Chapter 4

Two soldiers were talking with two girls of the streets. One of the soldiers took off his cap. One of the girls stopped talking to say a little word of prayer. Both soldiers faced about, and all four gazed in silence for long after the little cortège had passed on. Then the first soldier put on his cap, all faced about, and resumed their talk, but more slowly and not quite so loudly as before.

An English Tommy was driving a tram--a swearing Tommy that you could hear a block away. He came on the mourners from behind. He was in a hurry, and by clanging his bell he could have crowded by. But he held the tram in check, nursing it so as not to frighten the two old women in the rear--until they came to a wide square. Here there was room. He clanged his bell, not too loudly, turned on the juice, and hurried to make up for lost time. Men are being killed by the million over here, and other men who have been there--these very men on these streets--will tell you that they hardly turn their heads to see one more killed. But a little child is different.

Our steamer was to sail next night--at what hour no one could say, but it was well to be there in good time, we were told, so we went with the hotel bus. A little porter woman was there with my 70-pound bag before I even knew "things were ready"; and she said she did not roll it down the five flights from my room. She carried it every stair step of the way. Her husband was in the war, and she had five children and it required more than a few sous in the week for five children, the eldest fourteen. I agreed that it did.

Swinging on to the jetty, we had to take notice of a shop advertising to rent life-saving apparatus for the trip across the Channel. It was fine--a one-piece suit which came from the toes to the ears and a hood which you could turn in over your head! There was a painting of a torpedoed passenger ship going up in flames, topside and the hull settling down into the rolling billows. Men and women were jumping into the sea and drowning in agony. They had no life-saving, one-piece suits. But all were not so thoughtless. There were others floating along high out of water with the most beatific expressions on their faces. They had been thoughtful enough to buy one of the patent one-piece suits. The painting was in colors, red and black mostly.

The afternoon had closed in showers, and when we made the steamer landing we stood in pools of water in the hollows of the worn stone flags. We were in good time, but a hundred or more who had been in better time were already inside the shed. The hold-overs from three days were there, military people mostly. We waited--and waited--and waited. It was the eternal passport matter. One at a time they had to pass the tribunal inside. A pleasant-mannered young English soldier stood guard at the shed door. Every half-hour or so, at command of a voice from the inside, he would let another dozen or twenty slide by. When he did so, those of us in the rear would hurry to fill the void, picking up our baggage from our feet as we pushed on. I had hired a porter, an old man, to look after my 70-pound bag. He stood by patiently for two hours or so. Then, without warning, he ran off and did not come back. I had not paid him, so he must have grown very tired. After that, whenever I moved forward, I had to pick up my two bags myself--the other weighed 40 pounds. Sometimes I put the bags into a pool of water--sometimes I put my feet.

Not every one had to wait. An officer would be passed through immediately, which did not please two enlisted men near me, just back from what they called rough work at the front. The little one, called Scotty, had a fear that the boat might leave before he could get there. He wanted to "mak' a train oot o' Lunnon" at two of the next afternoon, "mak' a nicht train oot o' Glesgie" (Glasgow) and surprise his folk by walking in on 'em "afore brekkist." They would be glad to see him, be sure.

"Almost as glad to see you come as they was goin'?" asked the soldier with him, and then urged Scotty to stop over in London for a bit o' fun.

"I'll not," said Scotty. "I'll mak' the trains as I said an' surprise 'em afore brekkist. Besides, there's a football match on for the arternoon arter to-morrer, and an old pal o' mine is playin' for'ard for oor team. But let 'em allow all these officers aboord first--'ere's anither ane--listen tae 'im!"

But it was not an officer this time. It was a voice asking if any privileges were accorded a King's messenger. The guard at the door said certainly, but where was he? Everybody made way for the voice. He turned out to be a little man with a scraggy beard and large round spectacles. The guard eyed him doubtfully. The King's messenger stood on his toes and whispered up into the guard's ear.

The guard looked down on him. "King's messenger! Go on with yer!" He shoved him back.

"Yes, garn with yer!" said Scotty, "but he's gained a guid half oor wi' his King's-messenger talk. I think I'll hae tae be something important masel' sune."

The soldier with Scotty could speak French. He spoke it to a pretty young French girl and her mother who had been pressed up against them. The mother had a new hat in a big paper box. Whenever the rush threatened to crush the hat-box, she would hold it high over her head till she could hold it no longer, when she let it get crushed.

Whenever the girl spoke to the other soldier Scotty would want to know what she said. "She's sairtainly pretty. What did she say that time, Tid?"

Tid kept to himself what she said. "It's a cut above the likes of you we're discussin'," said Tid.

"She'll be goin' to England to marry an English officer," said Scotty.

The girl whirled on him. "No. No Engleesh officier--a French officier!"

"I had a notion you'd spoil it," said Tid.

"Ma Gud," groaned Scotty. "I wonder, Tid, did she hear a' I said this nicht o' her, and ma lips no two feet frae her ear!"

The night was growing cooler. The girl's fur neck-piece slipped down from her shoulders. The mother had passed her the hat-box, and the girl had no hand free for the neck-piece. Scotty put it back for her. She thanked him sweetly.

"You're no mad noo?" said Scotty. "I'll tak' a steady billet tae put it back." He took to slyly stroking the fur piece when he thought she could not see him.

A woman lost her passport, but did not know it until she was about to be passed through the door. Then she shrieked. She came back in the crowd to look for it. She had been standing in one spot for an hour--it must be there. She rushed to the spot, lit a match, and began to look under her feet. A man lit a match and began to look under his feet. Another man lit a match and began to look under his feet. We all lit matches and began to look under our feet.

She shrieked again. "Ma Gud, she's a dyin' woman!" said Scotty.

She was not. She had found her passport. The business of waiting was resumed by the rest of us.

The little cafés along the water-front were closing; loads of soldiers and sailors began to flow out on to the jetty. One began to sing, and another; others to whirl along in grotesque dance steps. Two began to talk loudly. They came to blows. A third one stepped in to stop it, whereupon one of the first two turned on him to inquire what he was interfering for.

"But he's a friend o' mine," explained the third man.

"Is he a better friend o' yours than o' me? Answer me that. Is he? Do you know him longer than I know him? No? Then mind your own and do not be interferin'." The third man felt properly rebuked. He withdrew his objections and the other two resumed their fight.

We were inside the shed at last; and by and by I came before a man in a little office inside the shed. He was a Frenchman, but spoke good English.

"Your passport, please."

I produced it. He took a look and passed it back.

"Any gold on your person?"

"Thirty dollars--American."

"Hand it over, please. Wait. Are you American?"

"I am."

"In that case keep it. That is all. Pass out. Next."

Next came a little house with a row of men sitting at a long, narrow pine-board table. The first had a quick look at my passport and handed it on to a man who sat on his left before a card index in boxes. That one dug into his boxes, found what he was looking for, and slid the passport along to the next on his left, who slid it along to the man on his left, and he to the man on his left, and he to the last one.

You chased that passport down the line, answering the questions which each one put in turn, as to where you last came from, where before that, and before that, and the date, your business, where you were going in England, why, for how long, and where you would stay. They were all pleasantly put, but you had the feeling that let you stumble and it would be God help you. Each asked a question or two that nobody else had thought of. The last one had the least of all to say. He probably thought that if, after all, you were a German spy, you had earned your exemption. He only made a note of your name, handed out a red card, said to give it to the soldier at the out-going door, claim your baggage, have the customs inspector pass it, and go aboard the steamer when you liked. All I saw liked to go aboard at once.

There was a man of many buttons behind a shining brass grill on the steamer--French, apparently, but also speaking plain English. I handed in my ticket and asked for a berth. He was snappy. "Have you one reserved?"

"Why, no. When I bought my steamer ticket I was told that there would be no need to reserve a berth--there would be plenty."

"He told you wrong. There are no berths."

"But is he not your agent--the man who sold me the ticket?"

"No."

"But you accept his ticket?"

"There is no berth."

"You mean that I pay for a first-class ticket on your steamer and then have to walk the deck?"

"There is no berth, I say." He talked like a machine-gun, and the marble Roman gods were not more impassive as he turned to the next. I saluted him. You just have to honor a man who knows exactly what he wants to say and says it, which did not prevent me from saying over the next one's shoulder what I thought of his manners, the ethics of his company, and the cheek of the well-known tourist agency which had sold me the ticket in Paris.

But it did not get me anything. He went right on about his business of turning more people away.

I had a look around. The smoking-room air was all blue, and all khaki as to chairs and tables. Also all khaki as to sleeping-quarters. They had been campaigning for a year or more on the western line, and had not lost any time here. And every blessed one of them had a whiskey and soda before him. They were talking, but not of the war. They were going home for a ten days' leave after a year at the front and were trying to forget the war. There was also a lounge-room and a dining-saloon, but bunks there were also already commandeered by the strategic military.

It could be a worse night to walk the deck. To see what was doing a man would want to walk the deck anyway.

There was a fine bright moon mounting above the housetops of the water-front when we slid away from our jetty berth. Slid is the word. She was all power, this Channel steamer of hardly 1,500 tons, yet with two great smoke-stacks, three propellers, turbine-engines, and burning oil for fuel. That last is a cheerful item when you have to walk the deck--it means no cinders in your eyes.

Fuss? A strange word to her. She slipped like running oil from the jetty, past the breakwater lights, out by the few craft anchored there--a fast one for sure. To get a line on her speed, you had but to watch the shore marks fall away or the water slide by her side as out into the Channel she went.

People without berths, but with a chair and a rug from the head steward, began now to tuck away. At first they sat mostly by the rail watching things. Later they sought snugger corners; but two o'clock of a September morning in 50° north is still two o'clock in the morning. They began to go inside. The lights were turned off inside the ship, so when you walked around in there and felt your foot come down on something soft, you needed to tread lightly--that would be somebody's neck or stomach. There were life-rafts on the top deck, of a homelike sort of model, in the form of two benches with the air-tanks under the benches. If anything happened to the ship, you could go floating off with all the comforts of a seat on a bench in the park--if too many did not try to have seats at the same time. It was a fine night for anybody to spot us, but just as fine a night for us to spot them. And a ship cutting out devious courses at twenty-one knots, or whatever she was logging--she is not too easy to hit. To lay out for the ten and eleven knot cargo boats is more economical. Still, who knows? We paid tribute to the U-boats by making détours. All the big stars of the night were out, and by them we could follow her shifting courses. But no harm; she had speed enough to sail the Channel sidewise and still bring us in by morning. The night grew older and cooler. The last of the people who had paid toll to the steward for a chair and rug went inside. Only one couple were left; and they had not hired any chair. He was a young officer, and they sat under his olive-drab blanket, on a life-raft bench athwartship. From there without moving they could get sidewise peeks at the climbing moon. At five o'clock in the morning they were still sitting there, heads together and arms across each other's shoulders.

When we grew tired of walking we sought little anchorages. By two o'clock any man on deck could have had his pick of abandoned chairs, but they were not good chairs--the extension part too short. One very young Canadian officer opened up his kit, made a bed and what lee he could of the forward smoke-stack. A round smoke-stack makes a poor lee, but once tucked in he stuck, and was there in the morning when clear light came.

The moon went behind clouds, and from the clouds little cold showers of rain came peppering down. Heavier clouds came, and heavier squalls with rain; and a mean little cross sea began to make. Straight ahead, above the little seas a light showed, and soon another--this a powerful one. We were still going at a great clip. We might know it anew by the way that big light jumped forward to meet us. Soon we had it off our bow, abeam, on our quarter; we were inshore.

A destroyer came out to meet us and blinked a message from screened lights. More ships met us. We passed other ships--all kinds of ships, of which in detail a man must not write here.

In good time and in smooth waters we made our landing. There was another long wait, the same passport grilling, but in a different way, and then a fast train to London. A taxi then, a room, a shave and bath, clean linen, and--oh boy!--the roast beef of old England and people you knew to talk to!

THE CENSORS

Before a visiting correspondent can do anything on the other side he has to report to a censor somewhere. In London the Chief Admiralty Censor was a retired Royal Navy captain and a Sir Knight, but not wearing his uniform or parading his knighthood. He was quartered in an old dark building where Nelson used to hang out in the days before Trafalgar. There was a sign on the door:

DON'T KNOCK. COME IN

He was a good sort, with not a sign about him of that swank which so many of the military caste seem to think it necessary to adopt. He was perfectly willing to pass me on to our naval base and go right ahead with my work; but he did not have charge of the naval base. There was an admiral over there--not an American admiral--who had full charge of our war-ships there. Without his permission not one of them could tie up to a mooring in the harbor. I would have to get his permission even to visit the base. My very human censor in London said he would cable to him and let me know just as soon as word came.

Awaiting the pleasure of the naval base dictator held me two weeks in London. While waiting I had a look over the city. It was during a period when the moon was ripe for air-raids. There were seven of them in nine nights. My business in life being to see things and then to write about them, I walked the streets during two of them and viewed some of the others from club and hotel windows.

The underground railway stations did a great business while the raids were on; also bomb-proof basements. In a newspaper office, where I used to visit, were precise directions how to get to their bomb-proof cellar. And be sure to take the right one. They had two cellars, but only one was bomb-proof. Shops in the expensive shopping districts had signs up, advertising their bomb-proof cellars and inviting their patrons to make use of them; but the trouble with the shops was that most air-raids took place after they had shut up for the day.

There was a local regulation which said that when an air-raid was on any person at all might knock at the door of any house he pleased and claim admittance. If he were not admitted at once he could call a policeman, who would have to see that he was admitted. We used to speculate on what would happen if some hobo knocked at the front door of the town house of the Duke of Westminster, say, and demanded of the butler in plush knee-breeches that he be let in.

The chief defense against the Goths was a barrage of guns mounted mostly on the roofs of buildings. An expected air-raid would be announced by policemen running through the streets on bicycles, on their chests and back were signs: AIR RAID ON. They also blew whistles.

The great search-lights would sweep the skies, and by and by there would be a great banging of barrage guns. Bang, bang, bang--that would be the defense guns. Boom! That would be a bomb. Bang, bang, bang, and Boo-oom! The guns fired 3-inch shrapnel. Three miles into the air the shrapnel shells would go! And what goes up has to come down. The next thing would be shrapnel showering into the streets. It seemed to me that I would rather take my chance with the bombs than with the shrapnel. A bomb came down, exploded, and had done with it; but the shrapnel fell all over the place.

You could see the shrapnel shells bursting high in the air--a beautiful sight--twinkling like big yellow stars, and then fading out. They would look more beautiful if only the pieces of them would stay up there after they burst. I was in Oxford Circus one night when a hatful of shrapnel fell about 20 feet away. One piece was about 5 inches long. Imagine that falling down from a height of 3 miles and hitting a fellow on the head. It would go clear on down through to your toes. Before any American city is raided I hope some chemist will invent a barrage shell which will dissipate all its energy and substance in the bursting. Surely an airplane can be wrecked by concussion.

An Australian soldier and a girl were standing in a doorway near me watching the shells burst. His was that common case--a soldier in London on leave, speculating on where the shrapnel would fall, and becoming peeved as he thought of it. "A hell of a place for a man to come on leave! I came here to get rest and quiet, and I run into this gory mess!"

While waiting the permission of the British authorities I learned that all a correspondent's troubles do not come from foreign censorship. An American newsman had cabled over something which did not please one of our admirals then in London. Meeting that same admiral, I put in a word for my trip to the naval base, thinking that he might warm up and hurry things along for me. He warmed up, but on the side away from me. He recounted the enormous villainy of that newsman, and in conclusion said: "Perhaps, after all, the best way to do is not to allow you newspaper men to send a word at all!"

Such an air of finality! He spoke as though he owned the navy; also the press.

One now and again grows up like that. By taking care not to die, and in the absence of plucking boards, they rise to be admirals. Then side-boys, the bosun's pipes, the 13 guns coming over the side--all this ritual goes to their heads. They get to thinking after a while that the whole business is a tribute to their genius, or valor, or something or other personal. Perhaps all this one needed was a little salve; but I thought it up to some writer to fire a shot across his bows. So I came back with: "That's all very well, sir, about your not allowing a word to be sent, but there may be another point of view. There are 110,000,000 people over in our country, and some of them may not look on our navy as the sole property of its officers. They may want to know what that navy of theirs is doing over here. And perhaps no harm in telling them--or some day they may decide to have no navy at all."

Imagination was not his long suit, so he had no card to follow with. But he did glare.

After two weeks of waiting I got word from my very human London censor that I might leave for the naval base. I left from Euston Station during an air-raid. The station had been darkened hours earlier, and it was a new kind of sport going around that big black place to locate the cloak-room, and after you got the cloak-room to identify your baggage from a big tumbled pile.

I lit a cigar, and as I did a policeman jumped me for showing a light. Stopping to light it under my hat, a tall, able woman, dragging a trunk by the strap, bowled into me. While we were in our compartments, the train all made up, there came a banging of barrage guns--bang, bang, bang--with now and then the boo-oom! of a bomb.

While we were waiting there we heard the crash of shrapnel coming through the glass roof. By and by another bunch of shrapnel fell with a fine ringing of metal on the concrete platform alongside the train. No harm done. The raiders passed, the banging and the booming stopped; but there was then no driver and stoker for the train. They had gone with the second load of shrapnel, and we had to wait two hours while they dug up a new crew.

After three and a half hours of deck-pacing on the steamer, and twenty-two hours of sitting up straight in third-class wooden seats, I made the naval base; and late at night though it was, there was a British naval officer at the hotel to let me know I was to report next morning to the British admiral in charge.

This admiral had a reputation in London for having no use for newspaper men. When this staff-officer asked me if I had heard of his admiral before, I told him what I heard in London. "He eats 'em alive," I was told by a big London journalist, and I repeated that now, of course without naming the journalist.

"And what do you think of that?" asked this staff-officer.

"If he tries to eat me alive I hope he chokes," I answered to that. I figured he would tell his chief that, but there had been so much boot-licking done by a couple of writers over there that, for the honor of the craft, I thought somebody ought to have a wallop at these press crushers once in a while.

This admiral is worth a paragraph, because he was a type. He was a capable man up to his limitations; a good executive, a devotee to duty; but he should have lived before printing-presses were invented. Also he, too, lacked imagination.

He was a man who acted as if priding himself on his brusqueness of language. He sat at his flat desk like a pagan image, never looked up, never said aye, no, or go to the devil when I stepped in and wished him "Good morning!"

I told him what I wanted. I wished to cruise with the American destroyers in their U-boat operations.

His answer was a No! Bing! No, sir!

"Whoops!" I said to myself. "I've come more than 4,000 miles, with a fine expense account to _Collier's_, and I'm turned down before I get going."