in one jump. The rest of the formation had gone on, dropped their bombs on Rombach and were beating it for Ludwigshafen. By the time I got back to my right altitude I could see the effects of their bombs. The railroad station was burning like a haystack and smoke was coming from the munitions plant. I circled the town and the observer released the bombs.
"Then I turned nose back towards Verdun and crossed the lines. A couple of miles behind the line the engine ran out of gas, so we came down in a field."
They circled several times on the French side of the lines before crossing in order to reach the necessary altitude. Kyle dropped eight bombs, most of them on the munition plant at Ludwigshafen.
"The sky was full of cream puffs," he said, "but it didn't bother us very much because most of the stuff was breaking above or below us. We took our time, aimed for the objective, and dropped the bombs.
Can't See Bomb's Results.