A reporter at Armageddon; letters from the front and behind the lines of the great war

W REPORTER^

kRMAGEDDON

K WILL IRWIN r

A REPORTER
AT ARMAGEDDON

A REPORTER
AT ARMAGEDDON

LETTERS FROM THE FRONT AND
BEHIND THE LINES OF THE GREAT WAR

BY
WILL IRWIN

AUTHOR OF "MEN. WOMEN AND WAR,"
"THE SPLENDID STORY OF YPRES," "THE LATIN AT WAR," ETC.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

1918

COPTRIGHT, 1918, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1918, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

TO
L H. I.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I GETTING OVER 1

II A BEAUTY SHOW . . 19

III FRANCE AGAIN! 33

IV MESSENGERS FROM BELGIUM 48

V CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES 68

VI THE AMERICAN VANGUARD 87

VII WITH THE BRITISH FLYERS 107

VIII MCPHERSON DOES STUNTS 119

IX THE FOURTH 134

X THE FOURTEENTH ....... 147

XI SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY 169

XII AFTER THREE YEARS 188

XIII THE RIOT AT GENEVA 215

XIV THE LAST OF THE TOURISTS 229

XV THE VOICE OF ISRAEL 250

XVI OFF SORRENTO 264

XVII THE ITALIAN DISASTER 308

XVIII A WARTIME JOURNEY ...... 322

XIX OUR OWN TROOPS . . .

A REPORTER
AT ARMAGEDDON

CHAPTER I
GETTING OVER

AT SEA,
Saturday Evening, March 24, 1917.

TO-NIGHT this little Spanish jitney steamer is
eleven days from New York and twelve hours —
perhaps — from her home port of Cadiz, just out-
side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Since we passed
the Azores three days ago we have been steering
a curved course; but for that we should have
reached port already. Approaching the Strait of
Gibraltar is dangerous just now, even for a strictly
neutral ship. Between the Pillars of Hercules
the German mine-laying submarines are busy, and
the currents carry the mines out into the broad
Atlantic. For that reason we steered north ; and
just after sunset this evening a flashing light an-
nounced our approach to the Spanish Coast. We
have been hugging the three-mile limit ever since,
and across the severe shore, which we can make
out in the beams of a new moon, comes the distant
gleam. ^f town lights. The ship's rumors, which

1

A BEPOKTEK AT AEMAGEDDON

always break out on the last night of these war-
time journeys, have been especially prevalent and
startling this evening. One has it that we shall
be stopped by a French cruiser early to-morrow
morning and searched for German subjects. It
is said also that the captain has advised all sub-
jects of belligerent countries to disembark at
Cadiz, outside the Strait, instead of trying the
further course to Barcelona, within the troubled
Mediterranean. Some of the belligerents are
planning to sit up all night — for in spite of the
German announcement that the Spanish coast is
not blockaded for neutral vessels no one seems
to put much faith in the self-control of a German
submarine commander confronted with a fat prize.

This has been a queer voyage. I have crossed
to Europe five times since the beginning of the
war, and each time I have seen the business of sea
travel grow less and less luxurious. Now we are
down to primitive necessity — the travel of forty
years ago. To begin with the ship, she was Clyde-
built in 1891, before the era of ocean greyhounds
and floating hotels. Her certificate of inspection
shows that she registers less than six thousand
tons; which puts her, on the standards of 1914,
in the class of coasters. She is probably the small-
est craft that dares to carry first-cabin passengers
across the Atlantic in these times.

Four days ago we had a fine following wind,
whereupon our merry Spanish crew — great sing-
ers and dancers — rigged a lateen sail on the f ore-

2

GETTING OVER

mast, which added thirty miles or so to the day's
run. It recalled the early era of steam power in
the United States Navy, when standing orders
forced commanders to use sails whenever possible,
and admirals used to be reprimanded for burning
coal when the wind would serve just as well.

She is a steady old tub, rolling and pitching far
less than most ships of four times her tonnage—
and that lets her out. At some time in her past
history, I take it, she was refitted with secondhand
furnishings torn out of dismantled ships; for no
two cabin washstands are of the same pattern.
Most of the washstands, indeed, function no
longer, as the French express it. Our tap is hope-
lessly out of order, and we pour our water from a
can resembling a garden watering-pot. Few of
the Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Japa-
nese, Rumanians, Russians, Dutchmen and Italians
making this journey speak Spanish. We had
thought that French, the universal language of
European travel, would carry us through. But
not a single servant of the boat has either French
or English, and only one of the officers. The Eng-
lish-Spanish pocket dictionaries aboard are pass-
ing from hand to hand while we learn that dinner
is "comida" and that sheets are "sdbanas."
For the rest we are down to the language of ges-
ture.

To do the old tub justice, the food is passable.
However, the American abroad refuses to recog-
nize as coffee any mixture or brew except his own.

3

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

In two years and a half of the war I have found
only two places that served coffee measuring up
to our standards. One was a very humble cafe
at Lyons, and the other an equally modest estab-
lishment in Udine. Here, I have had luck again.
Our star passenger this trip is the Reliever of
Belgium, returning to wind up, before the war
breaks on us, that institution which has been
America's most glorious work of war — so far.
He is a little disgusted because a cautious board
of directors persuaded him to take this safe
route instead of the more dangerous one,
via British passenger ship, from New York to
Liverpool. He is used by this time to dodging
explosives. He has crossed from England to Bel-
gium on an average of once every six weeks since
the first October of the war. The Dutch company
on whose packets he used to sail has lost six out of
seven vessels so far through floating mines; and
twice his ship has been captured and searched by
German torpedo fleets.

His cautious directors took no chances on the
Friend of the Hungry going hungry himself.
They loaded his cabin with fresh fruit, fresh eggs
and — most useful of all — a complete coffee-making
outfit, including ground Java and Mocha, canned
heat and fresh cream. So every morning he and
I have risen at our native farmer hour and made
real coffee for ourselves and for whatever guests
cared to breakfast before eight. The cream
lasted only three days. We had tried to put it in

4

GETTING OVER

the ice box, but the head steward, interviewed
through an obliging Spaniard, replied that he had
a very peculiar ice box. While on the subject of
eating and drinking and quarters, let me mention
that I paid four hundred and forty-two dollars and
fifty cents for a cabin on the main deck for my-
self and my wife. That sum, in any March be-
fore the war, would have secured us a suite on a
six-day boat. Still, the assurance of comparative
safety is worth the price.

The passenger list is entertaining to the point
of romance. Except for the Spaniards, it is a
kind of journey of desperation for most of us.
There are two or three American business men.
One is going over to sell steel cars to the Italian
Government — he has already filled up the Kus-
sian roads to the point of saturation. By con-
trast, another, bound also for Italy, will buy
maraschino cherries for the New York cocktail
market. A rosy-cheeked Dutchman and his
plump, handsome wife found themselves in Amer-
ica when the submarine proclamation stopped all
passenger traffic with Holland. They had left
their children in Holland. They are returning
via Spain, France, the Channel, England, and the
Channel again. Only we who have encountered
the official restrictions on travel know what our
friends from Holland must endure in the next
fortnight.

She whom we call to her face the Beautiful Wop
joins us sometimes at breakfast — a young, pretty

5

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

and alive Italian- American, by profession a cos-
tume buyer. This is her sixth trip over since the
war, though she has gone previously via Bordeaux.
Only two days, before our sailing did she decide to
make this voyage, and get out a last consignment
of Paris fashions before the entrance of the United
States should make shipments still more precari-
ous. The second day out she found on board her
Dearest Rival — on the same mission!

With her come to breakfast the Relief Girl,
who has been learning stenography in order to
act as secretary to a society for the relief of the
French wounded, and "Mr. Y. M. C. A.," whose
nickname explains his mission. He will take
charge of a recreation tent in the war zone — al-
most all of the British Y. M. C. A. secretaries are
mobilized.

A pleasant little Italian attorney, who speaks
all the languages current on board, has been for a
year on a special commercial mission to the United
States. A month from now he will be wearing the
olive-gray and fighting with the Third Alpini
among the peaks. An ex-football player of
Princeton is going over to London to report to the
head office of his banking firm; thence he passes
on to a permanent station in India. He is escort-
ing his sister, who will, upon arrival, marry an
English naval captain. War is war, and a sailor
of His Majesty's navy on active service cannot
cross the seas for his bride !

Then there is the Newspaper Enterprise Asso-

6

GETTING OVER

elation man, going to have his first shot at report-
ing the war and considerably excited over the
prospect. He is walking the deck with an Ameri-
can who will introduce to Spain a new compact
talking machine. Ship Js orchestras are numbered
with the things of that dead past before the war;
but every fine afternoon he has given a concert
on deck with his bijou machine. Other persons
worthy of mention include the remains of the Rus-
sian Ballet — most of that troupe sailed two weeks
ahead of us — and a French art dealer, member of
a famous Franco-American banking family, who
has been in America disposing of some great
French paintings, sold because of the war.

The sportively inclined among the Latin ele-
ment are at this moment drinking champagne on
deck. The Spanish have been enjoying them-
selves in their own way. First and last, they have
found means to play every known parlor game,
from bridge, chess and poker down to keno. We
had scarcely passed the Statue of Liberty before
they opened a lottery. This afternoon the draw-
ing was held on deck, amidst unprecedented ex-
citement. A half an hour later what looked like
a terrible row broke out — five plump, dark gentle-
men shoving their fingers under one another's
noses, waving their palms before one another's
faces, stamping and talking like the exhaust of an
automobile. The Italian attorney passed just
then. "What is this all about V9 1 asked. He lis-
tened a moment. ' ' They are arguing over a point

7

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

in philology!" lie replied. With the Spanish,
something is doing every moment. Most of the
men, I find, are commercial travelers from Barce-
lona, who have been selling Spanish goods in New
York.

However, there are romantic exceptions. A tall
and exceptionally dark person in a frock coat
turns out to be a fortune teller from Yucatan.
He has read the palms of all the Spanish women
on deck, looking soulfully into their eyes as he
plied his art. A short and plump person in a
mantilla, who sits all day on deck knitting with-
out ever raising her eyes, is his Mexican wife.
Rumor has it that she is a fabulously rich heiress.
There was a scramble for cabins just before we
sailed, and late comers had to take what they could
get. In consequence, she is quartered separately
from her husband with three American women.
Night before last she failed to show up in her
cabin. Investigation revealed that she had fallen
asleep on a bench in the hall and slept there all
night in her peaceful Indian fashion. A chatty
and sociable Dominican nun and her charge, a
pretty little girl of eleven years, give a lively note
to the Spanish colony. This morning the girl ap-
peared with a doll as big as herself. The Spanish
sports were drinking sherry on deck. They lured
the doll from her and pretended to get it drunk —
to the scandal of the little mother.

However, the great high light of this trip is
Tortola— Tortola Valencia, the Spanish dancer—

8

GETTING OVER

just back from a trip to South America, where,
according to her manager, the enthusiastic inhab-
itants unharnessed the horses from her carriage
and dragged her to the hotel by hand. He further
informs us that she is the greatest artist of the
dance ever born and the greatest that can ever
possibly be born. I learn from persons less in-
terested that she is supreme in her department-
interpretative dancing — on the Spanish stage. I
despair of describing how beautiful Tortola is ; it
would take a woman to do that. She begins, as
most beauties do not, with a correct background
of bony structure. The angle of her jaws, the
curve of her nose, the sweep of her ample eye-
socket are all essentially comely. On that back-
ground are built a smooth, creamy complexion, a
set of white teeth firm yet fine, slimly arched eye-
brows, and a pair of great black eyes all fire, in-
telligence and emotion. Her straight hair makes
midnight look like dawn. Her dress is startling,
to put the matter mildly; it runs to old-portrait
effects. She wears two pendent sapphire ear-
rings as big as pigeon's eggs, a great sapphire
finger-ring to match, and a half a dozen other
rings, emerald or diamond, none of which scores
less than five carats in weight. On cold days,
when she has to don her gloves for warmth, she
takes off her largest rings, deposits them in her
lap, draws on her gloves, and replaces the rings
carefully outside.

From the very moment when she landed on deck

9

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

she was surrounded by an admiring, solicitous,
respectful court of Spanish men. It became our
game to count them. There were never less than
four, and one fine evening the score reached
eleven — not including the infatuated decKnand.
A handsome lad who looks in his blue sailor uni-
form as though made up for romantic opera, he
always finds business in the background, whence
he devours her with his eyes. From the forward
deck a set of portholes look down into the dining
saloon. One evening, having finished dinner, I
strolled out on deck. The infatuated deck hand,
holding the ship's cat in his arms, lay stretched
out at full length, his face glued to a porthole.
He was regarding Tortola, where she sat holding
her court.

Only three days ago did we learn that she speaks
perfect English — though a native of Seville she
was educated in an English convent. After which
the American element, including our women —
nothing fascinates other women like a beauty —
joined her court. As we might have expected
from her ample forehead and the light in her eye,
she has real intelligence. Her comments on art —
not only her own, but all art from painting to
music — were both wise and witty. Ship life was
a bit hard on her abounding energies, and when
she grew bored she used to dance with the upper
part of her body, while the members usually asso-
ciated with her art remained immobile under about
five thousand dollars' worth of sealskin coat.

10

GETTING OVER

Twenty varieties of Spanish dances, Hindu dances,
snake dances, her own interpretative dances of
the Peer Gynt suite — she did them all with arms
and torso and expression. ' i Have you learned the
Hawaiian dances in your travels?" asked an
American during one of these performances. "I
do not learn, I create!" replied Tortola Valencia.

Finally, there is the Padre, who walks gravely
on deck every day reading his book of hours. One
Sunday and two major saints' days have occurred
since we cast off into the Sea of Submarines. On
these occasions, the sea being smooth, he has set
up an altar on deck and celebrated Mass with two
little apprentices in sailor uniforms as acolytes,
and with the ship 's officers, arranged according to
their rank, in front of the congregation.

Meantime, the face of the world has changed.*
The revolution in Eussia, for which the liberals of
the world have been waiting and hoping and pray-
ing all my lifetime — it has burst suddenly and
dramatically. The manner in , which the news
came to us was maddening. Fortunately we have
had a wireless bulletin every day, at first in Eng-
lish from Arlington, then in Spanish from passing
vessels, finally in French from the Eiffel Tower.
Three days out came the dramatic announcement,
far too brief, simply that the troops in favor of
revolution had beaten those opposed to it and oc-
cupied Petrograd. Next day the purser posted
a most confusing dispatch. The Grand Duke
Michael was at the head of the provisional govern-

11

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

raent; the government was restoring order and
attending to the distribution of food; and finally
the sinister sentence in Spanish: "The revolu-
tion has ibeen entirely unfruitful." How could
it have been, with a provisional government in con-
trol? Yet there stood that statement; and it was
the last we heard of the Russian Revolution for
six days, during which the Art Dealer, the Reliever
of Belgium and I, the three persons aboard who
had followed the war most closely, walked the deck
and indulged in conjecture. We all understood
the situation in its full importance : If that revo-
lution succeeded, it meant that Russia would go
on with the war; if it failed, it meant that Ger-
many would pull off a separate peace.

Daily the bulletins gave us fragments of news
from America and the Western Front; one day
they even recorded that three American ships had
been sunk by submarines, rendering our certain
entrance into this war doubly certain. But no
mention of Russia.

"It's the biggest thing for us since the Declara-
tion of Independence, " said the Reliever of Bel-
gium. "A liberal Russia will be our friend; an
autocratic Russia — " He had no need to finish
the sentence.

"It's one of the events in Jewish history," said
the Art Dealer, who is a Jew. "We have hated
Russia with cause; we can be her friends now."

And no news ! No news ! After four days the
wireless did another maddening thing. Without

12

GETTING OVEE

preliminary warning it flashed the announcement
that French cavalry had ridden through to Noyon,
had been acclaimed by the populace. What was
this! The long-hoped-for break of the great line
or a voluntary retirement? We are in doubt on
that point even yet, though we have talked of little
else for three days. But day before yesterday
Eussian news came at last — the abdication of the
Czar, the recognition of the new government by
France, Great Britain and the United States, the
loyalty of the army. We lifted up our voices andj
cheered.

As I write this in the ship's cabin, with the
Spanish sports still drinking on deck and warm
puffs of land air coming from the dim coast, Tor-
tola enters. An Englishman breaks to her news
of the latest ship 's rumor — that we will be stopped
and searched personally at four o'clock in the
morning by a French ship.

" Heavens! And Frenchmen!" says Tortola.
"I must not put cold cream on my face to-night.
I could not have them find me ugly!"

ON THE DOCK, CADIZ,
Sunday Morning, March 25th.

Of course the French cruiser that was to search
us failed to show up. The events prophesied by
ship's rumor in these troublous times never come
off. Things happen, but not the things foretold
by the man who had it from the assistant purser,
who had it from the captain, who got it straight by

13

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

/^wireless. On the tender we found a Rumanian
diplomat, come to take his brother by automobile
to Madrid. He told us the best — that the Eussian
Eevolution is a permanent camp ; but he modified
his good news by announcing that the action about
{_ Noyon looked like a voluntary retirement. We
are waiting here for the baggage to come off, and
catching through the windows of the waiting-room
alluring glimpses of women going to church in
mantillas.

This out-of-the-way port is one of the most at-
tractive in the world. Above a turquoise-blue
harbor it rises in vistas of tall white houses,
topped with quaint watch-towers and shot with
Moorish-looking arches — in fact, from the sea it
looks like a great world 's fair a little shaken down
with age. Here is much of the story of the van-
ished glory of Spain. For Cadiz, in the days of
Queen Elizabeth, was the port where the English
admirals used to practice the merry sport of
scorching the Spanish king's beard. In 1596, the
guidebooks tell us, they burned and sacked the
town. Later the Spanish treasure ships from
South America sailed for Cadiz ; and the British
admirals used to wait outside and take the treas-
ure away. Finally, after centuries, the town built
up a prosperous trade with the Spanish colonies,
especially Cuba. When we finished the Spanish
War there were no Spanish colonies to speak of.

These reflections are prompted by the adven-
tures of some of my fellow passengers, who have

14

GETTING OVER

been uptown trying to exchange their American
money for Spanish — the purser of our boat would
make no exchange. It is Sunday and the banks
are closed. They have paid six or seven different
rates of exchange, all ruinous. Some of them
have been short-changed into the bargain. Cadiz,
I take it, is getting back at us.

MADKID, Tuesday, March 27th.

Yesterday was passport day, with trouble
enough for my fellow travelers. The Entente Al-
lies are growing very cautious about letting any
one enter from Spain ; in fact, they are discourag-
ing all travel. If you wish to enter France from
the United States via Spain, you must have your
passport viseed first by a French consul in the
United States, to prove that you are considered
an innocent and worthy person in your own coun-
try. Then you must present yourself to the
French consul here. He makes you wait for three
days while he investigates you by telegraph. The
only exception to this rule is a person on govern-
ment business. It is left to Mr. Willard, our am-
bassador, to say who is and who is not on govern-
ment business; and he interprets the regulation
strictly. Journalists, for example, do not come
under the exception. The Newspaper Enterprise
Association man must wait his three days, and so
must I, when I get ready to leave.

In the lobby this afternoon I observed the Beau-
tiful Wop weeping softly on one bench, while the

15

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

wife of the Dutchman, going home via Spain, sat
across from her absolutely worn out with grief.
She had cause to cry, poor thing. She had accom-
panied her husband on his business trip to Amer-
ica last winter, leaving her children at home in
Eotterdam. They were returning on a Dutch
steamer, when the Germans issued their submarine
order. The Dutch steamer, though near Falmouth
at the time, turned back to New York. So they
tried it again via Spain. The British, French and
Dutch consuls all tell them the same story. There
is no passenger traffic between England and Hol-
land now ; even if they reached England they could
not get home. So wha«fc is the use of giving them
the right to travel across France to England, in
a day when every civilian passenger costs just
so much coal? They must either return to Amer-
ica or stay in Spain.

The Beautiful Wop's position is less tragic but
still irritating. It illustrates the consequences, in
these days, of a small irregularity in one's papers.
She sailed on two days ' notice. When she got her
passport some mistaken functionary informed her
that a French vise in the United States was a mere
formality and wholly unnecessary. The French
consul in Madrid would attend to everything.
She found that it was very necessary — indispensa-
ble, in fact. The French consul here, under his
orders, can do nothing until he telegraphs to the
United States and has her case investigated. In
these days of cable censorship it takes an ordinary

16

GETTING OVER

civilian telegram nearly a week to go from Madrid
to New York. The consul can get an exchange of
official telegrams in from four to ten days, but the
time the consul in New York will take to investi-
gate is an uncertain quantity. Here it is Tuesday,
and the openings of the summer styles begin next
Sunday! In the meantime, her rival, better ad-
vised, will get her permission to travel and be on
her way Friday.

Scarcely had I finished listening to their trou-
bles, when I found the girl who is to marry the
British naval captain having tea with her brother
and looking rather serious. It appears that her
business in England does not come under the regu-
lations. They are very sorry at the British con-
sulate; a journey to marry one of His Majesty's
navy is no excuse.

The Eeliever of Belgium went through last
night ; his is public business. He did have a little
trouble, however, about his secretary. The new
regulations specify that no citizen of the Allied
countries shall be allowed to travel with a secre-
tary ; one must dispense with that luxury in war-
time. However, he is not yet a belligerent; and,
moreover, his situation is semidiplomatic. So the
secretary also goes through.

The God of the famished go with him! He is
the biggest human phenomenon brought out of
America by this war, and the Commission for Be-
lief in Belgium has been our noblest work so far. /

Later: I have just met the Engaged Girl, all

17

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

trousseau and smiles. The British have informed
her, with the gruffness which a Briton uses to con-
ceal a kindly deed, that they have found a rule
covering her case. It is something about the
wives of officers, which can be stretched to include
the wife-to-be of an officer. So she is going
straight through to-morrow. She says that she
felt they'd do it, and never worried for a minute.
All the world loves a lover, even in war!

CHAPTER II

/

A BEAUTY SHOW

MADBID, Thursday, March 29th.

FASHIONS in stage character change. Up tol
the beginning of the war the villain of British
melodrama was usually a Frenchman or an Italian.
The Entente Cordiale and the entrance of Italy
on the side of Britain stopped all that. At pres-
ent he is either a German or a Spaniard. The
American, now — Europe used to refuse to take
him seriously enough to make him a villain. He
was usually the low-comedy relief, or at most the
clever friend of the persecuted hero. But yester-
day, in the cafe and cabaret which this hotel runs
in its basement, I met face to face on the movie
screen an American villainess of the deepest dye.

Since the war, it appears, Spain has been estab-
lishing a film industry of her own, producing with
native actors in the clear airs of the Mediterranean
Coast. This native five-reel thriller set forth the
adventures of The Black Captain.

The first reel was set in Madrid; and it intro-
duced Miss Arabella, American heiress of a blond
beauty and a black heart. The count falls in love
with her. By her wiles, and for no reason except

19

A BEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

inherent racial wickedness, she sets him against
his best friend. They fight a duel with swords,
and the count kills his friend. The reel ends with
the broken-hearted count taking a transatlantic
liner to America. When we see him again he is
the Black Captain, leader of a bandit band in the
Far West. After which Miss Arabella is reintro-
duced with the title: "The Wicked American
Woman Goes to Take Charge of her Vast In-
herited Estates in the West. " There follow three
reels of intense action. I take it that there is no
movie Board of Censors in Spain. When the
Black Captain fights he pulls out two guns and
piles up his dead in full view of the audience.
The West would admire the realism of this film.
The cowboys ride in English pad saddles; they
wear handkerchiefs bound round their heads, tight
riding breeches, and sashes bristling with knives.
The Black Captain is clad in velveteen, and when
he gets ready to ride in a pursuit his servant-
cowboy hands him a pair of white gloves and a
riding-crop. The heart of the villainess grows
blacker with each reel. She is especially severe
on the beautiful Spanish ward of the Black Cap-
tain, whom she ties to a stake in the rising tide,
shuts up in a burning house, and hangs over a
precipice. At one time the Black Captain catches
her and brands her with a hot iron between the
shoulder blades — this also in full view of the audi-
ence. Finally the villainess, Miss Arabella, flee-
ing from his vengeance in an automobile, goes over

20

A BEAUTY SHOW

a cliff into the sea, and the Black Captain gathers
his rescued ward into his arms as the lights go up.J

That great cafe, an institution of this town, is
packed every afternoon and evening, though Lent
is drawing to its somber close, though perplexi-
ties are gathering fast about the government,
though there are murmurs everywhere of a gen-
eral strike against the high cost of living. And
yet the effects of the war are visible even to the
casual eye. It is a different city from the one I
saw two years ago, when Armageddon was young
and we talked of peace within a year. To begin
with, I haven't been warm since I left Cadiz — I am
writing this in an ulster. Madrid stands on a
plateau, with a range of snow-clad mountains in
tbe distance. Its site resembles that of Denver, at
a lesser altitude. The climate runs to extremes,
and only in mid-summer, when a tropical sun beats
down, is the air ever quite free from chill. So the
people of Madrid heat their houses with stoves and
furnaces, American-fashion. Now the country
has run out of coal. Its own great coal seams to
the north have never been worked up to the do-
mestic demand; it has depended on the Cardiff
mines, a matter of sea transport. Cardiff is not
shipping coal now to neutral countries. The price
of coal has risen to thirty and forty dollars a ton
— when it can be had. For the past two days we
have had no artificial heat in this hotel, one of the
best two in Madrid. When I complained the man-
agement told me that they were very sorry ; they

21

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

really expected a little coal within two or three
days. In the meantime, they had all they could
do to find enough for cooking ; if this kept on they
would have to close the grill. Madrid is blue-
nosed, shivering.

Ten or fifteen years ago, before we opened our
era of great building expansion, there was one ho-
tel in every American town about which local life
centered — -the Palace in San Francisco, the Audi-
torium Annex in Chicago, the St. Charles in New
Orleans and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.
This is such a hotel ; the life of the Iberian Penin-
sula drifts in a steady current through its lobbies.
There is now an undercurrent of melodrama. I
walked from the tea room to the bar yesterday
with a man who knows Madrid, and all the way he
talked into my ear like this :

"That's a German agent. He does anything
that comes to his hand — mostly propaganda.
Look out for him, my boy, he's probably watching
you. That woman — the pretty one there — is an
Austrian. She lived in England the first two
years of the war, because she had the protection of
a nobleman. But she had to get out last summer.
No, there's nothing wrong with her. She's been
in England long enough to feel English; but she
never got naturalized, so she had to go. If that
fellow in the green hat makes up to you, keep your
fingers crossed. He talks perfect American and
claims to be a citizen, but I hear that the Embassy
has refused him a passport. They say he is a de-

22

A BEAUTY SHOW

serter from the United States Army, and that he
has been doing secret-service work here for the
Germans — some say that he has an iron cross. He
seems to have no occupation, and he lives high.
You're looking out for your passports, aren't
you? Half the secret agents in Madrid are trying
to steal them. "

Looking out for my passports ! The specter of
a lost passport sits on my pillow in this strange
neutral country of intrigues ; for you might as well
be dead as without papers. And American pass-
ports have a high market value — the latest quota-
tion, they tell me, is seven thousand pesetas, or
about fifteen hundred dollars. They are — or have
been — useful for spying purposes. That, how-
ever, is not the main use. Since the beginning of
the war Spain has been as a city of refuge for the
Germans. There were about seven thousand of
them in the whole kingdom before the war ; now
there are eighty thousand, if you include a body of
soldiers who found their way into the Spanish-Af-
rican colonies from the Kameruns, and were in-
terned.

The question the outsider asks is how they got
here. Some, it appears, fled from the southern
part of France in the first week of the war, when
the French system was not working so well as it
does now. Many more escaped from the German
colonies in Africa and made their way across the
Mediterranean by trick, fraud and device. Still
others have managed to cross from the United

23

A EEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

States. Now these people are virtually prisoners
in Spain. The Allies hold the open seas, and have
the power, if they will, to search Spanish vessels
for enemy subjects. To prevent this annoyance,
the Spanish have agreed with the British not to
give passage out of the country to Germans or
Austrians. An American passport is received
without question by the authorities at the Spanish
ports ; and the high prices are offered by Germans
who have pressing business in America. Within
the past month three passports have been stolen
in this city.

One has an uncomfortable feeling that he is be-
ing watched — by both sides. The Germans want
to know what you are doing here ; the Allies want
to satisfy themselves, before you cross the line into
France, that you are what you assume to be, and
not a German agent who has dropped off in Spain
to report. I have marked often, and in diverse
parts of the city, a small blondish gentleman of
uncertain nationality hanging carelessly about in
my vicinity. He is probably my pet spy.

I was in Madrid the last time during the late
summer of 1915. Then the German element was
much more in evidence than at present. In all the
cafes and the dining rooms of the more expensive
hotels big, blond men, often displaying sword cuts
on their cheeks, laughed and drank and chatted in
gutturals. Whenever Germany had a military
victory — which happened only too often in those
days — -they gave a banquet at this hotel. It was

24

A BEAUTY SHOW

on one of those occasions that the head waiter, who
was an Italian, lost his job. Unable to endure the
speeches, which were especially severe on Italy, he
walked along the balcony over the toastmaster's
head and dropped therefrom a large sheaf of Al-
lied flags. Now one sees a tableful of Germans
here and there at the best cafes ; but they are un-
common enough to attract attention.

They are here ; but one must look for them in the
small and inexpensive restaurants frequented by
bull-fighters, peasants and the cheaper sports.
For there are hard times just now in the German
colony.

MADRID, Palm Sunday, April 1st.

The race between the Beautiful Wop and her
Dearest Eival to be first at the Paris openings is
not over yet. When the Beautiful Wop found that
she could not cross the border because she had no
vise from the French consul in New York, she tele-
graphed to the consul and her people asking for a
telegraphic vise. That takes time nowadays —
messages go by French cable and must be cen-_
sored. The minimum allowance is three days. »
The quickest way to telegraph to New York from
Madrid is to send the message to Berlin by wire-
less and have it relayed by wireless again. Such
messages often go through in twenty-four hours. J
But, of course, this method is impossible to a
friend of the Allies, or to one who is doing busi-
ness with the Allied governments. Since last

25

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

Tuesday, when she sent her telegrams, she has
been going through the dreary business of waiting
and trying to keep a stiff upper lip. In the mean-
time, the Dearest Eival sailed through last Friday
night with flying colors.

This morning she reappeared in Madrid. She
had been refused admittance to France. Without
explanation, she was advised to return to Madrid
to see her diplomatic representatives. She went
back all the more quietly because she had been
keeping a worrisome secret for a week and under-
stood in her heart what was the matter. And
this afternoon the French consul, found working
in his office on his day off, confirmed her suspi-
cions :

On our boat coming over was a quiet young
woman who wore a diamond solitaire on the third
finger of her left hand. She said that she was go-
ing to Seville to live. She and the Dearest Eival
fell together and grew friendly. The quiet young
woman confided to her new friend a thrilling se-
cret: She was going over to Seville to marry a
young man, a foreign resident of Spain, whose
business kept him from traveling. For decency's
sake he was to meet her at the train with the
priest and the license. As they got thicker, the
quiet young woman asked her if she wouldn't stop
off and be a witness — it made one feel more at
home to have one 's own countrywoman at the cere-
mony. What woman could have resisted? The
Dearest Eival made arrangements to stay over at

26

A BEAUTY SHOW

Seville for the night, and travel on to Madrid in
the morning.

They were about to range themselves before the
altar, when the Dearest Eival learned one small
but significant fact hitherto concealed from her:
The bridegroom was a German ! She did exactly
what any other decent person would have done —
went through with the affair courteously. She at-
tended the supper afterward, and got out of Seville
on the first train next morning. But some one, as
she feared, had kept tabs on the affair and reported
it to the French.

It is easy for the people of a country just enter-
ing this war — or newly in it, as the case may be —
to criticize the French for overseverity in a case
like this. But we who have known this war from
the beginning, and understand the extraordinary
subtlety of the spy game as played by the Ger-
manic powers, do not blame any Allied government
for taking no chances whatever. And if the
French are severe they are also fair-mind-
ed. Doubtless when she has proven her record
and intentions she will pass. But it will take
time, and betting at present is on the Beautiful
Wop!

MADEID, Holy Thursday, April 5th.

One thing allures me about Madrid: It is the
only large capital of Western Europe that dares
to be itself. Brussels and Berlin, Paris and
Vienna, London and Stockholm, all are a bit stand-

27

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

ardized. The women wear Paris fashions, the
men London clothes. There are the same old
cafes, the same old uniformed orchestras, the same
old grand-opera houses, the same old everything.
No sooner does a fashion in public living start in
Paris than it is copied somberly in London, strenu-
ously in Berlin — where the specialty is being gay
with your teeth clenched — merrily in Vienna and
decorously in Stockholm. At least it was so be-
fore the war.

But Madrid, even at the very first glance, is it-
self. Half of the women, no matter how well
dressed or how ill dressed otherwise, drape over
their heads that bit of lace known to the language
of Spain and Eomance as the mantilla. It is the
only correct thing for church ; and a visit to church
is part of the day's routine for every conservative
Spanish woman. On the first hot day, out will
come the pictured fans with which they guard their
eyes from the brilliant sun of the Castilian plateau.
Only once or twice on this visit have I seen an au-
tomobile truck. The work is all done by great,
cream-colored Spanish oxen with immense horns,
or by teams of two mules and a donkey, hitched
tandem, the little burro proudly leading his greater
and humbler cousins. The bridles and neck yokes
of half these teams are decorated with woolen
pompons — red or blue or yellow for carriers of
general merchandise, black for coal carts. These
Spanish mules are beautiful animals; the aristo-
crats among them — sorrels with glossy skins, fine-

28

A BEAUTY SHOW

drawn ears, and hoofs manicured like mirrors —
draw the carriages of the higher clergy.

The vegetables all come to the door on donkey-
back. The huckster slings four or five wide pan-
niers across his fireless steed, fills them to running
over with lettuce, carrots, onions, and radishes,
and seats himself cross-legged on top of the pile.
The general effect is an inverted pyramid, the apex
the little feet of the burro. So milk is delivered in
two great egg-shaped cans, also on each side of the
patient ass. The milkman, his measure slung
across his back, sits just over the donkey's shoul-
ders. Often the little dog that guards the milk
while he is making the deliveries perches himself
on the lid of one of the cans. Every day at sunset
there move down the Prado — the Upper Fifth Ave-
nue, the Euclid Avenue, the Van Ness Avenue, of
Madrid — herds of goats, driven by a rough-looking
herder or an old woman with a red handkerchief
bound round her head. They pass from door to
door; and the goats are milked to the proper
measure in the presence of young mothers who are
bringing up delicate children.

Madrid is never more itself than in Holy Week.
Spain is the most profoundly religious nation of
Western Europe, and the church is established by
law. Yesterday the few cabarets, pelota courts
and cinemas which had kept open during the early
part of the week were closed by order of the pub-
lic authorities. This morning every shop closed,
and all traffic, except that absolutely necessary to

29

A EEPORTEE AT AEMAGEDDON

the life of the town, halted. On the Puerta del
Sol, heart of the town, and the Calle de Alcala, its
busiest thoroughfare, not a wheel turned.

Holy Thursday is observed throughout the Cath-
olic world by visits to churches. This introduces
the prettiest custom of Madrid. Ordinarily the
women wear the "low mantilla/' The comb be-
neath it is small. The mantilla appears merely
as a bit of lace thrown over the head. But on Holy
Thursday and Good Friday the Spanish woman
dresses her hair as she does for festal occasions.
She builds it high and finishes it with a great
comb, as much as ten inches high from teeth to tip.
And over it she drapes a mantilla, the front ruffle
of which frames her face, and the back ruffle, ma-
king a soft cascade over her shoulders, reaches of-
ten to her knees. Sometimes she mounds in front
of the comb a bank of red carnations ; and some-
times she has just one red blossom above her ear.

On Good Friday the mantillas must all be black ;
but to-day the white mantilla is allowed to those
whom it becomes. The richer women costume
themselves all in tight-fitting black, with high-
heeled patent-leather shoes on their little Spanish
feet. The others throw the finishing touch of the
mantilla over whatever costume they happen to
own ; and occasionally you see a priceless piece of
old lace (an heirloom, doubtless) covering a rather
shabby and humble dress.

As this afternoon wore oh, the crowd of pilgrims
and sight-seers in the Calle de Alcala grew so thick

30

A BEAUTY SHOW

that it filled not only the sidewalk but the broad
roadway. So it paraded slowly, rather quiet and
decorous in respect for the day, but all eyes never-
theless. Above everything, taller than the head
of the tallest Spaniard, rose the soft black and
white peaks of the mantillas. The beauty of the
Spanish woman has not been overpraised. It is,
in fact, an unusually good-looking race. The very
gnarled faces of the peasants have a rugged inter-
est. There is not the same variety of beauty which
one sees in San Francisco — the women are all of
the same soft-eyed, subtly curved, gently alluring
type — but still it seemed to me the finest beauty
show of pretty women I had ever seen in any land.
It took the shrewd feminine observation of the
lady who observed it with me — and she yields to
none in admiration of the Spanish type — to point
out that some of it was stage effect. That falhof
soft lace is the becoming frame for those olive-
tinted, soft-eyed faces.

MADRID, Saturday Evening, April 7th.

On returning to the hotel last night I saw the
Beautiful Wop running toward me, and knew be-
fore she came within hailing distance that she had
her vise at last. The news had arrived in the af-
ternoon, and she was off to Paris by the ten-twenty
train. The Dearest Eival, it appears, persuaded
the French yesterday that one wedding does not
make a war, and she too is off to-night. So the
race for the fashions turned out a tie after all.

31

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

This morning I spelled out from La Correspon-
dencia the vital news for us. The House has
passed the declaration of war ; the die is cast. The
English banker, down here on a munitions deal,
came up to me as I hurried to my room, shook me
by the hand, and solemnly called me "ally"! It
has been so long in coming and so long a certainty
that it brought no shock. I ought to be divided

I between sorrow for what we must face and solemn
joy that we have taken the right path. But the
only feeling in me, here in a land remote both from
home and from the war, is simply a great wave of
\ homesickness.

CHAPTEE III
FRANCE AGAIN!

PARIS, April 20tk

THE journey from Madrid to Paris is rather
easy, as European travel goes nowadays. Cer-
tain points in France that were only five hours
from Paris before the war are now twenty-four
hours away, even with good luck. But you leave
Madrid at ten o 'clock Monday evening and, unless
you strike trouble at the border, you reach Paris in
time for breakfast on Wednesday — two nights and
a day. There are wagons-lits, or sleeping cars,
for both nights — if you can get a berth. Reser-
vations on the Spanish train, as far as the
border, are easy. The second night comes harder.
Though I applied for reservations on the French
section six days in advance, I was told the train
had been sold out for a week.

As it turned out, we had at least a place to lie
down ; for at about eleven o'clock the woman train
porter entered the first-class compartment of the
day coach, where we were trying to make ourselves
comfortable for the night, with the news that we
might have two couchettes forward. I did not
know exactly what a couchette was ; but I followed

33

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

On European railroads, as the untraveled Ameri-
can may not know, the sleeping car is a thing sepa-
rate from the day coach. When the management
thinks it is time for the passengers to go to bed,
wagons-lits are switched on to the train and the
passengers are transferred from the day coach.
These sleeping cars are divided into tiny compart-
ments, each with two beds. It appeared that, in
the present condition of things, the sleeping cars
are short of bed linen. The portress had a com-
partment without sheets or blankets ; but we might
lie down on the bare berths. In our clothes, and
covered with fur coats against the cold of this vil-
lainously raw spring, we passed a comfortable
night, as nights go in wartime travel.

That examination at the border, which all aliens
going from spy-ridden Spain to rightfully suspi-
cious France dread so much, turned out in my case
to be foolishly easy. Every one passing through
Spain is watched, I take it ; and whoever watched
me must have noted that I had no German acquain-
tance. The inspectors studied my passport for a
minute, took down its date and made me lift my
hat to see whether I resembled my passport pho-
tograph; a business-like official consulted a card
index — and I was loose in France, free to roam
through a little town which was a summer resort
before the war and had all the dreariness of a re-
sort in the off season.

There was, however, a kind of stimulation in
coming from a country lazily going about its own

34

FRANCE AGAIN!

business, or doing a lot of disturbed thinking, to a
nation that is seeing it through. The war was all
about us, even in this border town. A poilu, home
on leave, swung from a train in his battered old
uniform, its horizon blue faded into streaks of
rusty green and overhung with the dusty brown of
his kit. Half a dozen others, in a uniform just
as old but a little better brushed, mixed with the
crowd of old Frenchmen who had come, like pro-
vincials all over the world, to see the train arrive.

It was pleasant, also, to see again the intelligent,
spirited French face, to hear the lively buzz of
French conversation, to have a seat at the drama
that your Frenchman makes out of every ordinary
transaction. I cannot possibly convey the serio-
comic melodrama with which our veteran porter
saw our baggage out of the Spanish train, through
the customs and into the French train. His air, as
he wheeled it from stopping place to stopping
place, was that of a marshal of France, loaded
down with the responsibilities of the Eepublic.
His manner, as the woman customs official ap-
proached our trunks and asked me in a solemn,
judicial tone whether I had anything to declare,
showed a terrible apprehension. When I an-
nounced that I really had nothing to declare, and
when the woman customs agent with a snap
chalked her initials on the outside of the trunks,
he broke into happy smiles.

When, again, he was forced to break to me that
my baggage was of a surplus of weight, he ex-

35

A EEPOETEB AT AEMAGEDDON

pressed such sympathy as he would have shown to
a parent bereaved by the war ; and when I told him
the excess was less than I expected, and that I was
glad to contribute to the war treasury of France,
his manner conveyed that he had taken me to his
bosom. Finally, when the moment came for the
tip, his face grew apologetic, changing at once,
after he had inspected his palm, to a look of in-
tense gratitude.

All along the way he entertained me with news
of that railroad junction and town gossip, point-
ing out the woman who was the mother of an avia-
tor; the boy who was " reformed, " with the Cross
of War and the Military Medal ; and finally the re-
markable town dog, which one of the soldiers had
brought back from the Front. This animal was of
the German shepherd breed, the big dog at present
most popular in France, in spite of the war. They
are what we often call police dogs at home ; nearest
of all their kind they resemble wolves.

But this dog, as the porter took great pains to
explain, was no common animal. He was really a
German dog by birth — for the French had cap-
tured him from the Germans at the Battle of
Champagne. But listen, monsieur; he was a
French dog now — a veritable poilu. Listen again
one time, monsieur; call him a Boche to his face
and he would leap at you ; he would try to bite you,
to tear you apart! He looked peaceable there,
with his tail wagging — business of waving the
hand to imitate the tail — but just call him a Boche!

36

FRANCE AGAIN!

—business of leaping most frightfully through the
air.

I politely admired this wonderful accomplish-
ment of the dog that had been rescued from Ger-
man Kultur; and I did not tell the porter that this
has become the stock trick of every German shep-
herd dog in France. It is like shaking hands or
speaking — part of elementary puppy education.
Myself, I once met a German shepherd dog of en-
gaging expression tied before a chateau in Gas-
cony. I called him a Boche, and only his chain
saved my life.

Yes ; it was France again, the country of pleas-
ant human drama in small things. And that qual-
ity, which adds so much to the enjoyment of life,
accounts perhaps for the attraction the Great .Re-
public has for aliens. More than one German of-
ficer, captured at the Front, has mourned the fact
that, with the hatred stirred up by this war, he
can never live in Paris again — mourned it as his
greatest personal calamity.

PABIS, April 21st.

The French hotel knows how to make you wel-
come, especially if you are an old guest. Scarcely
were our suit cases open before Paul, who com-
bines, since the war began, the functions of floor
waiter and boots, entered to inform us of his joy
at seeing us back on his floor. Paul had rather a
hard time last winter. He is troubled with a
double hernia ; so when war broke out he was mp~

37

A BEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

bilized for work behind the lines — though he did
have a little real fighting at the Battle of the
Marne.

After a year he injured himself badly in lifting
ammunition, and so he was reformed and allowed
to resume civil occupation. He worked last year
under constant pain ; and last winter, he tells me,
the time came when he needed another operation.
As he incurred his injury in the line of military
duty the Americans in this hotel got him admitted
to the American Ambulance. His gratitude, as he
told me how kind they had been at the Ambulance,
how well they had cared for him, how efficiently
the surgeons had patched him up, was enough to
repay us for the little we did to help France be-
fore we entered the Alliance of Civilization.

Just afterward we found our floor clerk, who sits
at the desk by the elevator attending to keys, mail
and calls, arranging two pink carnations on my
•wife's dresser. A pretty, slender little woman
from the harassed and troubled city of Luneville,
behind the Lorraine Front, she is married to Jules,
our elevator man. Jules is a hero of the Marne;
he wears the military medal on his green hotel uni-
form, and the Cross of War, with a star and a palm
— showing that he had been cited once before a
division and once before an army. He bears more
marks of glory than that. His right leg is gone
just below the hip. He has not yet grown quite
accustomed to its mechanical substitute, so that he
walks with a strange, awkward gait.

38

FEANCE AGAIN!

These European hotel elevators have double
doors, of which the corridor door swings outward.
The elevator man is supposed to open this door,
step out and bow as the guest passes. This serv-
ice from a man who wears such decorations as
Jules, and who moves so painfully, is grotesque.
The guests at this hotel, both French and foreign,
usually refuse to let him leave the elevator, and
swing the door back when they have passed, in
order to save him a step.

Their little boy, born just before the war, is in
Normandy with his grandparents. Jules informs
me that he is to be brought up next Tuesday for
a short visit with his parents.

" It is a long time until Tuesday!" says Jules.

Our door porter, who flags taxicabs for the
guests and sees that the boys get out the baggage,
is similarly decorated and as badly mutilated.
His right arm is gone from just below the shoulder,
and several joints are missing from the fingers of
the other hand.

This billet of door porter is a favorite post for
mutilated men. The hotels seem to vie with one
another in recognition of their heroism. Passing
to-day the Cafe de la Paix, the center of Paris and
of a Frenchman's universe, I noticed that the new
cab starter is minus an arm and wears four decora-
tions for valor.

Marie, the chambermaid, came in just before
noon to put the finishing touches to our room. I
rather dreaded her coming, because I had to ask

39

A REPOBTEK AT AEMAGEDDON

for news ; and I was af raiu that it would be bad.
Marie's sister is the cloak-room girl in this hotel.
Now last summer I took several trips to the French
Front. So every few days the servants would see
me start out in khaki. I imagine that — ignorant
of all the pleading and diplomacy which precedes a
permission for the war zone — they thought I went
to the Front whenever I wished, and was, there-
fore, a person of consequence ; for one day, when
Verdun was hot, I heard a ring at my door and
opened it to find Marie and her sister standing
there, timid and apologetic. Marie found her
voice first. Could monsieur do a great favor? she
asked ; it might be much to ask — but —

"When the war began they had three brothers
mobilized. One was dead; one mutilated. The
third was reported missing after the German
attack at Fort de Vaux. Only that — missing 1
Prisoners had been taken. He might be a pris-
oner.

" Monsieur is a neutral, " she said; "is it pos-
sible to get any news of him from Germany 1"

I did all I could — made inquiries through the
proper diplomatic channels. No news had arrived
when I left Paris last autumn ; so I sent through
Marie's name as next of kin, to whom information
should be transmitted concerning M. Jean Eloge.

"Any news?" I asked Marie this morning when
she had finished assuring me that she was happy to
have us on her floor again.

"Very little, monsieur/' she replied.

40

FEANCE AGAIN!

They had a letter last winter. It informed them
that a sergeant who had entered the countercharge
by Jean's side was a prisoner in Germany; but
there Vas no news of Jean himself.

This afternoon Marie and her sister approached
me again. Was I sure that I had done everything
to be done ? It was much to ask — but — To-mor-
row I will send out a tracer. It is the only thing I
can do.

PABIS, April 23rd.

This is a place and period in the world 's affairs
when the weather forms more than a conventional
topic of conversation. A dank cold hangs on and
continues to hang on. As the Western World
must know, the civilian population of Paris is
short of coal. At this hotel, which keeps up a
reputation for maintaining service in spite of the
war, we have a faint suggestion of furnace heat
in the morning. The rest of the day you must
wear your ulster if you sit down indoors. Fortu-
nately the tap still runs boiling water, and I find
myself looking forward to a hot bath as the only
comfortable moment of the day. Except for three
days in sunny Andalusia, which has a climate like
that of Southern California, I have not been warm
since I landed in Europe a month ago.

From my acquaintances I get nothing but remi-
niscences of last winter — and the cold. It was a
villainous winter, to begin with. Those who lived
in central-heated apartment houses without fire-

41

A EEPORTEE AT ARMAGEDDON

places suffered the most. When the landlord
could get no more coal the heat stopped. The Mu-
nicipal Council ordained that a landlord who could
not furnish heat must refund two francs a day on
the rent; but this gave small consolation. Those
who had fireplaces were warm — sometimes. At
times coal for domestic purposes could not be pur-
chased even by the sack. Fortunately, most of
the cooking here is done by gas, so almost every
one had at least hot meals. One American mother
tells me that she " sewed in" the children for the
winter, like an East Side woman.

A Paris correspondent had an office heated only
by a fireplace. He lived until January in a steam-
heated flat. After two weeks of arctic cold he
moved himself and his wife into one room, small
by choice, which had a fireplace. When he wasn't
working he searched for coal. He got just enough
to keep a slender fire burning at home, but none
for the office. He worked all winter in an ulster.
The Bourse, or Stock Exchange, is near by, and he
had a journalist's ticket of admission to the floor.
The Bourse was heated, and every afternoon he
strolled over there to thaw out.

A woman I know says she did some shameless
" window shopping" at one of the great depart-
ment stores. It has in its main hall a very large
register, which poured out heat all last winter.
Back and forth she used to stroll, past that regis-
ter again and again, until she felt once more like a
human being.

42

FRANCE AGAIN!

I fancy that, even if the line continues locked,
Paris will be warmer next winter. Though the en-
emy still holds the great coal fields on the north,
France has fields at St.-fitienne, on the south.
And it was not so much a coal-mining problem, I
think, as a transportation problem, which the gov-
ernment is preparing to remedy. A visitor from
Grenoble, not far from St.-fitienne, tells me he had
no trouble in getting enough coal for an orphan
asylum which he runs, and that the highest price
was sixty-two francs, or about eleven dollars, a
ton.

Further, the authorities are looking into peat, of
which there is a supply, but little used, in Central
France. A Franco- American engineer of my ac-
quaintance— a reforme of the Foreign Legion —
dragged me into his office yesterday to show me a
lot of black lozenges about as big as a pill box.
That was his solution for the domestic fuel situa-
tion— briquettes of peat. His machines, very sim-
ple, very cheap of construction, were beginning to
turn out this product already. It was a perfect
fuel for fireplaces and cookstoves ; and this process
made it condensed fuel, like coal.

I asked him whether he were not gambling with
the duration of the war. If it ended next autumn
he stood to lose his investment.

1 ' Not at all ! " he said. ' ' If the war should end
to-morrow there would still be coal shortage in
Europe for some time. Everywhere — Germany
and England, as well as France — they have been

43

A BEPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

rushing coal extraction at the expense of develop-
ment work. When the war ends they will have to
do a lot of development before they can mine on
the old scale. For several years no fuel will be
scorned in Europe. ' '

PARIS, May 1st.

~ I have hesitated before to record just how Paris
struck me upon my return after six months in Eng-
land and America. The place seemed to me a little
dead and dispirited as compared with its state last
year. Sad it has always been since the war ; but
humanely, even attractively sad. This time,
though I saw less mourning — the heavy crape of
old days has gone out of fashion — I felt a kind of
slackness in the spirits of the people. In spite of
assurances that France was standing firm, I won-
dered whether the French were not growing over-
weary of the war.

It is all explained. For on Sunday this villain-
ously cold damp weather broke into a heavenly
spring day, both warm and bracing. The sun of
France streamed on the budding leaves ; the light
of France fell as in crystals over crowded streets.
Paris, in a day, became more like her old insou-
ciant self than I have ever seen her since the war

/^commenced.

^ I did not venture into the country myself; but
they tell me that every open space between Fon-
tainebleau and Versailles was dotted with families,
enjoying the fields, as the French love to do. The

44

FRANCE AGAIN!

inbound tramways at dusk were packed; and ev-
ery one carried a posy of primroses or violets.
The Bois de Boulogne was a procession of car-
riages and motors. By three o 'clock you could get
across the battle line more easily than you could
get a seat before the boulevard cafes; and the
crowd that drifted past, blocking the sidewalks,
had dared to blossom out into a little color. The
weather has held for two days and the gay ap-
pearance of things continues.

The trouble with Paris, the factor I did not un-
derstand, was simply cold. A terribly hard win-
ter, with insufficient fuel, a spring that bade fair
never to break had got on the public nerves. It
is hard to be .enthusiastic or gay when you are
chronically cold. The last three days have shown
the real spirit of the city. It has been a long,
dreadful grind; it will be a long grind still. Butj
the sun is come at last ; why not be a little gay?

PARIS, May 2nd.

Among the party at dinner last night was Doc-
tor S , an American surgeon, who has been

patching up the wounded ever since 1914, and is
now in American olive-drab khaki for the first
time. The French attack of a fortnight ago
brought its toll of wounded ; to-day he had a dozen
operations, besides his work of supervising two
full hospitals. He was tired ; but he was glowing,
also, with the spirit of the French.

"I stand ashamed before them," he said.
45

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

4 i Where do they get it? I cannot find such ca-
pacity for sacrifice within myself. Men who have
stood the trenches for two years come back to me
terribly wounded. There's never a word of com-
plaint and revolt ; when you speak of their suffer-
ings they simply say that it is all for France. I
patch them up and -they go back to it like brides.
Hate it? Of course they do. Siege warfare is
the dirtiest, nastiest thing known to the military
art. But France will be cut into little pieces be-
fore she will yield. Make no mistake about the
spirit of France. I deal with the wounded, who
ought to be discouraged if any one is ; and I know !
France will go through with this game. ' '

Another who sat with us last night knows Rus-
sia. He was speaking of the Revolution, and he
expressed the opinion that its greatest danger was
a kind of loving tolerance in the Slavonic charac-
ter which prevents them from taking strong meas-
ures in tragic emergencies.

" Years ago," he said by way of illustration,
"when the night of reaction was so dark that the
people had only assassination as a means of de-
fense, a brute of a police prefect in a certain town
was marked for death. The revolutionaries laid
their plot carefully. That was before the days of
the automobile. As a get-away, they secured the
fastest horse in the district. He belonged to a doc-
tor, and to guard his owner they dyed his coat.

"The assassin — drawn by lot from a revolution-
ary committee — preferred to use the knife. His

46

FKANCE AGAIN!

carriage, to which that fast horse was harnessed,
drove up to a sidewalk where the prefect was read-
ing a notice on a billboard. The revolutionary
agent jumped out and stabbed him in the back —
stabbed him, to make sure of the job, again and
again.

"He leaped into the carriage. The muzhik
driver, being excited, began lashing the horse.
The assassin put a bloody hand on his shoulder
and said :

" * Don't whip the poor horse; he is doing the
best he can ! ' ' '

CHAPTER IV
MESSENGERS FROM BELGIUM

PABIS, May 9th.

IF we ever have the United States of Europe —
and in this day of political miracles who dares
laugh at the most optimistic prophecy? — Paris
will be the leading candidate for the capital. It
has always been the most cosmopolitan city of the
world ; but in old years it was impossible to iden-
tify the nationality of pedestrians. It is easier
now, when all the world has donned uniforms to
fight Germany.

Yesterday I saw a detachment of officers regis-
tering at this hotel. Their uniform was new to
me, but it so resembled the Italian in color and gen-
eral effect that I thought it merely the costume of
some corps I had not encountered at the Italian
Front. They proved to be Portuguese. From
the elevator came two of our own attaches, in the
brown khaki, which is beginning to appear on
the streets of Paris. They stopped to speak with
two Belgian officers. The Belgian uniform most
nearly resembles our own, as it happens. The
only distinction, at first sight, is a browner shade
of the khaki cloth. British officers in dull khaki,

48

MESSENGERS FEOM BELGIUM

with the indefinably smart British cut, were taking
tea in the lobby. Outside, a Eussian officer, in a
belted blouse and a cap whose peak clung close to
his forehead, was trying to hail a taxicab.

That Eussian uniform — a belted blouse which
pulls over the head, comfortably loose breeches,
knee-high cowhide boots — is said by commissary
and supply uniform experts to be the most sen-
sible in use along the line. Certainly it is the
most distinctive. And since the Russians — on
this front at least — are huge men, the crowd al-
ways stares at them as they swing along the boule-
vards.

On these fine spring afternoons the dull back-
ground of every civilian crowd is slashed with the
colors of uniforms. Olive-green-gray and a
plumed hat, such as Eobin Hood wore — those are
Italian Alpini officers, visiting Paris on some
military mission. Yellowish khaki, wide trousers,
red fezzes over dark, clean-cut faces — those are
Arabian Turcos of the French Army. A little
yellow individual trips delicately down the street ;
he wears loose khaki and a blue, visorless cap.
He is an " imported " Chinese laborer. There
come two fine, stalwart, romantic-looking men in
golden-colored khaki, with caps of a curious cut.
They are Serbian officers. The smart dullness of
the British uniform is varied, here and there, by
officers who wear epaulets of chain mail. They
belong to the Indian cavalry.

In all this melange the uniform of the Ameri-

49

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

can Ambulance is becoming conspicuous. Even
before the war, ambulance volunteers were pour-
ing into Paris. Seventeen sections are working
at the Front now ; and men have been arriving so
fast that a squad will leave this week not to run
ambulances but to transport motor cars. Their
uniform greatly resembles the British; the main
difference is not in cut and color, but in the chev-
rons and insignia. However, I can always spot
them even from the rear, by their free American
stride, and usually by their size.

France has maintained a greater variety of uni-
form than any other nation on the Western Front.
Now when a wounded man gets back to hospital
from the line, his clothes are usually finished.
When he becomes convalescent and begins to roam
the boulevards, getting air, they dress him in
whatever they have on hand.

Lieutenant V , a member of the most fa-
mous fighting corps in the French Army, called
on me to-day. Wounded at the Somme last au-
tumn, he spent months in bed. About on crutches
since a month ago, he found that his shattered leg
needed special treatment to restore its flexibility ;
so he is going to a special hospital at the south of
France. He was wearing an infantryman's light-
blue fatigue cap, an artilleryman's khaki jacket, a
cavalryman 's red breeches and a pair of Canadian
putties. These combinations add still more color
and variety to the appearance of Parisian crowds.

This color of the streets becomes a kaleidoscope

50

MESSENGEES FEOM BELGIUM

in the lobbies and smoking rooms of the music
halls and variety theaters, where officers on leave
go for their fling. These, now that spring has
come, have not only the old gayety of Paris, but
an additional gayety from the presence of so much
youth in a state of rebound from trench life.

Just now an American vaudeville team is giv-
ing Paris its first big laugh of the war — Coleman
and Alexandra, the latter being billed as The
Good-Luck Girl. She is pretty ; she is blond ; she
is a past mistress of American ragtime. In the
last part of the turn she stands singing before a
black curtain. The lights go out. A moment la-
ter you see her swinging through space above the
front rows of the orchestra, in a floral horseshoe.

As a matter of fact, it is an illusion act ; the bas-
ket in which she sits is attached to a long crane,
shaped like a great wagon tongue and rendered in-
visible by a lighting trick ; and an operator on the
stage is making it swing or dip at will. She
throws out toy balloons as she swings. The audi-
ence scrambles for them; they mean good luck.
But the greatest luck of all, as the announcer tells
you before the act, is to get one of her little blue
strapped slippers.

The front rows and the stage boxes fill up after
the intermission with officers of all nations, wait-
ing for a chance at those slippers. When I saw
her a week ago their performance was unsys-
tematic. When I saw her again, last night, they
had introduced teamwork.

51

A EEPOKTER AT AEMAGEDDON

Alexandra, singing and twinkling her little blue
feet saucily, dipped, dipped, dipped toward a row
of British officers at the right of the orchestra.
Suddenly three Britons rose up and a bantam
among them sprang to their shoulders — a very
creditable pyramid. He balanced himself, his
comrades holding his ankles; he grabbed; he
grazed Alexandra's toes just as she soared up to
the ceiling, twinkling her feet and pretending to
shoot them with her thumb and forefinger. The
bantam lost his balance ; the pyramid tumbled, all
together, into the aisle.

Alexandra soared over toward the boxes. The
French officers who occupied them stood on the
parapet and clung with one hand to the curtains
while they grabbed with the other; Alexandra,
sparring with her feet, eluded them. The horse-
shoe swung away; swung back. The Frenchmen
grabbed again; the box curtain gave way, and
down they went into the audience, which vented its
delights in shrieks. She brushed lightly across
the group of British officers ; they formed a pyra-
mid again ; this time the apex man got a hold with
one hand; but she pulled away.

She soared to the edge of the balcony and flirted
with the front rows. Eussians, Serbians and
American Ambulance men crowded the aisles,
making leaps into the air as she brushed just over
their clutching hands. She trifled again with the
British. This time they had a new apex man, a
little fellow — a convalescent officer, I take it — in

52

MESSENGERS FROM BELGIUM

mufti. He did not content himself with standing
on his comrades' shoulders as she swung past;
he made a well-timed leap and grabbed the slipper
with both hands.

It held for an instant; then the strap button
parted — and he rose a moment later from the
opera chair into which he had dropped, holding up
the slipper as an outfielder, who has fallen after
making a catch, holds up the ball.

The audience, standing by now, cheered madly.
Alexandra, blowing a storm of kisses at the win-
ner, continued to soar, to twinkle her other slipper
over the heads below, to tease, tantalize, cajole.
She made a dip ; and suddenly an American Am-
bulance man who had been lying very low jumped
three feet into the air, caught, held — and off came
the other slipper. He mounted a chair, waving
his trophy, and gave a wild rebel yell.

I don't know whether or not this is an old Amer-
ican turn ; but it could never "go" at home, I sup-
pose, as it does here in Paris with that strange
audience — the soldiers of the ten nations.

PARIS, May llth.

In the week before war was declared, the State
Department ordered our young district food
agents out of Belgium. However, by special re-
quest of all parties concerned, including the Ger-
mans, five or six remained behind, in order to clos0
up the books and turn our property over to the
Spanish and Dutch.

53

A KEPOKTER AT AEMAGEDDON

These men, the last Americans who will pass, by
permission, from the Central Powers during this
war, reached Paris yesterday from Switzerland.
This afternoon I found three of them sitting be-
fore a boulevard cafe with two others, who arrived
in the first lot.

They were in a happy mood, these recent arri-
vals— larking like boys and giggling like school-
girls. All had lived in the sober, repressed, tragic
atmosphere of Belgium for at least a year — one of
them since the third month of the war. "They
told us that Paris was sad," said he. "Heavens,
it's like Coney Island to me! The first thing 1
noticed when I crossed into Switzerland was that
people were smiling!" Belgium, our food agents
have been telling me ever since the war began, has
the most depressing atmosphere in Europe.

However neutral the honor of these boys has
made them in their acts, they have not been neu-
tral for a long time in their thoughts. If any of
them retained any doubts concerning the justice
of the Allied cause, the damnable business of the
Belgian deportations settled the question forever
in their minds. Of this atrocity they told me
tragedy after tragedy, crime after crime.

The Belgian branch of the commission keeps in
each community a list of the unemployed, so as to
administer charity with intelligent justice. The
first act of the Germans, upon starting the depor-
tations, was to demand these lists. Now part of
the covenant with the allied governments was that

54

MESSENGEKS FROM BELGIUM

we should furnish no information to the enemy.
The Americans refused to show the lists, as the
Germans probably expected they would. It was
only a trick to shift the blame ; what they wanted
was not the unemployed, but skilled workmen,
most of whom had jobs. So they proceeded to
community after community, rounded up all the
men, tore them from their families and rushed
them on to trains.

The commission employs fifty-five thousand
men in the vital work of food distribution. The
directors in Brussels secured, or thought they
secured, immunity for these people. White cards
were issued to them; on presentation of these
cards, the Germans said they would be spared de-
portation. When the first set of commission em-
ployees presented their cards the Germans tore
them up and herded the bearers on to the trains
with the rest.

Our men fought this matter out with the Ger-
man central authorities and, after hundreds of
commission employees had been transported, se-
cured a new order against seizing any one who had
a white card. A few days later, news came that
fifty employees, in spite of their cards, had been
deported from Luxemburg. An agent from the
Brussels office rushed to the spot and found a
Prussian commandant by whom the commission
had already been troubled. He had his family
with him; and a year ago he demanded from the
Commission stores condensed milk for his baby.

55

A BEPOBTER AT ARMAGEDDON

JDhe matter was referred to the head office,
which replied that its covenant with the Allies for-
bade handing over an ounce of food to the Ger-
mans. The milk could be got perfectly well, by a
man in his position, from German sources — only it
was a little more trouble. Faced by our agent, he
declared flatly that he had deported these men for
revenge. "Pve been waiting to get at you fel-
lows," he said. His revenge was murder, for
some of them died in Germany.

The Germans, so far as possible, planned the
work of deportation so that our men, sixty pairs
of shrewd, impartial eyes, would not see it. How-
ever, one of the Americans with whom I talked
this afternoon dropped unannounced into a Bel-
gian town near Antwerp. He saw several hun-
dred men lined up on the public square, sur-
rounded by soldiers. Outside of the line stood
the women, all crying. As each man was exam-
ined, he was ordered to move to right or left ; those
massed to the right were going to Germany. Ev-
ery time a man stepped to the right a wail broke
out from his woman in the crowd. When finally
the procession started, the women made a rush to
bid their men good-by. The soldiers beat them
back; our American witness saw three women
knocked senseless by gun butts.

Train after train passed through Brussels, car-
rying the men deported from Ghent. They were
in cattle cars, packed so tightly that they had to
stand; they had not eaten for twenty-four hours.

56

MESSENGERS FROM BELGIUM

But they threw from the train slips of paper on
which they had written On ne signer a pas — "We
will not sign. ' ' This referred to the contracts the
Germans had thrust under their noses — agree-
ments which would bind them to stay in Germany
and would make it appear that they went volun-
tarily.

"They shall not pass!" was the motto of free
France at Verdun. "We will not sign!" was the
motto of enslaved Belgium. Less than ten per
cent did sign. And presently the wreckage be-
gan to come back.

One of our agents had three of his employees
taken away. When they left they were stout,
healthy Flemish men. When they returned, he
went to see them at the hospital. "Indian fam-
ine victims were athletes beside them," he said.
"I could span their biceps with my thumb and
fingers. I could see every bone in their bodies.
Their lips pulled back from their teeth as though
they were already dead." One of them had
smuggled out a little bowl of about the capacity;
of a teacup. Their ration, all this time, had been,
that bowlful of fish-head soup once a day — noth-
ing more.

At the detention camp, when they refused to
sign they were forced to stand at attention in the
courtyard for twelve hours running. It was in
the dead of a very cold winter. They had no
coats, and if they tried to put their hands into
their pockets the guards pricked them with bayo-

57

A BEPOKTER AT AEMAGEDDON

nets. Their hands were frostbitten ; one of them
lost three fingers. Every day a German officer
thrust a contract before them, offering them pay
and good food if they would sign. "Je ne signe-
rai pas!" they replied simply.

Faster and faster the wrecks of 'Kultur came
back. They filled the hospitals in Liege and its
vicinity. Some of their comrades had died in
Germany; and some died in these hospitals.
They had all been starved and tortured — but tor-
tured in such a way that marks would not remain
as proofs. In the dead of winter the guards
broke the ice over pools or ditches and made them
stand in the water for hours. This was the pun-
ishment for the "hopeless cases M — the "extra-
stubborn," of whom the Germans had no further
hope. Naturally their feet were frozen-— but
frozen feet, you see, may be an accident, while a
mutilation carries its own proof. They were
strung up by the thumbs. For a day at a timo
their hands were tied to beams above their
heads.

When their condition was such that they would
never make satisfactory laborers, the Germans
began to ship them home — crippled, broken down
with undernutrition, maimed. Many toes and feet
and legs had to be amputated. One of these men,
who died of frostbite, starvation and hardship,
was just at his last gasp. The priest had admin-
istered extreme unction; his hands were folded
on his breast. The doctor, by accident, jogged his

58

MESSENGEKS FROM BELGIUM

elbow. His eyes opened. "No; I will not sign —
I will not sign!" he muttered — and died.

So much loose talk runs about Europe that I
should not fully believe such stories were I not
sure of the source. But these are straight, cool-
headed, reliable American men, of whom, as a
member of the C. E. B., I have had knowledge ever
since they entered Belgium. They have been to
the hospitals and talked with the victims; and
they know.

The Germans have stopped this deportation
business. It did not pay in the first place.
Nearly all the deported refused to sign and their
experiments with torture got them nothing!
Then the protest from the Vatican had its effect.
Our men think there was another reason. The
Belgians know the truth about many a situation
on which the German populace is ridiculously mis-
informed. They were a "bad influence " on pub-
lic morale.

Still, the first reason governed the German ac-
tion, I think. If the Belgians could have been
forced to manufacture machines to kill their own
brothers Germany would doubtless have kept it
up. It is perhaps the finest victory of passive re-
sistance known to history. The courage of these
plain Flemish artisans and peasants was more
superb, I think, than the courage of battle.

When the German military authorities had to
back water they framed, for the benefit of their
own people, one of the most ridiculous excuses on

59

A KEPOBTER AT ARMAGEDDON

record. The govornor-general of Antwerp, where
the first deportations occurred, was made the goat.
He was reprimanded for being too soft-hearted
with the Belgians! "Listening to their frantic
pleas for employment, " said the official report in
effect, "and not considering that Germany, owing
to her excellent internal condition, has plenty of
labor, he has sent Belgian laborers into Germany
faster than they can be used. He is ordered to
send no more for the present. "

One of our men spoke up at this point to tell
another story of official hypocrisy. The Germans
have been combing Belgium for brass and copper.
A general order commanded every Belgian hav-
ing a brass utensil or ornament in his possession
to send a notice, with a full inventory, to the local
commandant. The Belgians, quite naturally,
were not eager to help the enemy make shells to
kill their kinsmen on the Yser. Few articles were
turned in; so the Germans sent searching squads
from house to house. At about this time, an offi-
cial item was circulated through the German press
to this effect:

6 i Owing to the poverty of Belgium, the military
command, wishing to assist these people as much
as possible, has offered exceptionally high prices
for brass and copper. By this means much use-
ful metal has been added to our military stores ! ' '

It is his sense of humor that keeps the Belgian
alive in these heartbreaking times. All the men-
tal ingenuity of a race dashed with the witty

60

MESSENGERS FROM BELGIUM

Gallic streak has been turned to the job of mak-
ing the Boche uncomfortable. The Germans are
characteristically lacking in sense of humor. For
Belgian wit they have only one repartee — it is to
put the jester in jail. Most of the stories, some
of them unpublishable, about what the Belgian
said to the German end: "And then they gave
him two weeks.''

For example, in a village near Antwerp, the
Staff ordered all the horses brought to the artil-
lery barracks, so that the Germans might requisi-
tion those they wanted. One old Belgian ap-
peared with seven horses. Six were crowbait, but
the seventh was a beautiful animal. The owner
ran him round and round the yard, putting him
through his paces. He had a superb gait. The
Germans took him on the spot, paying three hun-
dred and fifty francs in war requisition scrip.
That alleged money, in case Germany pulls out
without indemnity, will be of a value to make Con-
federate currency look like Bank of England
notes.

The next morning the former owner of this
horse was arrested and haled before the Kom-
mandant.

"You've cheated us!" roared the German.
"Your horse is no good!"

"What's the matter with him?" inquired the
Belgian, with a manner of childish innocence.

"When we tried to back him out of the stable
this morning he fell down. Every time we try to

61

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

back him he falls down! He's paralyzed some-
where. He can 't back up ; and you know it ! "

' ' Oh, that 's all right ! ' ' replied the Belgian. < < I
thought you'd need that kind of horse when you
come to try to cross the Yser."

German repartee, in this case, was exceptionally
ready and witty. He got a month!

No sooner is a solemn proclamation of the Ger-
man Government posted on the walls of Brussels
than a burlesque of it, even to a forgery of the
official seal, appears on the streets. Who prints
these proclamations, and where they are printed,
the Germans would like to know. La Libre
Belgique. that mysterious perambulating news-
paper, continues to publish its biting satire on the
Germans and its news of allied victories. Now it
seems to issue from one town and now from an-
other; but the Germans, though they have made
many arrests, cannot find its types or its press.

A general joke on the Germans — something
subtle enough to lie within the rules and still ob-
vious enough to annoy them — seems to spring up
in a night and pass through the kingdom by men-
tal telepathy. The Germans forbade the Bel-
gians to wear their national colors. Next morn-
ing all Belgium wore green — the color of hope.

When the German peace proposals were an-
nounced the Belgians took to strolling by twos and
threes past all the German officers they saw, and
remarking in a clear yet natural tone of voice:
"I see the Germans are suing for peace !"

62

MESSENGERS FROM BELGIUM

By night apoplectic German officers were break-
ing into these groups and roaring :

"That's a lie! Germany is proposing peace !"

Three times Brussels has been "closed" as a
punishment for offending the might and majesty
of the Kaiser. Under this form of punishment
no public assemblies and amusements are allowed,
and every one must stay indoors after seven
o'clock in the evening. The first time the sen-
tence was for one day only; it followed a little
cheering on the National Fete Day. The next
time Brussels offended was when the famous Bel-
gian aeroplane flew over the city, dropping procla-
mations of hope and cheer.

That occasion was very dramatic. It happened
on a clear, black night when the streets ran full.
Suddenly the crowd caught the sound of aerial
engines. That unmistakable whir-r-r, coming at
night over a city in the war zone, always gives
people pause — it may mean bombs. The engines
sounded nearer and nearer. The plane, from the
sound, seemed to be making a landing.

Suddenly a searchlight flashed from the aero-
plane, revealing the aviator, who immediately
broke out the Belgian flag. Then white leaves be-
gan to flutter downward. Along the Avenue
Louise it sped, so low that it seemed scarcely to
skim the lamp-posts. Suddenly the light went
out; but the noise of the engines showed that it
was escaping unscathed. All Brussels broke into
wild cheers.

63

A BEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

The German repartee was announced next morn-
ing from the Hotel de Ville : Five days.

Brussels was a strange city that night. Except
for sentinels, the streets were deserted. But
every window was wide open and blazing with
light. Every talking machine was booming its
loudest record. Every piano was tinkling, every
fiddle scraping, every cornet tooting. People
leaned out from their casements and held long,
interesting and animated conversations with
friends across the street. Amateur male quartets
rendered selections of American ragtime. Dogs
barked their heads off. However, it was all
within the rules.

Next morning the Germans amended the order
so as to prohibit ^>pen windows, playing musical
instruments, conversations above an ordinary tone
of voice, song, and barking. But Brussels had
its joke.

Such incidents both enrage and puzzle the Ger-
mans.

"See all we've done for this people !" they say.
' ' Look at our forbearance ! In place of their own
rotten government we've given them the German
Government — the best the world ever knew — and
they behave like this ! They are blind, stubborn,
ungrateful ! ' '

This seems incredible ; but it is the general atti-
tude of the German official, our men declare.

No ; the Belgians certainly have not responded !
The University of Ghent was founded last year

64

MESSENGERS FROM BELGIUM

by the conquerors, "to restore the language and
culture of the Flemish people, a Germanic tribe
too long under debasing French influence. " It
has forty professors and thirty students ; most of
the students are of German parentage.

Last year, the Germans spawned a great idea —
an exhibition of German Kultur, showing how the
benevolent conqueror ran his cities and ordered
his industries. They commandeered the largest
hall in Brussels and filled it with exhibits.
Through the Commission they prepared to feed
immense numbers of tourists. They ran excur-
sions from Antwerp and other points at half rates.

The arrangement was this: You bought your
ticket, one way, from Antwerp. It carried a cou-
pon, which you retained. Upon leaving the exhi-
bition hall in Brussels, you exchanged the coupon
at the turnstile for a free return ticket. This was
by way of making sure that the tourist would
attend.

Great crowds took advantage of the rates ; they
presented themselves at the exhibition, entered
the vestibule of the hall, and immediately walked
out through the exit, collecting the return tickets.
Not one of them entered the hall ; the great expo-
sition of Kultur was witnessed by Germans alone.
I must explain that civilian travel is forbidden in
Belgium except by special permission of the Ger-
mans. One must stay in his own town. Antwerp
was full of people who had long wanted to visit
relatives and friends in Brussels. This was their

65

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

chance — and at half rates! The Germans, of
course, were furious. " Blind, stupid ingrates!"
they called the Belgians, as they packed up the
exhibits and sent them home.

Our men tried to introduce some of our own
Kultur last summer, with but little better success.
The Department of Northern France organized a
baseball team and challenged the head office at
Brussels to a series of games. The matches,
which resulted in a complete victory for the Cen-
tral Office, were played at Brussels.

Belgian society attended, partly out of compli-
ment to America and partly out of curiosity. In
advance our men boosted the game, telling the
Belgians how especially clean, safe and civilized
a sport it was. And in the very first inning Gray,
sliding to second, broke his arm, and had to be
patched up before the grand stand by Doctor
Leech, pitcher for the North of France team.

The Belgians never did seem to discover what
it was all about. Some one had explained that
the object of the batsman was to hit the ball. So
grounders brought mild handclapping and outfield
flies, cheers ; but when a batsman sent up a high
pop fly, which dropped straight into the catcher's
glove, the grand stand rose and gave him an ova-
tion.

Though each remembered some German whom
he liked or admired, our men came out with a
nauseating sickness of the whole German game.
However, only one of them expressed his feelings

66

MESSENGEES FEOM BELGIUM

in Belgium. On the night when the first squad
left, their Belgian friends entertained them. One
of the departing Americans dined too well. At
the eleventh hour he was dragged to the train,
clutching his golf clubs, which he refused to let
the porter carry.

"Important use for those implements, " he said
darkly.

The platform was full of German soldiers and
officers. As the train started he leaned from the
window of his compartment, wearing a smile of
long-delayed satisfaction, and brandished his
driver, with which he neatly knocked off every
German helmet he passed!

CHAPTEE V

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

PABIS, May 1st.

THE world is a small place after all — a state-
ment so ancient and bromidic that no self-respect-
ing person is supposed to use it any more — and so
is this war. I had an incidental meeting at Ver-
dun last summer with a lieutenant of the French
Army who spoke good and idiomatic English. He
was assigned, as it happened, to take me past
' ' Dead Man's Corner" to an advanced dressing
post somewhere behind the Fort de Dugny. As
we prepared to start I remembered that I had
left off my steel helmet, a piece of hardware very
reassuring in those shrapnel-saturated atmos-
pheres. I stopped the car and ran back to quar-
ters to get it ; and as I returned he remarked with
a laugh:

"That's right; stick to your French derby in
these parts."

Now an Englishman calls the ugliest piece of
headgear known to man a "bowler"; and so I
answered :

"You didn't learn your English in England."

"I should say not!" he replied. "Say, you

68

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

don't know any one who wants to buy some town
lots in Los Angeles, do you? Because I've got
'em to sell."

Yesterday I went up to a town on the fringe of
the war zone, to visit the Americans who are train-
ing for officers in the new Mechanical Transport
Corps. In the process of being shown round I
passed through a shed built of black paper over
a board floor; and a cheerful American voice with
a French tang, which seemed somehow familiar,
floated across the lath-and-paper partition, say-
ing: "The lieutenant here tells you you've got
to get it white-hot before you weld it — white-hot
—see? Watch him do it— now get that!"

I peeped round the corner of the partition. It
was my old acquaintance — old as war goes — of
Fort de Dugny and points north. Assigned to
take care of the American ambulances because he
was beyond military age when he volunteered, and
because he knew American English, he had now
been transferred to this school in order that he
might explain the subtleties of automobile French
to our volunteers. Grouped about him, their arms
over each other's shoulders, were fifteen stalwart
young men in the uniform of the American Ambu-
lance.

These boys are pioneers in a new departure.
Just before our declaration of war, so many vol-
unteers for the American Field Sections, which
used to run the ambulances, poured into Paris
that Piatt Andrew, the director, conceived the idea

69

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

of extending his work to a more vital and neces-
sary function of the French Army — getting up
the ammunition to the artillery. A whole section
left last week for its final training at the Front,
and others will follow fast.

It is not impossible that a great deal of the
ammunition handling jn those French regiments
that do most of the active fighting will soon be in
American hands. The transport service needs
officers as much as any other branch of the serv-
ice; and in consequence these fifteen men, all ex-
perienced ambulance drivers, most of them wear-
ing that Croix de Guerre which proves their valor,
have been told off to learn the profession. At this
training school they share instruction, bed and
board with one hundred and fifty Frenchmen, also
working for commissions.

For five or six weeks they will be crammed with
facts concerning army camions, automobile ma-
chinery in general, the organization of the French
Army, the theory and practice of handling men.
Having passed their examinations they will grad-
ually replace the French officers in temporary
command. Just what their standing will be, in
either the French Army or the American, no one
knows yet. They will have the power and privi-
leges of French second lieutenants for the present,
without the chevrons or the pay — the title will be
simply Volunteer Chief of Section.

The regime at this school is hard enough even
for the natives. I have long suspected that Euro-.

70

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

pean boys are always expected to work harder at
school than our own young loafers ; and this is an
affair of war, when every man is supposed to put
in the best that he has. For our men, mostly im-
perfectly acquainted with French, it is doubly
hard. The day begins at half past five in the
morning with reveille and a French breakfast of
coffee and war bread. All the morning they are
listening to lectures, are watching laboratory dem-
onstrations, are toiling over machinery. The
course includes taking a five-ton truck to pieces
and putting it together again. Taking them apart
is easy, but putting them together — one of the
Americans remarked to me under his breath, as
he pawed through a mess of bolts, nuts, oil cups
and spare parts, "I've Dutched it complete, Gott
strafe it ! But the head mechanic has just pointed
out a defective part, so I'll have an alibi when the
instructor comes round."

After luncheon usually comes drill; mechanical
transport men as well as cavalry and infantry
must learn how to get to a certain place in a cer-
tain time, which is about all there is to drill now-
adays. Here, I find, the Americans give a comedy
touch to life in camp. Nearly every Frenchman
has done his two years of military service in his
youth, and has learned that peculiar snap and
click which the Frenchman puts into military evo-
lution. While the French were learning the man-
ual of arms our boys were playing football and
tennis. They move, therefore, with the ease of

71

A EEPOETEB AT ARMAGEDDON

trained athletes — a gait pleasing to the artistic
eye, but unmilitary in the extreme. Somehow it
strikes the French as funny; they are always sit-
ting on the fence and calling out pleasantly sar-
castic encouragement as our men swing by.

Yet though their drilling has been a joke to the
French poilu, they themselves have been a great
hit. There is no use in talking, the Americans
and the French get along well together. No
sooner were our men established in camp than
their French comrades gave them a dinner. The
fare was the regular army ration, supplemented
by a few extra courses bought by subscription.
An artiste from the Opera was brought specially
from Paris to sing for them, and both the colonel
and an orator elected from the French students
made speeches. The student spiced his talk with
a few witty references to American peculiarities.

Some response had to be made ; and one of our
boys was shoved to his feet. In halting French
he mentioned that the Americans, sitting apart by
themselves in the mess hall, would prefer to sit
with the French. The whole house rose, yelling,
"Come to our table !" "Come to ours!" An
enterprising Frenchman rushed through the mob,
caught an American about the waist and dragged
him to his table.

That started a riot — every one fighting for an
American. Now they are mixed up satisfactorily
with the French. The Americans will return hos-
pitality next week with a dinner of their own, and

72

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

they are trying to get an American prima donna
to furnish the entertainment.

I lunched with four or five of the boys at a cafe
outside the gates of the camp. A sergeant ar-
rived in the midst of luncheon with orders for the
afternoon. That period is given up usually to
road work. The students take out a section of
automobile trucks and make a practice run. Each
day a different man commands them as chief of
section. He carries running orders, made out in
the regular French military form, and a map of
the sector. No one explains the map or the or-
ders to him; he must work it all out for himself;
and the officers, I suspect, try to make it as hard
as possible.

The chief of section does not ride on a truck
like the rank and file. He has a touring car for a
war horse ; he runs up and down the line, directing
the route, straightening out tangles, and especially
looking after breakdowns. When the machinery
of a truck goes wrong it is run at once to the side
of the road, that traffic may not be impeded. The
chief — here is use for his learning in the anatomy
of automobiles — looks it over and determines if
jury repairs can be made. If not he telephones to
the mechanics at the base, mounts his war horse,
and hurries on after the convoy.

Bigelow, the orders stated, was officer for the
day; with the orders went a map over which ho
was still knitting his brows when one of the com-
pany glanced at his wrist watch and said, "Only

73

A EEPOETEB AT ABMAGEDDON

three minutes to one-thirty, Big." We rushed
over to the American tent to see the squad start
out.

"Rassemblementl" ordered Bigelow, practic-
ing his army French, and the squad fell in. "A
droit alignement — fixe! Les ordres du jour — I
guess, fellows, we'd better go at the rest of this
in United States. Here's the orders" — and he
read off the assignments of drivers and assistants.
"Now youVe got it? All right. A droite par
quatres-marche!"

While the squad marched to the automobile park
and got out the camions we drove forward with a
French captain and Lieutenant K , the French-
man from Los Angeles ; drove through one of the
sweetest bits of countryside, all green fields,
spreading trees, bright little gray villages and
tumbling hedges of lilac. [We stopped before a
farmhouse on the edge of a village, and here Lieu-
tenant K smiled sardonically to himself be-
fore he said:

"This is where they'll fall down — it's nearly a
cinch. Bigelow 's got orders to turn to the left,
according to the map. There are two roads here.
This one to the left looks all right, but it runs
into a cul-de-sac. The one beyond there" — he
indicated a turn a hundred yards away — "is the
road we're driving at. We're resting here to
make it harder. He'll take this road, for a
cinch!"

The lieutenant and the captain rubbed their

74

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

Hands in anticipation. A moment later a burst of
dust at the top of a distant hill signaled the ap-
proach of the transport train. Out of the dust,
presently, came the light touring car. It slowed
up as it passed us ; Bigelow sat beside the mili-
tary driver, studying that map. He looked back,
he looked beyond; the car backed up, turned
round, and Bigelow, saluting perfunctorily, cast
a long look down the lieutenant's trap.

"It's a cinch !" murmured Lieutenant K .

"Bet you anything !"

He would have won. The leading truck turned
past the farmhouse; the others rumbled after it.
Bigelow, still unaware, followed the trailer, and
we followed him. We rounded a turn. In a gully
below us the convoy was stacked up, the leading
truck with its nose jammed against the barn to
which that road led. And the blushing Bigelow
came tramping back along the road to salute and
report :

"I took the wrong turning, sir."

"You did!" said the captain in French, and
every one laughed. "That was put into the day's
run to show you that maps are not merely deco-
rative. You won't do that again, will you? It's
only a little mistake, my boy. We all make them.
Now find the right road!"

Ten minutes later the camions were backing out
into the main highway, under observation of a
crowd of villagers, conspicuously a stout peasant
woman, with a twin on each arm, who asked me,

75

A EEPOETER AT AEMAGEDDON

as we passed, who these gentlemen were in the
strange uniforms — Russians, perhaps, or Eng-
lish?

Bigelow acquitted himself without error for the
rest of the day. Some fifteen miles away from
camp the convoy was parked in the plaza of a lit-
tle war-zone town — parked, according to standing
orders, with the greatest economy of space. Then
it ran monotonously back to camp, the captain and
Lieutenant K , in their fast touring car, shoot-
ing ahead by spurts and reviewing it at this or
that crossroad, to criticize its technic and align-
ment. The camions parked at headquarters, the
squad hurried to the lecture hall — a structure of
laths and building paper with a bank of benches —
where the captain talked an hour on the practical
lessons of that day's run. Then dinner; and then
study until ten o 'clock.

This day's work of our embryo American offi-
cers was merely a glimpse of the organization be-
hind the lines, of which the American people know
'so little and of which we must know so much if
this war drags on to its expected length. The
mechanical transport of automobile trucks has
served to counteract for the French the German
strategic railroads. Along with the valor of the
men at the Front, it saved Verdun.

PAKIS, May 19th.

The strike of the "midinettes," the sewing
women of the great and famous Parisian dress-

76

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

makers, is the event of the hour along the boule-
vards. The proprietors, it appears, decided that
owing to slack times they would enforce the * * Eng-
lish week," which means a Saturday half holiday.
The girls liked that until they learned that they
would be docked for that half day. Then they
struck; and while they were about it they de-
manded a franc a day additional pay to meet the
increased cost of living.

So far, it has been rather a gay and merry
strike. All day I have been meeting bands of
marching women, sometimes singing, sometimes
calling badinage to the crowds on the sidewalk
cafes — for it is lovely weather and the boulevards
are full. As a Socialist newspaper remarked this
morning, the boulevardier — the Parisian equiva-
lent of our man-about-town — has a chance to see
the midinette as she really is.

Much fake literature has been written about
the girl of this craft; there she figures as sister
to the girl of the Latin Quarter — chic, romantic,
living on love and music. In reality she is simply
a working girl. Some, indeed, were young, as
you saw them along the boulevards, and they had
about them that touch of smartness which the
French girl knows how to put into eight dollars'
worth of clothes. More were middle-aged, ap-
pearing like working mothers of families. Some
were old women, even toothless old women.
Here and there in the marching groups appeared
the horizon blue of the army — soldier brothers or

77

A KEPOKTER AT ARMAGEDDON

lovers, home on leave, who marched with them for
sympathy. And usually, tailing the procession at
a respectful distance, were four or five worried-
looking policemen.

They were gay enough until they lined up before
the dressmaking shops for a demonstration; and
then it became a slightly different matter. Victor
Hugo said that he felt two natures struggling
within him. That duality of nature is most pro-
nounced in the French. On one side your French-
man is a sprightly, entertaining and humorous
angel; but there's a sleeping tiger in him too.
That tiger wakes when he goes into action ; it ex-
plains why an army of quiet, courteous, joking
little men, who look like anything but soldiers,
has been able to hold against the greatest military
power in the modern world.

I saw a flash of the tiger to-day. On the street
near the Opera, where I go for my mail, a crowd
had filed up before a famous dressmaker's. The
babble sounded a block down the street. Three
policemen were barring the door, and half a dozen
girl strikers were making defiant gestures under
their noses while talking five hundred insulting
words a minute.

I left the American lady with whom I was walk-
ing on the edge of the crowd, while I pushed for-
ward toward the focus of disturbance. Some one
from the rear shouted " There they are — the
camels!" The surge of the crowd carried me to
the middle of the street. As I looked over my

78

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

shoulder I saw that the three policemen, their
faces very red from keeping silence under insult,
were drawing long breaths of relief and smiling
faintly.

Leaning over the balcony rail on the second
floor were three women dressed in simple but ex-
pensive-looking black and with their hair elabo-
rately coifed — Parisian forewomen these, the
kind of haughty countesses who put madame's
dress into a fit while twittering compliments in
dovelike voices. Languidly they leaned, with an
expression of haughty disdain, while the midi-
nettes called them horrible unprintable names —
like camels, onions, carrots and little pink pigs !

I turned back to the lady whom I had left on the
sidewalk. She was lost to view, surrounded ; I saw
arms waving above heads. I made my way to her.
She was backed against the wall, more embar-
rassed than frightened, for she speaks but little
'rench. Three or four of the more emotional
among the strikers were talking at the top of their
voices, their eyes gleaming, their teeth showing;
and one, a buxom, black-eyed fury of a creature,
was fingering the lapel of a new coat that the
American woman was wearing.

" Listen, madame !" the black-eyed girl was say-
ing; "you are rich and we are poor. You paid
for that coat — you bought it at the Galerie La-
fayette— two hundred, perhaps three hundred
francs." This was true, by the way. "I know,
for I make those coats. And what do I get for

79

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

making a coat like this? Three francs! Is it
right ?"

"Is it right? No! No!" clamored the girls
behind her.

The American lady happens to sympathize with
labor. She found enough French to say :

' * You are right ! It is not just ! We are Amer-
icans. Our girls are better paid in America."

"Yes; they did it themselves by organizing,"
I said.

Then, like the sun breaking, their faces
smoothed out to smiles. They oh-ed and oh-ed.
"Americans ! ' ' they said, and i ' They are with us ! "
The black-eyed girl who had been fingering the
new coat cried "Vive VAmerique!" They all
took it up.

"Vive la France! Vive les midinettes!" I
cried, waving my hat. There was tremendous ap-
plause, and as the strikers moved away they were
craning their necks to wave at us. So was our
little riot turned into a pro-Ally ratification meet-
ing ; but, all the same, while I watched them finger-
ing madame's coat I understood the knitting
women about the guillotine which once purged
France — and also the Battle of the Marne !

PAKIS, May 21st.

I ran up yesterday to a beautiful old French
town where three of our American boys, rather
envied by other young men who are ready to offer
their swords to France, have been put in training

80

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

as artillery officers. When they pass their exami-
nations and get the galons as second lieutenants
they will take command in French regiments at
the Front.

Doubtless when our new troops arrive they will
be transferred, owing to their practical experi-
ence on this Front ; and they should be invaluable.
I had a little hunt for them, and so I chartered the
carriage of a businesslike woman driver who
asked for my trade at the station.

It was an all- feminist equipment, that cab; the
horse was named Julie, and the dog Sophie. This
Sophie was an Airedale, and she took her job so
seriously that she was run down to skin and bone.
She went before the cab all the way, wearing a
manner of pompous authority, looking back now
and then to assure herself that all was well.
Whenever she found a male dog in the way she
took outrageous advantage of dog chivalry and,
barking with authority, chased him onto the side-
walk. Once we ran foul of an army camion, and
she tried to bark that also out of the way. This
awakened militant womanhood, just breaking into
industry, takes its job with great seriousness.

Unless you are writing under the censorship, as
I am not at this moment, it is unfair to describe
military arrangements, even training schools. I
merely quote, therefore, what one of the boys
said when I found them and went to dinner with
them. He was in a class of one hundred and fifty
Frenchmen, all younger than he, all less advanced

81

A REPOKTER AT ARMAGEDDON

in their education. They had been chosen by com-
petitive examination for entrance into the school.

"I'm having a hard time keeping up," he said.
"It's not only French — and if you think you know
this language try some technical stuff and find
how much you don't know — it's general knowl-
edge. They run rings round me in mathematics
and physics — and what they know they know cer-
tainly and accurately. English and American col-
leges don't turn out such scholars as these."

It is being borne upon me that Continental boys
get a great deal more education out of their 'schools
than ours of the English-speaking races. I am
sure it is so with the French and Italians, and it
must be so with the Germans. I wonder, some-
times, if the day of the picturesque college loafer
is not over for England and the United States.

PABIS, May 22d.

I am having the dickens of a time about a cam-
era; and my experience brings out a detail of
wartime life that seems to have escaped notice at
home. It is the manner in which everything runs
to seed.

Mine is a German camera — bought, I hasten to
say, before the war. I've carried is so long that
its use is second nature to me. It has crossed
the ocean eleven times, and has knocked about in
the baggage of all armies. When in New York
last winter, it began to show signs of wear, I
should have got a new one, but I did not — partly

82

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

through laziness and partly because it seemed like
throwing down an old friend. Last week its fo-
cusing apparatus broke down.

I took it to the American camera house where I
buy films and have developing done, and asked
to have it repaired. " Quite impossible, ' ' they
said; "no one to do it." I tried again, at a
French establishment. They were very sorry, but
it couldn't be done. I got the same story at three
other places. Finally I found a French house
that held out a possibility of making repairs —
this, mind you, would probably be a half -hour's
job for an expert mechanic — in about two weeks.
A workman of the firm was coming home on leave
in about that period, and might work a little — "if
nothing happens to him meantime," they added
grimly.

The hardest thing to obtain in Paris, these days,
is repairs. Such mechanics as are not mobilized
find their time fully occupied in necessary indus-
tries. Now and then, by searching, one can get a
munitions worker to do a little repairing in his
leisure hours. That is about the sole dependence.

Wandering about from camera shop to camera
shop with this idea in mind I noticed fully for the
irst time how Paris has run down at the heel. I

ive not seen a brushful of paint applied to the
ixterior of a building since the war began. Paint
is peeling with age ; varnish is cracking. Just off
the boulevards is a fashionable tailor shop bear-
ing a sign made of some substance that looks like

83

A EEPOETEK AT AEMAGEDDON

isinglass covered by plain glass. The isinglass
has begun to crack and peel, so that half the let-
ters are obliterated. Carpets and rugs, wherever
I went, were frayed and worn. Looms are too
busy with uniforms, ships too busy with muni-
tions, to trifle with merely ornamental floor cover-
ing. All signboards are ridiculously shabby;
some are getting hard to read.

After my search for camera repairs I drifted
into a newspaper office. "Take care," said the
editor; "the bottom's out of that chair!" I sat
down in another, which slowly settled under my
weight. ' < There, blast it ! ' ' he said. < ' I thought
that one would be going soon! IVe got to take
time to go rummaging in secondhand stores for
chairs," he continued. "I priced new ones the
other day, and the price was beyond belief. I
suppose there's hardly been a chair made in
France during the last year or two ; and of course
we're not importing chairs just now. As for re-
pairs— you might as well whistle for the moon ! ' '

I met an American woman yesterday, mourning
over the loss of her bag, which she left in the
Metro. "It isn't the money," she said, "though
I couldn't afford to lose that. It is my keys — I
can never, never get new ones made ! ' '

Life in the latter stages of a long-drawn-out war
like this goes down toward basic necessities ; and
everything pertaining to half necessities or to
luxuries looks a little decayed just now.

84

CAMIONS AND MIDINETTES

PAEIS, May 23d.

It is getting hard to keep track of American
activities in this town ; and if that is the case now
what will it be when our armies really begin to
arrive ! You seldom enter a resort frequented by
our countrymen but you meet some young fellow
who is going into aviation or is waiting for his
Bed Cross enlistment or is asking questions about
the Foreign Legion.

As for what used to be the American Ambu-
lance Field Service, they are coming so fast that
the management has trouble in handling them.
The organization, by the way, has dropped the
word Ambulance from its official designation, and
is known simply as the American Field Service.

This change of name is a matter of some im-
portance. For, not content with the twenty or
more ambulance sections operating at the Front,
it has begun, as I recorded a few days ago, to
form sections for transport service. If under
these circumstances it pretended to be strictly an
ambulance service it would be sailing under false
colors, since mot or- truck drivers carrying ammu-
nition to the guns are belligerents in every re-
spect, while ambulance men are not. The camion
drivers, who go armed to the Front, have altered
their uniforms accordingly, taking off the Eed
Cross buttons and tabs of ambulance drivers and
replacing them by the regular buttons and tabs of
that branch of the French service.

In a few days I am going up to see the first

85

A KEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

motor transport section received at the actual
fighting Front and put to work. As a prelimi-
nary, I dropped into the headquarters of the serv-
ice at Passy. It is housed in an old chateau, a
country place before Paris grew outward and took
in Passy. A great garden that is almost a park
lies below the chateau. In this park several iron
springs still bubble out reddish-brown waters;
they are the Eaux de Passy, famous in French lit-
erature of the eighteenth century. In these gar-
dens, sitting with his head bare to the sun to stim-
ulate imagination, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote
the first of his operas. Here, tradition says,
Franklin made his experiments with the lightning
rod. The window of his lodgings when he was
the social hit of Paris looks down on the park.
And the whole place is haunted by the spirit of
Voltaire, who used to meditate and work in these
gardens.

Now, the chateau shows little of its old splendor.
It has been changed into a set of offices, among the
most busy in Paris. The old and commodious
servants' quarters in the basement have been
transformed into dining-rooms for the field-serv-
ice men, and what was once a vaulted corridor,
where fashionables taking the waters could get out
of the sun, is a dormitory whose iron cots, fur-
nished with gray army blankets, are ranged close
side by side. Even these quarters have become
insufficient, and the park that was once the Waters
of Passy is dotted with white tents.

86

CHAPTEE VI
THE AMERICAN VANGUARD

THE WAR ZONE, May — .

[II I gave the exact date maybe the censor would object.]'

THE old-time war correspondent, according to
his own story, used to scratch off his dispatches,
on the night of battle, while sitting in a tent with
the guns rumbling, and using a drumhead for a
desk. This is the first time, in nearly three years
of war, that I have had a chance to imitate him,
even remotely.

There is no drumhead to be had ; the only drum
I remember to have seen in the war zone was car-
ried by a military band which serenaded us one
night at a British rest station. Otherwise, I am
giving a mild imitation of the old act.

For I am scratching off these notes, before the
letails grow faint in memory, under a villainously
dim lantern in the trailer of a camion, or army
automobile truck. We shall be forced before long
to take that word camion into the language; like
most French military terms it is shorter and
neater than ours and expresses one thing and one
thing only. Therefore I propose to use it in fu-
ture without apologies or quotation marks.

These two-wheel trailers, which rest their ends

87

A EEPOETER AT AEMAGEDDON

on steel braces when there are no camions to hold
them up, are used in camp as offices or quarters
for the officers. This one has a little board writ-
ing shelf that lets down from the wall when the
trailer is at rest; I am using that instead of a
drumhead. The guns are doing their part; what
the communiques will call in a day or so a "bom-
bardment of sufficient intensity " is going on at
the line, a few miles away. The big fellows have
just opened, and their distant blast rattled the
walls of the trailer a little.

From the other side come sounds not entirely
appropriate to the setting — a chorus of young
male voices chanting, with a long-drawn-out,
unctuous chorus, "Ise been workin' on the rail-
road. ' ' They have been singing for an hour every
college song known between the Atlantic and the
Pacific ; for taps has not yet sounded ; and, besides,
discipline is a little lax for them this evening.
To-morrow morning these singers, the pioneer
American camion section at the French Front, are
to report at the line, finished transport drivers,
for their actual work ; and I am going with them.

I wrote about the school for camion officers a
few days ago. Men as well as officers need in-
struction in this branch of the service. When this
pioneer section left Paris, a fortnight back, people
supposed they were going straight to the Front.
As a matter of fact they TV ere bound for this place
within range of the guns for instruction. They
are almost all university men, and as such know

88

THE AMERICAN VANGUARD

how to drive touring cars; but driving a five-ton
camion on bad roads is a special art.

The camion officers whom I saw in training last
week are veterans of the ambulance service and
know a thousand and one tricks about roads and
shell-dodging and the ways and regulations of the
French Army. These boys, most of whom were
studying at Cornell two months ago, are green to
the whole army game.

In case I forget, this is prevalently a Cornell
section. Tinkham, who will take them out as chef
de section — and probably, later, as lieutenant — is
the bellwether who led them away from their
books. An old ambulance man, he visited Cornell
last winter and recruited this section for ambu-
lance work. When they arrived the need for
camion drivers became pressing. They volun-
teered, and were taken before other volunteers
largely because Cornell has military drill and
gives therefore a kind of preliminary army edu-
cation.

I have been knocking about with the officers all
the afternoon watching the second section — which
will follow in a fortnight — get its schooling. The
whole process of education in automobile driving
on this part of the Front is in charge of a captain.

Lieutenant G , of the French Army, has charge

of the Americans, largely because he speaks Eng-
lish. A fine, upstanding, clean-cut French gentle-
man, he has a roving streak in him. Early in life
he yearned to know America. So for two years

89

A EEPOETER AT ARMAGEDDON

lie wandered in our midst, picking up his living by
working in department stores in New York, Chi-
cago and Pittsburgh. This afternoon he told me
that one day in Chicago a French-Canadian
woman who could not speak English entered the
store. He was told off to wait on her. When she
had finished buying, she said:

"You speak rather good French, monsieur."

"Madame flatters me," he replied in the French
formula for receiving a compliment.

"But of course," she added, "if you want the
real French accent you must go to Paris. Your
French is so good that it is a pity not to have it
perfect 1"

Lieutenant G — : — , as it happens, is a Parisian
born and bred.

He entered the war as a second lieutenant in the
Infantry Reserve. He was wounded in the leg
and the back during the early fighting for Verdun.
Invalided and returned to the line, he got it again
— this time a shell fragment in the left forearm.
Ten months in hospital followed. He came out
with a deep dent along his wrist and with all the
fingers except two paralyzed. So, owing to capac-
ity for leadership and his knowledge of the lan-
guage, he was put at this work.

He is popular with the men, of course ; but that
is the way of the French Army. Any officer who
cannot hold his men by the handle of their affec-
tions is gradually shunted out of command.

The second lieutenant, who gives most of the

90

THE AMERICAN VANGUARD

lecture courses, is an American citizen, though he
never saw America. His parents were natives of
the United States who followed their business to
Paris, where he was born. As he grew up and in-
herited his share of the business he maintained his
American connections. When a French boy in his
circumstances comes of age he must declare
whether he wants to be a citizen of his father's
country or of France. He chose the United
States.

But when the war came he wanted to do some-
thing for France. "One thing I did know, I re-
membered, was automobiles, " he told me to-day.
He entered the transport service as a private and
worked his way up to his commission. All
through the trying days of the Verdun attack,
when improvised automobile transport saved the
day, he was hustling camions forward through
towns harassed by air raids, swept with shells.
Because he speaks perfect English — I cannot un-
derstand how, living always in Paris, he has ac-
quired so much of our slang — because he knows
automobiles from tire to cover, and because of his
experience with army transport, he is an ideal in-
structor ; and he does most of the teaching.

I visited his schoolroom this afternoon. We
are camped in a pretty piece of wood, but a farm
with ample buildings stands about a quarter of
a mile along the road ; and about half a mile far-
ther, a town. There, in the mayor's office, the
boys listen to lectures. Section A, which goes out

91

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

to-morrow under T inkham, with Scully, of Prince-
ton, as his assistant, has finished its school edu-
cation.

Sub-lieutenant 0 was working with Section

B. At the moment when I entered the room the
boys, grouped round a long table, were listening
while he held forth on petrol — or gasoline, as we
call it in defiance of English precedent. How to
judge the quality of gasoline, how to look out for
water, how to act when water stopped proceedings
— he instructed them carefully on all that. He
ended with a lecture which some of our own auto-
mobile owners who want to help in this war might
take to heart.

"Remember," he said, "that every ten-gallon
can of petrol takes up as much space as a sack
of flour, and that our trouble at present is ocean
transport. Your job, next to getting ammunition
through, is to save petrol. Every time you stop
your car and keep the engine running, just because
you are too lazy to get down and crank up, you
are burning a fluid of which there is none too
much in the world; and a fluid which has to be
brought here in ships. In ten minutes of useless
engine work you are wasting somebody's loaf of
bread."

There was a short rest period before the hour
for practical instruction, which means running a
five-ton truck as part of a procession along calcu-
latedly villainous roads and about sharp hairpin
turns. As a visitor I was forced to make a speech,

92

THE AMEEICAN VANGUAED

and I looked back with sympathy to the sorrows
of the board visitor when I was a schoolboy.

However, what they wanted was news, not ora-
tory. English newspapers come to them but sel-
dom, and French newspapers not every day.
They were hungry to know what was doing. As
a matter of fact, not all can extract intellectual
nourishment from a French paper. Most of
them have a little of that theoretical French
instruction favored by our American schools
which breaks down when one has definite use for
the language.

On the way across the ocean there were daily
drills in the common practical phrases used by the
French Army. One of them was La voiture est
complete — The wagon is full. Who has ever an-
alyzed the psychology of a family joke? And
why, among all the phrases they learned, did this
one appeal to their sense of humor ? At any rate,
complet, pronounced French fashion and with
French meaning, is the humorous by-word of the
camp. If a man has drunk too much he is complet.
If he has eaten enough, he is complet. And it al-
ways brings a laugh.

The practical work has its difficulties. Most of
these men, as I have said, know how to drive ordi-
nary touring cars. But to manage these big five-
ton trucks, and on country roads, not city streets,
takes practice and education. Like the officers
down in their own special school, these men have
been instructed in the anatomy and peculiarities

93

A BEPOKTER AT AEMAGEDDON

of these automobiles — all of which were made in
America, by the way.

The instruction here is less thorough than at
the officers' school, but it is designed to keep them
from fool blunders and to make them understand
the reasons for breakdowns. They apply their
knowledge on the roads. Three or four of Section
A who had never driven any machine before,
learned a little slowly and were replaced, for this
initial venture to the line, by experts from Sec-
tion B. One of these students tried to ram down
the wall of a post office last week; and another
had his machine bucking like a bronco until it
collided with the machine just ahead of him in the
column. Taking the hairpin turns is in general
the greatest trouble to the beginners. To prevent
stopping the convoy — the one unforgivable sin in
French automobile transport — these turns must
be made on regular speed, without stopping and
backing. No man is passed for the Front until he
can do this with certainty.

As I was writing this I heard a rumble outside
on the road. I opened the canvas cover of the
trailer. A dark line of camions was bumping past
the trees. Daly, the Yale captain in the remote
peace days of 1910, who will take out Section B
when its education is finished, poked in his head
to explain that it is a night run.

Near the fighting Front, as all the world knows,
there are no headlights. They would betray you

94

THE AMERICAN VANGUARD

to the enemy. One must run in darkness, looking
out for traffic with a kind of sixth sense. That
takes practice, and every other evening the squad
must make a night run, in battle conditions. The
singers have gone to bed long ago. Also, the
"evening hate" along the line has stopped. The
silence of forests is over the camp. And now
Tinkham has added a few remarks to the record of
the day.

"You know," says Tinkham, "about every few
minutes, it seems to me, I have been obliged to
call this squad together to get something in the
way of equipment fitted on them. To-night, just
as they were breaking up, one of them said :

" 'Well, boss, I suppose in the morning we'll be
called up to get measured for harps and halos !' "

PARIS, Two Days Later.

The bugle turned me out of bed at five o'clock
^sterday morning, blowing the old, familiar re-
veille of the American Army — "I can't get 'em up
in the morning." It had turned out a beautiful
day, and because a bright day is a good one for ar-
tillery observation the heavies were going along
the Front. The water cart pulled round a turn
of our pretty woodland road, and the two sections,
in their undershirts, ran out with rubber collap-
sible washpans to get the means of morning ablu-
tions.

This is a new camp, and the shower baths were
not installed down the road until a few days ago ;

95

A EEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

in the meantime the earlier arrivals, being univer-
sity men and accustomed to bathing, got their first
idea of the hardships of war. The camp is in a
dry spot, except when it is raining, and the water
has to be hauled by a foolish little tank cart, driven
by a French Territorial infantryman and drawn
by a shaggy gray pony. Each man gets his pan-
ful for his morning wash, and no more until the
water cart comes again.

Assembly followed, and the ceremony of hoist-
ing the flag — or rather two flags, for the Tricolor
and the Stars and Stripes float side by side at the
gates of the camp. The sections, drawn up sep-
arately, presented arms. In the meantime From-
age, the small, curly, coal-black puppy who is
mascot to the camp, had roused from his
slumbers upon noticing that there was something
doing, and was going down the line biting feet
as he passed, quite contented that they were so
still.

And before the cook had ladled breakfast into
the grub tins the whole wood was abustle with the
business of preparation for departure. The de-
parting squad was loaded, with luggage, into four
empty camions, while four men of Section B, who
needed the practice, were told off to drive. It had
rained a little in the night, and the road through
the wood was in bad shape, so that the leading
camion stuck. The men of Section B had to run
out and shove it free; which killed any fuss or
ceremony there might have been about the depart-

96

THE AMERICAN VANGUARD

lire of the pioneer section for the Front and actual
work.

I rode in the staff car with Tinkham and the
lieutenant ; Scully, wanting the practice, mounted
the driver's seat of the leading camion, his leather-
bound road map in hand, just by way of getting
a little practice in following roads. Our car was
parked in the fortified farm, halfway between us
and the village.

I pause here to say that this is a region of for-
tified farms, and they give a peculiar color to this
beautiful part of dear, suffering France. In old
years, Northern France suffered continually from
the barbaric invader, as she is suffering now.
Also, there were robbers who preyed upon the rich
farms of the country which was the granary of
Europe. So the peasant proprietors grouped
houses, sheds and barns about a courtyard and
surrounded the whole thing with a thick, ten-foot
wall, pierced by long loopholes for bowmen. The
finest of them had watchtowers at the corners of
the wall. Here and there the loopholes and bas-
tions are still visible. In other farms, the old
walls have fallen into decay, but the peasants, by
the law of habit, have rebuilt them, though with-
out the loopholes. There were no loopholes in
the wall of this farm, but it kept the old form.

One or two batteries of artillery, shifting posi-
tion, passed us on the road up. They were coming
out from the line; their uniforms were soiled,
streaked and faded, their horses showed need of

97

A KEPOBTER AT ARMAGEDDON

the currycomb, one of the camp kitchens, smoking
with the fire that was baking bread as it bumped
along the road, had a hole through its stack.
There was more artillery at the farm; a battery
was finding quarters and parks for its guns, and
the heavy, good-humored-looking peasant woman
who works the place while her husband fights was
running about making arrangements. Two little
girls, of about four and six, tagged her, returning
shy but friendly smiles to the advances of the sol-
diers.

Some errand took me for a minute to the farm-
house, flanked on one side by a carriage shed and
on the other by a granary. In the little hallway
stood a goat — a fat and stolid goat, who looked
at me out of his wide-set, heavy-lidded eyes with
neither hostility nor affection, and had to be
pushed out of the way before I could get into the
living room. To go ahead a few hours: When
we came back to the farm late that afternoon we
found four officers playing cards in the courtyard.
One of them, with whoops of laughter, told us that
when they went in to luncheon they found the goat
lying under the table. It appears that he is the
privileged animal of that farm.

Section B, which was going up to the lecture hall
in the village for some instruction, was piling into
a camion. The French poilus crowded into the
courtyard to look at them with shy friendliness.
I rushed out to photograph the group ; whereupon
they struck poses, as people always do under such

98

THE AMEEICAN VANGUAED

circumstances. When my shutter had snapped, a
soldier came out of the crowd and spoke to me in
very good English. He had been a waiter in Lon-
don before the war, he said ; and would I do some-
thing for him? Nearly three years he had been
in the army now, and had never been photo-
graphed with his comrades. Could monsieur send
him a print 1 He would be glad to pay for it.

This happens nearly every time you take a pho-
tograph at the Front, and is a nuisance or a chance
to do a great kindness, just as you look at it. For
of course, such photographs will become valuable
family heirlooms as the years go on. One can do
no more welcome favor to a man at the Front.
That old German camera is dropping to pieces in
my hands; I tried night before last to repair it
with a pair of pincers and a hammer which I bor-
rowed from the toolchest of a camion, and only
made it worse. But I hope it worked that time.

The lieutenant had picked the road to the new
camp, and had purposely picked a bad one. Most
of it was a mere dirt road, in strong contrast to
the fine French highways that the army is keeping
up with such pains in order that transport of sup-
plies may not be hampered. But this one resem-
bled a country road in the newly settled West. It
would teach the drivers how to overcome obstacles
such as they might meet at the Front, the lieuten-
ant explained to me as we bowled along by side
roads or, cutting in ahead of the camion trains,
went before.

99

A KEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

So far as I have seen it, the work of instruction
in the French Army proceeds on the theory of tell-
ing the man what to do and how to do it, and then
letting him learn by his mistakes. After he has
made the mistake the instructor takes him in hand
and with a pleasant word or a joke sets him right.

The first incident occurred at a sharp hairpin
turn on a road which climbed past a beautiful forti-
fied farm, the loopholes and turrets still in place.
The three leading drivers made it in pretty shape ;
the fourth and last turned too late and was forced
to stop and back up. Confused by his mistake, he
nearly backed too far, and all but went over a
steep bank. The camions spilled lithe brown
bodies ; the section ran back and pushed him out.
We stuck again, and had to be pushed out, on a
muddy stretch near the top of a hill ; but that, as
the lieutenant informed the men, was not the fault
of the drivers but of the road.

Over beyond the hill was a fair-sized town —
gray, rambling, lined with rows of old elms and
with solid stone walls over which the lilacs tossed.
A camion or two was bowling down the road, bear-
ing the sign of the Bee.

Those heraldic devices give variety to the
monotony of the camions. • Sometimes during the
days of that battle of the camions, Verdun, the
groups of sections took to painting devices on
their sides so that they might be identified at a
glance. It began with the four aces of a pack of
cards, printed in red or black on a patch of white.

100

THE AMERICAN VANGUAED

The idea spread, and now there are hundreds of
devices.

The transport service even grew artistically am-
bitious. There are the group of the Nurse, for
example ; that of the Jockey; and that of the Ballet
Girl. These three designs are rather crude; but
often the workmanship is good. The Cat's Head,
for example, is both pleasing and whimsical.
Perhaps the best of all is that on the group of
camions that they use at the school — the Jumping
Eabbits. Two anxious-looking little white rab-
bits, dressed in blue breeches and jumpers, are
leaping a hurdle shaped like the letter M. It sym-
bolizes, to the French mind, the manner in which
the officers are putting the recruits over the jumps.

The men of the Bee smiled and bubbled with
French excitement as our men came along; they
took off their hats to the flag floating from the seat
of the leading camion. We turned into officers '
quarters and met the captain of the group to which
Section A was about to add itself, the lieutenant
who will have command of the Americans until
Tinkham and Scully grow expert enough to go it
alone. When more sections arrive, when the of-
ficers finish their course in the training school,
there will be an all- American group officered en-
tirely by Americans. That will be accomplished,
and more, before these lines reach print.

The captain was a fine, gray-eyed gentleman, a
business man before the war, a mighty hustler of
motor transport since. The lieutenant, who was

101

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

to take command, was a stocky, pleasant French-
man, in the silk business before he was called to
the army. He speaks, as he admitted on intro-
duction, only theoretical English; but he added
that he expected a great deal of practice in the
next few weeks.

The men of the Bee had learned, somehow, that
there was to be a little ceremony before the cap-
tain's quarters, and that they would get a chance
to see the Americans. They found places behind
a row of bushes, half of them with cameras. I
walked back to a street where our men were lining
up. It was one o'clock, and their chief emotion at
this historic moment seemed to be an overwhelm-
ing sense of hunger. My one common observation
on the soldiers of all nations is that they are al-
ways hungry. Fill them up, and they will eat
again an hour later with appetite and thanksgiv-
ing. "Any line on the grub question?" they
asked me out of the corners of their mouths as
Tinkham formed the company.

So they were drawn up before the captain, and
introduced. The captain made a speech, in Eng-
lish. He also speaks theoretical English. Once
or twice he came to a full stop ; on these occasions

he turned to Lieutenant G , who was standing

by his side, said what he wanted to say in French,
and got the English translation. This might have
been ridiculous on the part of another man. On
the part of a Frenchman it was perfectly fine and
dignified.

102

THE AMEEICAN VANGUAED

Having been photographed by all the cameras
in sight, including that of the captain, the squad
marched away. I sneaked up to the side of Hast-
ings, of Stanford — my own university — and re-
marked :

" It's a long way from Palo Alto."

"It sure is," said Hastings, keeping step and
talking with his eyes forward. "Say, have you
any notion when we eat 1 ' '

The lieutenant and I begged a basket luncheon
from a headquarters down the road and ran back,
eating as we went, by a more direct road, which
took us through a French town famous in this war.
It is under fire nearly every day ; the night before,
I remembered, the lieutenant had stopped his din-
ner to listen to the bombardment with the prac-
ticed ear of a modern soldier and to remark ' ' That
was an arrival — on Blank." We passed the
wreck of that arrival, and passed, too, hundreds of
other houses battered or dented since the war be-
gan. But still women walked the streets with col-
ored parasols raised against the sun, though signs
here and there read: "Public shelter in case of
bombardment."

Beyond the town we ran parallel to a range of
hills where lay the line; and on the edges of the
next road beyond ours burst out now and then a
geyser of black — it was getting its daily shelling.
I mentioned that fact to one or two of the Section
B men when I got back to camp. By dinner time a
rumor had spread over camp that Section A had

103

A EEPOETEB AT AEMAGEDDON

been under fire all the way up ! Such is the mind
of war.

I had a two days' permission. A journalist go-
ing into the war zone is supposed to have a chap-
eron. Usually an officer goes with him from
Paris. In this case, since I was visiting a place
where I could not learn any very deep military

secrets, Lieutenant G was that chaperon.

The greatest sin possible to a military chaperon
is to let his charge overstay his leave. However,
the French officers, together with Daly and Tay-
lor in command of Section B, started a mightily
entertaining symposium at dinner, and when we
glanced at our wrists, warned by the lowering
shades, we realized that the run to the train, some
fifteen or twenty miles down the road, must be
made in fast time.

As we pulled away I found that another French
battery had bivouacked in our beautiful wood —
tall, mature elms with fern underfoot. In pass-
ing, I caught one of those glimpses that make one
long to be a painter. The evening shadows, thick
under the trees, were a deep, mysterious blue.
The uniforms, of lighter blue, seemed to blend
with the softened gray-blue of the gun carriages,
the camp kitchens, all the wheeled transport. The
horses, scattered through the bivouac, were all
bays, making reddish-brown spots — a study in
blues and browns.

When we came out on the highlands we were
looking across a deeply cleft valley, looking down

"

THE AMEEICAN VANGUAKD

on that fortified farm; and we could see why the
freeholder of the Middle Ages picked that spot.
It overlooked, it guarded that valley, which was
doubtless his farm. And the whole landscape,
valley and forest alike, was so thick with green-
ery, so bursting with fertility, that the sense of
beauty in living things pressed against the heart
until it hurt. And the lieutenant burst into a fine
French enthusiasm.

"The most beautiful forest in Northern
France ! " he said. < < When they told me to choose
a site for the school I picked this. One has the
right to enjoy himself while he lives — isn't that
so?"

In spite of furious driving we missed the train
after all. The station was in a war-zone town —
not a light showing anywhere, but packed with the
activities of an army. There was no train, the
gendarme at the station informed us, until five in
the morning; also there was no hotel. But the
five o'clock train was only the return trip of a
train due to arrive at this terminus in a half hour.
It would stay all night in the station. Would
monsieur mind sleeping on the seat of a first-class
compartment ?

So I turned in, my raincoat rolled up under my
head and a copy of Le Matin under my muddy feet
to save the cushions. An hour later a French of-
ficer groped his way in and stretched out on the
seat opposite. I suppose I snored, for I was wak-

105

A EEPOBTEB AT ARMAGEDDON

ened now and then by drowsy protests in French.
I am sure he did, and he was wakened by drowsy
protests in English. I asked him in the morning
how he had slept, and he answered " Rotten !"-
its equivalent.

CHAPTER VH

WITH THE BRITISH FLYERS

BRITISH FBONT, June —

VISITING among the airmen reminds me re-
motely, somehow, of visiting a university athletic
team in training quarters; for this, as the world
should know, is the greatest sport of all. I went
up this morning to a section working on a part of
the Front at present very quiet, as the Front goes
just now.

The camp stood on a fair stretch of level
ground, just far enough from the trenches so that
only the line of military balloons, swaying among
the mists of the horizon, and the distant roar of
guns, showed that we were near this eternal battle
of the great line. Time was when airmen, the
aristocrats of modern war, were housed in
chateaux. Now most of these French country
places have fallen to other uses ; also, the air serv-
ice has grown enormously. This camp was a col-
lection of wooden shacks, comfortable enough and
shipshape, but primitive, too.

Beside the quarters were the aerodromes, barn-
like sheds, wherein stood ranged the great wasps
of the air — for this was a fighting squadron.

107

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

Mounted on the fastest piece of mobile machinery
ever devised by man, the birdmen range the air
daily in search of Germans — and a scrap.

Half a dozen machines were drawn up on the
field as we arrived; and in the near foreground
an aviator, caparisoned in his leather cap, was
tuning up a new machine for a practice flight.
Two mechanics were holding the wings, and the
wheels were blocked by prismatic-shaped pieces
of wood. The vicious propellers whirled in rhyth-
mic beats, stopped, whirled again; the engine,
droning like a swarm of gigantic bees, drowned
out all conversation. Each time the propellers
warmed to their work they tore up a cloud of dust
that streamed away on the wind. The engine was
running regularly now, without stops. I saw the
aviator nod.

The prisms of wood, attached to cords, were
jerked away from the front wheels ; the mechanics,
holding the' wings from the rear, ran along, push-
ing for a few steps. The machine drew away
from them, and taxied along the field. Half fish,
half bird it seemed. Now its tail, shaped like that
of a goldfish, was off the ground, and now — I had
a genuine surprise : I have seen little of first-class
aviation since a year ago, and I was not prepared
for the rise — I might call it almost a jump — of this
modern fighting machine. No sooner were its
wheels clear than it seemed to shoot up; the mo-
tion was not the old, familiar soaring rise of the
aeroplanes I had known, but a straight climb. He

108

WITH THE BRITISH FLYERS

ran upward; he turned, banking at an angle that
seemed perilous ; he shot up again.

Another aeroplane had taken the air by now.
It darted upward toward the course where the first"
was circling, and began to give it mimic battle —
the maneuvers by which aviators try to reach posi-
tion for a favorable shot. Round and round they
circled, climbed, dipped. They were so high now
that they were specks in the air. The first ma-
chine did a sudden flip ; brought up above the other
machine and behind it — "onto his tail," the fa-
vorable position for aerial attack. Suddenly the
other turned its nose earthward and began a whirl-
ing dive. The first followed; the second, coming
suddenly to horizontal, turning its nose toward
its rival — a perfect position for pouring in a burst
of shots as the other passed. This was practice —
the five-finger exercises of the fighting aviator, by
which he keeps his hand and eye in trim against
the perilous, heroic few seconds when he must
really fight.

The flight commander strolled over, was intro-
duced. He is a little, easy-mannered English-
man, with a clean-cut face; that small, short-
cropped mustache, affected now by the British
Army, revealed a firm mouth. Only his decora-
tions showed that there was anything unusual
about his military record. The French aerial
service, as all the world knows, maintains the in-
stitution of aces. When a man has brought down
five enemy machines he becomes an ace; and his

109

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

score, as it grows, is mentioned in the daily com-
munique. Now this would seem like swank to the
English, and that is a deadly sin. This man, had
he fought with the French, would have made him-
self an ace in one hig aerial day, during which he
brought down six machines.

However, when the conversation turned from
commonplaces to aeronautics, he spoke like a
craftsman, less of adventures in the air than of en-
gines, horse power, wing spread, struts, speeds,
the difficulty of knowing any aeroplane 's practical
capacity by its trial record, the various methods
of rigging machine guns. We strolled from
hangar to hangar as he talked; and we stopped
long while he expatiated on his machine shop. It
was housed in a set of motor camions; and here
half a dozen mechanics were toiling with drills or
files.

"The idea is," he said, "to send up every ma-
chine in perfect order. If anything goes wrong
in a fight it's the difference between a German
plane down and a British plane down. ' '

I recalled then that every machine in the hang-
ars had looked bright and new as when it first come
from the shops. There was a gun room over
among the sheds ; there, as soon as a plane comes
back from the Front, an expert gunsmith disman-
tles the machine guns and puts them in the most
minute order. A jammed gun loses many a fight,
as we were to learn a moment later.

For we strolled, as we talked, into a long shed,

110

WITH THE BEITISH FLYERS

with a board table along its center, a telephone
desk in the corner, and many maps on the plain
board walls — the regulation appearance of a head-
quarters. A bench ran down one side of the room,
and on it sat seven or eight lean, blond, clean-cut
British youths in khaki. It was the watch, wait-
ing on call against emergencies of the air.

Phil Simms, being an American and therefore
of witty imagination, smiled. ' ' Bell hops, waiting
for a call to Z 26," he whispered. The row of
aviators, being Britons and shy, shifted their legs
and looked embarrassed. But one rose from the
bench and approached the captain, saluting. He
was breathing heavily ; his eyes were bloodshot.

"Oh — you've just landed!" said the captain
easily. < « Had a fight, didn 't you !» '

"Yes, sir," said the boy all in a 'breath.
"Squad of four German planes attacked me and
Brown-Jones. [This name, of course, is dis-
guised.] My gun jammed after three shots, and
I had to hurry back. Brown-Jones brought one
down, I think. At least he appeared to be out
of control when he dropped into the cloud below. ' '

' l Oh — er — Brown- Jones back ? ' '

"No, sir. But I saw him crossing our lines
behind me."

"Engine trouble, I suppose. Doubtless we'll
hear from him later. What about the other three
Huns?"

"They showed evidences of extreme terror,
sir!"

Ill

A KEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

' ' Very well."

The boy settled back onto the bench, where
he nonchalantly borrowed a cigarette from his
neighbor.

Just let your imagination play on this, as mine
did. Back from a fight fifteen thousand, eighteen
thousand, feet in the air — a thing merely dreamed
of three years ago, realized only a year ago — an
adventure beyond precedent. And here it was,
treated as part of the day's work!

The two 'prentice airmen had come down from
their aerial play as we stepped into the field.
The mechanics were trundling the machines back
to the hangar, and the aviators, in their grease-
streaked working uniforms, were walking toward
us, swinging their leather caps as they walked. I
said something about the show they had given
us, and the captain remarked easily :

"Yes, they're going to be good, both of
them — but of course, they've only recently ar-
rived. Sorry I hadn't McPherson here. [I dis-
guise this name also.] No one in the corps can
do more with an aeroplane than McPherson.
He's been at it two years — and he lives for that
machine. I say!" he proceeded on an after-
thought, "Could you fellows come over here day
after to-morrow at blank o 'clock ? The patrol will
be coming in, and if you'll say you'll come you may
see them do stunts before they land. Where did
you Americans get that jolly word * stunts'? I'm
sure I don't know what we should do without it."

112

WITH THE BRITISH FLYERS

Our kullur, I perceive, is spreading — possibly^
because our Canadian cousins have helped. Five
years ago, if you had told an Englishman that you
were up against it he would have stared at you.
Now the whole army uses that phrase. Yester-
day in reading John Galsworthy I discovered one
of his characters saying, "It's up to you"; which
is pure poker language. In their humorous mo-
ments— and believe me, doubting Americans, they
are a really humorous people — they say, "some
girl ! ' ' or, " some fight ! ' ' Elsie Janis, I believe, is I
responsible for that.

We mounted our automobile and drove on, in
sight of the balloon line, through a country where
all the complex business of war is mixed inextric-
ably with the simple business of a resident popu-
lation, to luncheon at the flying-field of a recon-
noissance squadron. One of the officers, as we en-
tered quarters, grinned broadly at me and greeted
me with :

"I'll bet you don't remember me, Bill!"

A man whom you have known in civilian clothes
looks strange sometimes when he appears in his
uniform. I had to confess I didn't, until he gave
his name. At the beginning of the war I had
talked over with him his entrance into the British
Army. He was an American ; but, like many other
young Americans living abroad, he had seen what
this war meant and where his duty lay. He en-
tered the artillery, got a commission, and served
all through those hard days when the few British

113

.A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

guns were working on a terribly scanty allowance
of shells. Catching the fascination of the air, he
got himself transferred to the Flying Corps in the
period before fighting machines were much differ-
entiated from observation machines. He stuck to
the older branch of aviation. For efficiency and
bravery he has been decorated and promoted un-
til he is second in command of this squadron.

In this offhand fashion I have been hailed time
and again, from Dunkirk to Monf alcone, by young
men in British brown, French blue or Italian gray,
who proved to be American citizens, pioneers in
our war for democracy.

"We saw no fancy stunts at this aerodrome. The
broad-spreading, strong-lifting observation plane,
carrying two passengers and armed fore and aft,
is not made for that work. We did see, after
much technical gossip at luncheon, a demonstra-
tion of air work on its scientific side. For those
big planes are the eyes of the battle line ; the fight-
ing planes, to stretch a metaphor, its eyelids,
guarding the eyes.

In buildings behind the aerodrome was what
amounted to a suite of offices and laboratories,
where all devices of photography, chemistry and
mathematics are bent to making the observation
work useful to the artillery, which is the strong
right arm of the battle line. Of that I may not
speak in detail; but the results are marvelous.

The work of running an observation plane re-
quires not only coolness, courage and knowledge

114

WITH THE BEITISH FLYEES

of aviation ; it requires also a kind of scientific in-
stinct and great judgment. The photographs and
records that I saw there to-day, combined with
those that I inspected yesterday at general avia-
tion headquarters, fixed in my mind one fact which
I may be allowed to record : Bombing is growing
accurate — at least among the Allies. These ob-
servation planes, what with their size and lifting
power, are used also for bomb-dropping. Two
years ago we used to say that the thing to do in an
air raid was to find the place that the enemy was
trying to hit, and run there. He was sure to hit
anything except the spot at which he aimed. That
era is past ; practice and mechanical improvement
are making this operation accurate.

BRITISH FRONT, Next Day.

I came up here to complete the facts for a cer-
tain article. I found last night at dinner that I
could get my leave to the Front extended for a day,
which gives me just time to finish the article and
leave it with the censor before I go back to Paris.
In the present uncertain condition of the mails,
that means a gain of several days. So I have
passed up a chance to go in sight of the "show" —
the universal British slang for the fighting Front
—have borrowed the typewriter of Percival Phil-
lips, who has gone to Paris on a two-day leave,
and am just finishing a writing day.

The sound of an automobile horn outside made
me look up a few minutes ago, to perceive Philip

115

A EEPOKTER AT ABMAGEDDON

Oibbs coming back from the advanced line, where
I know he has been looking into the story of a small
action which occurred a day or two ago. It re-
called to me, also, the strangeness of my sur-
roundings.

This old chateau, gray and formal, unfurnished
with anything resembling a piazza, but very light
within because of the high French windows, is
owned by a family which once held the High Jus-
tice, the Middle and the Low. Memories of
former greatness, such as family portraits, em-
blazoned coats of arms and old Koyalist engrav-
ings— Marie Antoinette ascending to heaven, for
example — decorate the walls. Though the pres-
ent inhabitants are mainly Protestant, the cruci-
fixes and sacred images of the older faith look
down on them from all the bedroom walls.

As for furniture, the rooms have been stripped
to bare necessities, but the chairs and tables are
of antique carved oak. Also, the gentleman's li-
brary, filled with French classics, invites whoso-
ever cares to read. On top of all this is the dun-
nage of fifteen or twenty very busy out-of-doors
young men. I tried this morning to make an in-
ventory of the articles that littered the tables, the
old carved chests and the balustrade of the wide
reception hall. I gave it up ; but the list included
battered trench helmets, leather coats — relics of
the winter campaign — gas masks, typewriter cov-
ers, field glasses, rain-coats, and such souvenirs
of battle as shell cases, Prussian helmets, German

116

WITH THE BEITISH FLYEES

signs from captured trenches and broken rifles.
In the midst of this confusion a sergeant, his gun
beside him, sat transmitting orders at a telephone
which rested on the stand where, of old, visitors
used to leave their cards.

Before my window a long gravel avenue
stretches out to a solid, gray-stone lodge gate and
to a square-clipped box hedge which divides the
estate from the road. Past that piece of hedge a
moment ago gray motor lorries were flashing.
The drive is bordered with magnificent trees ; and
all about us, acre on acre, lies as pretty a wooded
estate as I have seen in France. The fact that
the lawn grass grows long — for no one has time
to mow it — only makes this wood greener. A
brook, so level and quiet that it looks like a canal,
threads the park ; it is green also with a tangle of
water weed, in which, if you steal softly through
the bushes that line the bank, you can see the trout
resting and waving their fins. One of the older
British correspondents found a fishing rod in a
village near by, and has been angling for them —
without luck, because he cannot get the proper
kind of fly.

From the great stripped salon below comes a
sound of scuffling feet. Phil Simms, of the United
Press, and Bobbie Small, of the Associated Press,
are playing badminton. They, together with Per-
cival Phillips, of the London Express, represent
the American contingent up here. Badminton
serves in place of tennis for exercise between the

117

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

hot periods of battle. This conservative family
has not been caught by the modern French rage
for sport, and there is no tennis court on the place.
From this attractive and gracious little halting
ground in the midst of war their motor cars carry
them, together with their escorting officers, to the
farthest reaches of the line. Times have changed
for correspondents since the early period when
every one went under military arrest now and then
for being found where he shouldn't be — the only
way to get the story. Now these regularly as-
signed correspondents, men of proved honor, go
about where they please ; the censorship takes care
of the rest. And daily they come back from Ar-
mageddon to this quiet little haven, from such
scenes as neither they nor any one else who ever
wrote can possibly convey — so inadequate is the
human device of language !

CHAPTER Yin
McPHERSON DOES STUNTS

PAKIS, Two Days Later.

THE captain of Squadron , British Scout

Planes, kept his engagement to give us a show.
We foregathered on the field under a perfectly
clear sky, with a general, his aid and a major in the
Flying Service — also invited guests. News of the
event must have got abroad in the French village
near by, for long before the first plane of the re-
turning patrol was signaled as a dot above the hor-
izon a crowd of women, children, boys and old men
was hanging over the fence that surrounds the fly-
ing field. The dot grew bigger, more dots ap-
peared, and presently the fleet of little fighting
planes was buzzing and darting close overhead.
A double-seater reconnoissance plane, about to
fly an officer over to headquarters, took the air at
this moment. It soared where the others darted;
it seemed like a dove in a flock of swallows.

Yet these vicious little fighting machines,
evolved to perfection only within the last year, re-
minded me more of insects than of any bird that
flies — insects with a bite and a sting. They seem
all body, so great and powerful are their engines

119

A BEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

in proportion to the rest of their structure. The
fuselage, that elongated part of an aeroplane that
runs between the pilot's seat and the tail, has a
saucy upward curve, such as you see in the body
of a mosquito. In fact, they resembled mosqui-
toes more than anything else that flies: gigantic
mosquitoes, short-winged mosquitoes, fast mosqui-
toes— incredibly fast. For most of them, at this
moment, were doing, in their forward rushes, at
least two miles a minute.

4 'There— he's going to loop!" said the flight
commander, as the leading plane came overhead.
The nose flipped — he was riding upside down — he
was level again — he was darting off at another
angle. The second plane in line began to loop the
loop sidewise, rolling over, and without seeming
loss of speed, as a horse rolls over when turned
out to pasture. In the far sky two machines were
playing with each other like puppies, one making
rapid virages, the other following, clinging to the
course in a series of whirls with its own wing tip
as a pivot. It was like watching a three-ring cir-
cus. No sooner was your eye attracted by an ex-
traordinary maneuver than a quick, English
" Would you look at that ! ' ' from the general or his
aide turned your attention to another quarter of
the heavens.

The star airman, whom I have called McPher-
son, had not yet appeared, as I learned from the
conversation all about me. I could trace, also, a
little note of anxiety.

120

McPHEBSON DOES STUNTS

In these days of increasing war in the air, a
squadron seldom goes over the German lines with-
out having a brush of some kind. Once the major
remarked, with an appearance of nonchalance, "I
don't see McPherson yet!" and the captain added
in his carefully controlled voice: "No; he does
seem to be a little late; but he's doing a special
job."

In the meantime they spoke of him and his tech-
nic as the coaches of a football team might have
spoken of a popular star half back. Just past
twenty-one, he was, "And, by Jove, do you know
I missed his birthday last week — we should have
given him a dinner!" said the captain. He had
been flying nearly two years now, and he would
rather do stunts with that machine than anything
else in the world.

' * There he is ! " said the captain as a speck cut
the low horizon mists. With his special trained
senses he had recognized McPherson 's flying be-
fore any of us untrained earth-men could make out
anything except an aeroplane.

The show above us went on. A flock of little
birds flopped and darted past us. What pikers
they seemed! And now McPherson had joined
the rest. It took no expert eye to see that he was
king of this fleet. He looped, he rolled, he did
virages, he rose; and suddenly the nose of his
plane turned straight toward the earth. Down he
fell, a thousand feet, like Lucifer from heaven, his
plane revolving as lazily as an autumn leaf re*

121

A EEPOBTEB AT ARMAGEDDON

volves on a light wind. It righted itself not two
hundred feet above the ground, darted at incred-
ible speed, shot upward. It was circling now
above our heads ; suddenly its nose turned straight
down again — he was diving, and onto us. We
stood, watching the bulk of his machine grow
greater. Nearer and nearer it shot, until the
whirring tractor propeller blew wind in our faces.

We knew it was a stunt ; and yet to stand there
and watch a steel engine falling upon you from
the skies took the same kind of nerve which it takes
to hold your hand against a pane of plate glass
while a snake strikes from the other side. He was
on us, fairly on us, when his plane flattened its
course with a quick snap ; I felt that by jumping in
the air I could have touched his fuselage as it
passed overhead. He rose a little, dipped again,
and a moment later he had dropped his wheels to a
perfect landing and was taxi-ing along the ground.
The rest of the patrol was landed by now.
Breathing a little heavily, from the change of alti-
tude, they came over and we were introduced.

Lean, trained men in the best athletic age, they
looked tired, wrung; save for the absence of
bruises they might have been a football team which
had just finished a strenuous match. That nervous
strain of flying must be taken info account, they
tell me, when dealing with aviators. That is why
they are so much better quartered than other
troops, why they are excused from much military
routine work, and why they get frequent leave.

122 '

McPHEESON DOES STUNTS

They are watched carefully for signs of nervous
breakdown. When these appear the aviator goes
for a still longer leave — until his nerves are
straightened out.

One of them, a slim, straight youth in a once-
smart uniform now spotted with oil — his working
clothes — hailed me in American slang, which came,
oddly, through a half-British accent, "Pm an out-
burst of Butte, Montana/' he said; "and it's sure
good to see a Yank!"

McPherson came forward, a clean-cut youth
with a fine Celtic face — smooth, sun-browned com-
plexion, high cheek bones, full red lips — he might
have been either Highland- Scotch or Irish, I
thought, but certainly Celtic.

I saw more of him at dinner that night, where
he spoke with much youthful wisdom concerning
aeroplanes and air-fighting, but said little of his
own adventures except to remark that you got a
brush, now, almost every time you went over; in
fact, he had fought a drawn bottle in the air dur-
ing that very patrol from which he came home to
do stunts for the visitors. The major, on the
other side, put in his word now and then ; he was
keen to see Americans in the flying service, he
said. We were sportsmen, and to fly well takes
a sportsman. The day before, a very great Brit-
ish authority on flying had spoken to the same ef-
fect. Being a Briton, he had arranged his world
by classes.

"In the upper classes it is the horseman or the
123

A EEPOKTEE AT ARMAGEDDON

big-game hunter who makes a practical flyer, " he
had said; ",and in the lower class, what we call a
bicycle hog. You know the term? The little fel-
low who goes out on a bicycle or a motorcycle and
delights in desperate speed and close chances.
When anything goes wrong you see him beside the
road with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth,
making his own repairs!"

In addition to being sportsmen, the major said
we were inventive and self-reliant. The Cana-
dians were an example of what our continent
could do ; and he grew epic on that subject.

The senior officers withdrew for an evening over
their military papers. Alone with the youngsters,
Buck, the American, began to slang me in our own
argot; and I slanged him back — to the bewilder-
ment, and sometimes the joy, of the English.
Now and then we had to translate — as when Buck
accused me of pulling a bonehead play. How
could you explain to people who do not know base-
ball? Also, there was song; and we taught them
the riotous Western ditty, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum.

The sound of a gun, then of many guns, stopped
the singing. We ran out. One edge of the moon-
lit sky was aquiver ; now and then the horizon was
streaked with the course of a tracer shell. Our
anti-aircraft guns were at work. A bomb raid?
But the Germans at whom the British gunners
were sniping must have been on a business more
secret than that, for no bombs fell ; and presently
the guns stopped.

124

McPHERSON DOES STUNTS

PARIS, June llth.

I was walking this morning in that unromantic
district of wholesale business houses which lies be-
hind the Palais Eoyal, when I heard shouts. I
looked up and caught a panorama of a thief chase
which reminded me, at first glimpse, of a comic
drawing. A short thickset man, very fast on his
feet, was running away. Far behind him ran two
policemen, holding their stocky little swords
straight up and shouting at the top of their voices.
Behind them toiled the populace, mostly soldiers.
Eesponsive to the shouts, the men along the side-
walks darted out and snatched at the fugitive. He
dodged like a running half back. A good stiff
football tackle might have stopped him, but these
assistants of the law merely clutched at his arms,
and he evaded them easily. He had come now to
the rear of a truck. The truckman jumped down
and confronted him. As he dodged to one side a
soldier who had rushed out from a cafe caught him
by the collar. He was wrenching away, when the
truck driver tripped him up. Down they went, all
three together. An instant later the two police-
men had fallen on top of the pile.

I had been tagging along, doing the best I could
to keep up. When I arrived, the policemen were
just snapping the handcuffs onto his wrists. He
was a young, vigorous man, very dark of hair and
eye. His skin at this moment had a waxy pallor.
The policemen never addressed him as they tested
out the handcuffs and led him away. I was struck,

125

A EEPOETEE AT ARMAGEDDON

too, by the silence of the crowd ; they did not chat-
ter and bubble as Parisian crowds usually do in
excitement ; they were grave and grim. I turned
to a little poilu beside me.

"What has he done?" I asked.

"A German spy! A Boche!" said the soldier.

I smiled to myself, putting this down to spy
madness. Nevertheless, I noticed a moment later
that two officers had joined the policemen and were
walking on either side of the group. The proces-
sion, still very grave, passed on to a police station,
disappeared.

A group of women stood on the pavement out-
side of the station, and one was talking in low,
tense tones, appropriate to the drama of the situa-
tion.

"Through that window there, " she said, point-
ing to a window some six feet above the pavement,
"I saw him jump. They were examining him;
they had confronted him with proofs, and he
leaped. I saw him — leaped like a cat, mesdames
— ah, it is the end of him!"

And I have no doubt that I witnessed this morn-
ing the act that sealed a death warrant.

PAKIS, June 12th.

Mrs. L , an American volunteer nurse, came

in late and laughing, this evening, to the restau-
rant where she had a dinner appointment with
us.

"I was delayed," she said when she caught her

126

McPHEKSON DOES STUNTS

breath, " because I've been in the jolliest Parisian
row ! Listen ! ' '

A noise like the mob in "Julius Caesar " pro-
ceeded from without.

""What's the matter?" I asked.

"They've been measuring the petrol!" said
Mrs. L ; and she fell to laughing again.

It appears that she drove up in a taxicab to the
door of the restaurant, and found a crowd sur-
rounding another cab. In its center were the aged
chauffeur — all chauffeurs are aged now — and a
poilu loaded with haversack, knapsack, helmet,
gas mask and little home comforts, together with
his wife and mother. The poilu had demanded
that the chauffeur take him at once to the North
Station, for it was near train time, and the chauf-
feur had refused on the ground that he wanted
his dinner.

"But if you don't, I lose the train, and I shall
be arrested for exceeding my leave ! ' ' shouted the
poilu.

"My husband will be disgraced!" cried the wife.

"My son will be ruined!" wailed the mother.

"But I cannot — I am out of gasoline," said the
chauffeur.

"Why didn't you tell me that at first?" said
the poilu, transfixing him with cold French sus-
picion.

"Yes! He is right! The chauffeur has de-
ceived him ! To prison with him ! What a shame
—and he is a soldier!" roared the mob.

127

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

"But I have no gasoline, " said the chauffeur in
weak defense, backing up against his machine.

At this moment Mrs. L , with her own spe-
cial tact and readiness, came through the crowd.

" Monsieur, " she said. "I solicit the pleasure
of offering you my taxicab."

"A thousand thanks," said the pottu, taking ad-
vantage of her offer at once. "As for that va-
riety of an onion, that sort of a camel, that species
of a pig — I leave him to the justice of French-
men!"

The poilu, his kit and his family, drove away,
waving thanks to their rescuer. The crowd, much
reenforced now, .backed the chauffeur against his
tonneau, while a boy, who claimed to be expert in
such things, opened the tank and measured with a
stick.

"He has twice enough to take him to the Gare
du Nord," he announced, holding up the stick.

At this point the police arrived, squelched the
disturbance with that mysteriously effective tact
which the Parisian policeman has to learn, and
sent the chauffeur, pale, shaking and chastened,
on his way.

The independence of the chauffeur is one of the
minor irritations nowadays. With the present
restrictions on rapid transit, even people in very
moderate circumstances must take taxicabs now
and then, in order to keep engagements. And the
Parisian taxicab, with its minimum charge of fif-
teen cents, is not a great strain on the purse. But

128

McPHEESON DOES STUNTS

at present there are not nearly enough taxicabs to
go round — or rather, there is not nearly enough
gasoline. Consequently the chauffeur is a very
arrogant person, especially at about mealtime, just
when there is the greatest general demand for taxi-
cabs.

When you signal a taxi with the vacant sign up
on its meter, at between twelve and one or be-
tween half past six and half past seven, the chauf-
feur makes a gesture which conveys ' ' In which di-
rection do you want to go?" You signal the di-
rection. If the address happens to lie in the
neighborhood of the restaurant where the chauf-
feur eats, he graciously slows down and lets you
aboard. But Paris is a large city, with many ad-
dresses and many chauffeurs' restaurants, so the
chances are that your intentions do not coincide.
In that case he lets out his speed and points
genially to his mouth to show that he is going to
luncheon. He does this pleasantly, but firmly.
Standing on the Eue de Eivoli last week, with a
procession of vacant taxicabs whirling by, I sig-
naled seventeen before the eighteenth kindly con-
sented to favor.

The hit of a current Boulevard review is a taxi-
cab turn, with the low comedian as the chauffeur.
He is signaled by a dude.

" Where does Monsieur wish to go?" asks the
comedian.

"To Montmartre," said the fare.

"Ah, no!" responds the comedian. "It is al-
129

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

ways necessary for the client to have an engage-
ment at the place where the chauffeur lives ! ' '

PARIS, June 13th.

Pershing came yesterday. The American news-
papers must be full of his welcome, so I shall not
describe it except to say that I have never seen
the like for spontaneous, unstimulated enthusi-
asm. However, the Frenchman, even in his most
serious moments, must have his joke ; and a little
episode of that really glorious occasion may have
been missed by the other reporters.

As Pershing 's automobile ran slowly down the
Boulevard des Capucines, with a dense crowd go-
ing mad along the pavement, a poilu, in a worn
trench uniform turning from horizon blue to a
kind of rusty green, leaped onto the running
board. He was a little gamin of a poilu, a natu-
ral comedian; the kind of soldier who keeps his
company laughing in the face of death. Standing
on the running board he took all the applause unto
himself. He bowed; he raised his cap; he threw
kisses at the pretty girls ; he made pantomime of
addressing the multitude in impassioned oratory.
Somewhere near the Madeleine a shocked police-
man removed him — still good-natured, still pre-
tending that this was part of the honor conferred
upon him by the adoring multitude.

Joffre shared honors with Pershing — one of the
few occasions when the people have had a chance
to acclaim the splendid old victor of the Marne.

130

McPHEESON DOES STUNTS

We used to say here, when America was making
such a fuss over him, that we'd like a chance to
see him ourselves.

The truth is that Joffre, for diplomatic pur-
poses, keeps himself as much as possible in the
background. France, after its experience with the
Bonaparte family, fears always the Man on
Horseback — the military victor whose popularity
shall overthrow the Eepublic. Now only one man
in France could possibly occupy such a position
to-day — that same likable old victor of the Marne.
Joffre, unfortunately, is as plain as an old shoe.
He does not care for glory ; he has no political am-
bition ; he is only a soldier, deeply interested in his
profession, burning with zeal to get victory for
France. If he sought the acclaim of the populace
the whisper might circulate that he wanted to be
the Man on Horseback; and so he keeps to him-
self and to his work.

The selfish and personal reason why the French
welcome American aid with such enthusiasm came
out in a little remark of a Parisian girl standing
beside her mother and waving her handkerchief at
Pershing, who was bowing from a balcony of the
Hotel de Crillon: "Ah, now perhaps we'll have
papa back ! ' '

It seems generally understood — on what ground
of reality I do not know — that the American units,
as they go to the Front, will replace the older men
of the French Army — the last line of Territorials.
When France entered the war she mobilized every

131

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

man up to forty-five years old. In the military
plans of that period these old fellows — old at least
for soldiers — were expected to do merely auxil-
iary work, such as guarding bridges and bases of
supplies. But the war brought an unprecedented
drain on man power; before long some of them
were holding front trenches. A body of these
Territorials sustained and repelled the first shock
attack at Verdun.

The war is nearly three years old, and those who
entered the army at forty-five are now reaching
forty-eight — and still they fight on. One feels a
peculiar pathos in the sight of these old fellows
at the Front — pleasant, gray-haired Frenchmen,
a little thick in the waistline, looking like anything
but soldiers. Fighting age being athletic age,
they serve only in default of better. A Parisian
newspaper, discussing this phase of the man-
power problem, declared the other day that a
whole company of these older Territorials, put at
the job of road making in the districts where Ger-
man shells are constantly tearing up the military
highways, will do the work of twenty professional
road makers — and no more.

On the other hand, these old fellows, experi-
enced mechanics or commercial men or farmers,
would be of greater value in the civilian activities
of France than almost any men who could take
their places. A peasant forty-seven years old,
with his experience on that home acre which he
has cultivated all his life, can get more out of the

132

A EEPOETEB AT ABMAGEDDON

soil than any newcomer, no matter how young and
vigorous. And in certain districts of fertile
France a weed-choked soil cries out for cultiva-
tors. Already the young camion drivers of the
American Field Sections have replaced hundreds
of old farmers — too old to do satisfactorily the
work of bucking a five-ton truck up to the guns —
and the army has sent them back to their farms.

CHAPTEE IX
THE FOURTH

PAEIS, July 5, 1917.

THE municipality of Paris decreed no public
holiday to celebrate this most glorious of all
Fourths, but the populace made it a holiday on
their own account, adjourning business almost uni-
versally during the hours when armed American
troops marched from the Invalides, where Napo-
leon lies among the relics of his armies, to the
Picpus Cemetery, where Lafayette is buried.
Never, not even on France's own national holi-
day, have I seen such crowds in Paris; in fact,
they surprised the police, who at no time were able
to keep perfect order.

By choice I wandered on the wide and busy Eue
de Eivoli, instead of crowding for a place at the
ceremony before the Invalides. Half an hour be-
fore the battalion arrived, the police were in trou-
ble— they could not keep a permanent way open.
The tactful and argumentative French sergent de
ville who kept guard before my section of the
crowd would push us back and hurry on to an-
other section. Then the chatty little old French-
woman who stood beside me would remark that a

134

THE FOUETH

meter more or less made little difference, and
would take both that meter and another. We
would all follow like sheep, and the sergent would
have his work to do over again.

A gasp of breath in the crowd and then a burst
of hand-clapping turned my vision to the right,
where the arcaded Hotel Continental borders one
side of the street and the Tuileries Gardens the
other. An aeroplane, a fast, buzzing, light chasse
machine, was skimming the tree tops above the
gardens. It took a perilous vrille, it looped the
loop so low down that the aviator's head seemed
to graze the branches, it darted over the roof of
the hotel, it shot back above the street, where it
performed another series of mad maneuvers. It
seemed — and the aviator was doubtless trying for
that effect — like a great bird drunken with joy.

Under it the crowd was surging; and then we
could make out men in horizon blue — the escorting
battalion of French infantry, veterans just from
the trenches, and moving with the easy swing of
veterans. Behind them I saw a surge of the crowd
and heard a rattle of clapping hands. I could
make out a line of horsemen in khaki and slouch
hats, which emerged from flowers. A rain, a bom-
bardment of bouquets and garlands was falling
upon them from the balconies. Those that fell
nearest, the horsemen — officers of the regimental
staffs — were throwing back. And behind them —
the marching infantry.

That was the last I saw of the procession as a
135

A EEPOKTER AT ARMAGEDDON

whole. For at this point the police gave it up
and the crowd broke for the Yankees. I went
with them. Battered, buffeted, struggling, I
gained at last the edge of one rank and found my-
self walking arm in arm with a stolid but pleased

Indian of the th Infantry. Before me and

behind me every file closer had his left arm linked
with some one — if he was lucky, a girl. Along
both edges a benevolent riot was proceeding — the
populace of Paris struggling to lay hands on them,
to pass them flowers. Their belts, their shoul-
der straps and their gun butts were gardens by
now.

In time I gave up the struggle, renouncing my
Indian to two delighted girls and a little French
soldier who was escorting them, and let myself
be carried along on the outskirts. Now and then
a weary perspiring policeman would make a dash
and. try to force us to the sidewalk ; it was like try-
ing to sweep back the sea with a broom. I found
myself presently walking with my shoulder under
the arm of a nice old French gentleman who had
noticed the American flag in my buttonhole and
wanted to express affection for something Ameri-
can, even if it was not a soldier.

"But why are they looking so serious f" he
asked. ' ' My faith ! With all this, they should be
glad!"

"It's our way!" I responded. "That shows
how much they're touched. If any one of these
boys was alone, now, he 'd be crying his eyes out ! ' 9

136

THE FOUBTH

" You 're much like the English after all, aren't
you?" said the nice old French gentleman.

At about that point where the solemn tower
which rang out the fatal Saint Bartholomew's day
overlooks the pleasant ribbon of the Kue de Eivoli,
I gave it up, caught a taxicab and hurried to the
region of the Picpus Cemetery, hoping to antici-
pate the crowds and find a vantage point. On the
way I passed army camions loaded with policemen
— all the reserves in Paris. Either the authori-
ties feared that the crowd would hurt itself in its
joy or they were acting on that love of a fixed and
orderly program which marks the police of all
nations. They had their labor for their pains.
At the Place de la Nation I could get only a roost-
ing place on the pediment of a statue, fifty yards
from the line of march ; and by the time our troops
arrived, the line resembled a procession less than
it did a flood. All you saw was a tinge of khaki,
dotted with the high colors of flowers, flowing like
the central current of a stream of black, white and
blue.

All that day America roamed the streets, get-
ting acquainted; everywhere were groups of
French poilus trying to talk to groups of Ameri-
can soldiers, and accomplishing something with
the help of gesture and facial expression. Cana-
dians and " Imperial" Tommies were fraterniz-
ing also; one group on the boulevards consisted
of two American soldiers, one American sailor,
three French aviators, two Canadians, a Ku-

137

A KEPOBTEB AT AEMAGEDDON

manian and a Portuguese. Late in the afternoon
I found a seat at a cafe in the Bois ; at the next
table two American bluejackets were holding dis-
course concerning points of interest with the
waiter, who spoke English. I butted in.

" What are you doing here?" I asked by way of
opening conversation.

"Well, it's this way, bo," replied the nearest
sailor in a South Chicago accent. "You see, the
blank Kaiser he was shootin' up merchant ships
with submarines — any old kind of ships. And our
President says 'Cut it out, see! If you don't
we're goin' to start something.' So the Kaiser
cut it out. But after awhile he saw he was losin',
so he sent word to the President, 'The lid's off —
see ! Makes no difference what a ship is ; if she 's
found monkeying round the French or English
coast, she gits it — see!' And the President says
'All-right, all-righty. Then we fight — see!' So
we declared war on Germany — we been at war two
months. And we've got troops over here — see!
That's what I'm doing here — helped to bring 'em.
And we've get ten million soldiers — that's right.
Everybody's got to fight whether he wants to or
not. And we're going to lick the blank Kaiser —
see!"

At this accurate synopsis of the news I laughed
— I couldn't help it. And I thought for a moment
he was going to punch me.

"Say," he roared, "do you think I'm stringing
you!"

138

THE FOURTH

Last night under my window on the Rue des
Pyramides occurred a jolly little impromptu rati-
fication of the new alliance. A group of Ameri-
can soldiers had been dining in a private room of
the restaurant across the way. When dinner was
finished they burst into song — "The Star-Span-
gled Banner. " It must be admitted that their
teamwork was ragged and even their individual
performance gave cause for criticism; but at any
rate they sang with zeal. The window was open
and a burst of applause came from the street be-
low. The Americans crowded to the window ; the
populace, rapidly filling up the street, was clamor- J
ing for more.

The Americans tried "The Marseillaise."
When they had finished, the French took it up and
showed them how it should be rendered. By this
time the Rue des Pyramides was blocked. The
police, arriving and taking in the situation, tact-
fully cleared a narrow passage for traffic and re-
mained to see the fun. When next the Americans
opened it was the "Stein Song." Richard Hovey
and Fred Bullard lived, and Bullard died, in the
little Massachusetts town where I live of summers.
Fine and valiant spirits both — how they would
have loved to hear their own song on a night like
this! The crowd came back with "Le Regiment
de Sambre et Meuse," the immortal marching song
of the French regiment. The Americans re-
sponded with "Old Black Joe," "Sewanee
River, ' ' and a lot more of those sad American sen-

139

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

timental ditties that always puzzle the French,
who like to be happy when they sing. Then they
tried " The Marseillaise" again ; and an American,
leaning out to the sheaf of flags that hung the win-
dow, kissed the tricolor amidst great applause
from the crowd.

At about that moment, so I am told this morn-
ing, Brand Whitlock, who had come up from
Havre to speak at Lafayette's tomb, strolled
along. He was recognized from above and an
American hailed him. He put up his hand with
a gesture which showed that he wanted to enjoy
the fun incognito. The crowd saw the gesture,
however, and gathered round, begging him to
translate. Just then the American chorus started
* ' Oh, Didn 't He Eamble, ' ' followed by < < My Wife 'a
Gone to the Country," and Whitlock, literary man
even though he is, found trouble in expressing him-

There had been formal meetings all day, with
speeches and prom. cits, on the platform, but
those, to my mind, were less significant than these
sidewalk ratifications of the new alliance. As-
suredly, we get on with the French !

PAKIS, July — .

Last night I attended what I consider the most
successful party in my social experience.

The permission, or leave, of the French soldier
is usually for one week ; and usually, also, it ends
on one certain day of the week. Paris is not only

140

THE FOUETH

the capital and metropolis of France, but also its
railroad center. All the afternoon before the day
of return, trains from the provincial towns are
dumping soldiers into Paris. The trains for the
Front usually start early in the morning. With
the cafes closed at half-past nine, with the mov-
ing-picture shows running mostly in the after-
noons in order to save lights, the men have no-
where to go. A year ago the platforms of the
principal stations running to the north and east
were congested all that night with soldiers, packed
for the line, trying to get a little sleep on the hard
concrete floors. The poilu, leaving the little
heaven of home for the dirt, vermin, toil and dan-
ger of the trenches, found this night of discom-
fort hard to bear.

A few months ago a Frenchwoman of motherly
heart, tireless frame and great executive ability
took hold of this problem. She got some financial
aid from Americans and fitted out several disused
)ffices near the great station with cots and bed-
ding. This gave the poilu a place to lie down and
enjoy a comfortable night's sleep. "With the help
of our Bed Cross and the Fund for French
Wounded she went further than that. On the one
night of the week when most of the soldiers come
through from home to the trenches she has a party
for them — a dinner, vaudeville turns by volunteer
artists, and finally a distribution of bags of little
presents made up in America.

We entered the great cellar room near the sta-
141

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

tion, where the party was given, just when the
first vaudeville artist was warming up to his work.
Half of the soldiers still sat on benches, leaning
across the pine dinner tables ; the rest lolled on the
cots, pushed back against the walls, where they
would sleep after eleven o'clock, at which hour the
party is sternly ended. The place reeked with
smoke and the human smell ; underneath the smoke-
haze the company was a bank of rusty blue. After
a few weeks of service the French uniform al-
ways begins to fade to a greenish hue, very busi-
nesslike. Brown haversacks, gray water bottles,
blue and dented French helmets, gas masks in
cases, hung festooned about the soldiers. Here
and there was youth with the comeliness common
to this comely race ; especially I remember a big,
clean- featured Alpine infantryman who drew the
eye of every American woman in the room. These
touched me less than the battered but stalwart vet-
erans in their thirties or early forties — the lines of
their faces as hard as furrows in steel, their clear
eyes with an appearance of looking far away, and
on their left arms the four notched chevrons which
showed that they had fought at the Front since
the very beginning — that they were veterans of
Charleroi, the Couronne de Nancy or the Marne.
What firm jaws they had ! And what confident re-
pose was there in their attitude as they leaned
across the tables, laughing at the comedians !

I am sure that the artists — mostly, I believe,
wedging in this engagement with their turns at

142

THE FOUBTH

the music halls — never performed to an audience
more appreciative. A drunken-tramp act brought
howls. Mrs. Eoosevelt — an amateur introduced
amidst thunderous applause as a cousin of the
great friend of France — sang operatic selections
with good voice. One of the best natural mon-
ologuists I ever heard — and he could sing, too —
rendered "The Nights of Seville/' a new popular
song ; the poilus joined in the chorus with enthusi-
asm, especially at that point where you imitate a
guitar. Eecalled, he composed a poem with the
help of the audience — whenever he was stuck for
a rime he asked for suggestions, which came in
scores. And after each turn the poilus showed
approval by that rhythmic clapping which
amounts to the college yell of the French Army.

This is a new custom, started from I know not
what remote trench. The rhythm is like this :

Clap-clap Clap-clap-clap [fast]
Clap-clap Clap-clap-clap [fast]
Clap-clap-clap Clap-clap [fast]
Clap-clap-clap [slow]

They do it now at the Front whenever they wish
to show approval or general joy — as when a com-
pany has made a neat attack or when delayed pro-
visions arrive. If you wish to emphasize your
feelings you do it again. For Mrs. Eoosevelt, out
of compliment to her singing, her distinguished
relative and the new ally, they did it three times.

143

A EEPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

An intermission was called by the chairman;
and then came the real climax of the evening's en-
tertainment: Madame, the presiding genius of
the place, started for those big clothes baskets
where the bags from America were stored, and re-
turned with her arms full. The American ladies
followed ; and it began to look like Christmas.

These bags, usually gaudy little affairs of cre-
tonne, had been packed on the sensible plan. The
gifts in them were nearly all practical — safety
razors, for example, pieces of toilet soap, shaving
brushes, combs, sewing kits, safety pins, pocket
mirrors, pen-knives, nail files. Always they con-
tained a pair of stout socks, a wash rag and writ-
ing materials. By way of luxury there were
mouth organs, chocolate tablets, jew's-harps and,
in a few cases, chewing gum. I hope that the re-
cipients did not try to swallow this strange con-
fection !

For a few minutes there was almost silence as
the poilus opened their bags and spread out the
contents on the tables. Then babble broke out —
jokes called from one table to the other, cries of
approval. Again I say it was ridiculously like a
set of small boys opening their Christmas stock-
ings. We all have enough child in us to like little
unexpected presents ; and besides, the French have
a special quality of enjoyment in childish things.
A Turco from North Africa, with a clean-cut Arab
face, held up a safety razor as I passed. It was
the very thing he 'd been wanting, he said in inde-

144

THE FOUETH

scribably broken French; lie had been shaving
with a species of hoe; but would monsieur show
him how it worked? So I sat down and explained.
At the end of one table sat a stocky, battered old
veteran with a blond mustache that drooped over
his mouth like a sea lion's. He was sorting his
pile over and over again, inspecting each object
and then reinspecting it. One of the ladies passed
an artilleryman who had drawn a be-ribboned pin
cushion.

"I will save that for my little wife," he said;
"it is too nice for me!"

"And where is your wife?" asked the American
lady.

"In Lille," he replied. "If she is alive — I have
not heard for nearly three years now. But I keep
pretty little things like this for her."

We shall never know the full tragedy of that
invaded region; and this incident brought out a
story from one of the Americans who witnessed
it.

When the Germans fell back last March there
rode with the French cavalry, which pursued, a
trooper who lived in that region. He learned, to
his unspeakable joy, that his troop was to pass
through his home town, in which, more than two
years before, he had left his wife and daughter.
With permission from his captain he fell out and
rode to his home. It was burned ; but by the gate
stood a neighbor.

"Where are they?" he cried.
145

A EEPOBTER AT AEMAGEDDON

"Gone!" said the neighbor; "the Boche carried
them away!"

It must be said that the second part of the per-
formance was less successful than the first ; every
one was busy inspecting presents and swapping.
At a quarter of eleven the chairman adjourned the
meeting; the poilus, as they rose, scrambled for
the little American flags which formed the table
decorations. I myself was very busy for the next
quarter of an hour. The women in America who
packed those bags had each inclosed a post card
or a note, with name and address. Now, French
and American handwritings differ in certain par-
ticulars, and many of the signatures were illegible
at best. But the recipients, following that univer-
sal courtesy of the meanest Frenchman, wanted to
acknowledge the gifts ; so I had to spell out signa-
tures in the French alphabet. At eleven sharp the
inexorable madame clapped her hands to announce
bedtime, and two policemen helped her clear the
hall. As they filed out, hung like pack mules with
the worn and stained paraphernalia of the
trenches, each poilu held by a stubby hard finger
a dainty little bag in flowered cretonne !

CHAPTER X

THE FOURTEENTH

BECOVERED ALSACE, July 13th.

IT is nearly midnight, and sounds of exultant
joy are still cleaving the clear mountain air with-
out. To-day, in case you are weak on dates, is the
eve of the French national holiday — the equiva-
lent to our Fourth of July. This year recovered
Alsace began the celebration on the afternoon be-
fore ; and a party of American correspondents un-
der proper escort has come up to see and to enjoy.
I am billeted in a private house of this town, the
hotel having been commandeered for another pur-
pose. The arrangement is purely commercial, I
believe. The army rents these rooms, using them
for officers or visitors. But my reception was like
that of an honored guest. Madame, my hostess,
met me at the door with the maids drawn up be-
side her and welcomed me to her house and to
Alsace. She saw personally that the room was
ready; with her own hands she hung out the stars
and stripes beside the tricolor from my balcony
window. Finding that I was a writing man she
placed another room on that floor, with a desk and
writing materials, at my service.

147

A EEPOBTER AT AKMAGEDDON

Since four o'clock, when we left poor, battered,
war-torn Belfort, and especially since we raised
our caps at the frontier between France and what
was Germany from 1870 to 1914, it has been a day
of beauty and of glory. I know grander moun-
tains than the Vosges ; I know of none more beau-
tiful. Bound-topped and yet precipitous, their
slopes and ridges are thick with magnificent for-
ests of pine and beech. White, tumbling streams
traverse them everywhere. The villages have a
peculiar and distinctive style of architecture. All
the houses are high built, of substantial gray gran-
ite or stucco. The red-tiled roofs are very steep ;
and most of them are snubbed off at the ends of
the ridgepoles by shorter roofs. Each town has
in its central square a fountain with an ornamen-
tal pillar from which spurt two or four jets of
water. Fountain pillars, church steeples, the cor-
nices of the houses, the doors, the windows —
floated now the tricolor or the red and white flag
of old Alsace. The old men, who remember 1870,
were sitting with the women at the doorways, en-
joying a fine afternoon and the eve of a holiday.
As we passed, they and the little boys beside them
jumped to their feet and gave us the snappy,
flourishing salute of the French Army.

We pulled at last into a larger town, where a
major in charge of civil administration came forth
to meet us. We dined with him and his staff;
there were speeches. Then we called on the
mayor. All the way down the street, hung with

148

THE FOUBTEENTH

bunting as I have never seen city streets before,
the people were gathering in their wartime Sun-
day best — the villagers in gay colors, the peasants
in sober black, often in wooden shoes. The sol-
diers, as we passed, saluted with an extra flourish.
Everything had a holiday air.

So as reviewing party we ranged ourselves on
the balcony of the Hotel de Ville. The mayor
stood beside the major, center of the group; he
rore, as the garments appropriate to such cere-
monial in Alsace — a dress suit with a tricolored
sash slashed across his shirt front. With us stood
the cordial and venerable cure, the officers of the
staff, and representatives of the town council.
Then, heralded by two bands, civilian and mili-
tary, came the procession.

At its head — a touch universal of a village cele-
bration ! — marched the fire department, Hose Com-
pany Number One. They wore their best dark-
blue uniforms and brass helmets, polished like the
sun, which glistened even in the twilight then
gathering over valley and mountain. At least
part of the fire department ; for the rest were help-
ing out those boys, too young for military service,
and those veterans of 1870, too old, who made up
the town band. It passed, tooting "The Marseil-
laise " with enthusiasm. Behind it came the mili-
tary band. They halted before the Hotel de Ville
and played ' ' The Marseillaise ' ' — every one stand-
ing at salute. Then they rendered, as only a
French military band can render it; that old Na-

149

A EEPOKTEE AT AEMAGEDDON

poleonic march which would make a wooden Indian
want to fight: "Le Eegiment de Sambre et
Meuse."

I have heard the best British and American
bands attempt this march ; and it was not the same
thing at all. There is always a point where a file
of trumpeters come in with a fanfare. The trum-
peters in this case were mostly magnificent blacks
from the North African regiments. As they
stood, trumpets poised, waiting to come in, their
knees were beating time to the music. On the last
bar the procession started again toward the public
square. Behind the musicians the populace and
the soldiers had fallen in, without any regular
arrangement ; and as the military band struck up
another gay march every one began to dance.
Soldiers, their arms linked with village girls, did
the grand right and left. There were not enough
girls to go round, so groups of poilus, linking their
arms about each other's necks, performed giddy
whirls. The populace flooded on to the town
square. Down the vista afforded by the street we
could see them dancing round and round the
square, still following the band.

This was all real joy — not an artificial joy
worked up for the occasion. And why not?
Think of any American village you know, and
imagine that the Germans had come, forty-seven
years ago, to warp it into the mold of German
Kultur. Suppose the public use and private
teaching of the English language forbidden by

150

THE FOURTEENTH

law ; suppose the young men forced to serve in the
Prussian Army; suppose a thousand irritating
restrictions, all directed toward making Germans
out of the native American population. Then sup-
pose that, two or three years ago, the American
Army had come and taken the village back to its
own. How it would behave on the Fourth of July !

There followed a reception in the Town Hall,
wherein, with fine French formality, the digni-
taries received us. At about this time the officers

of the th Heavy Artillery arrived and made

themselves known. They had been marching and
toiling over the guns all day; so they wore their
working uniforms, stained with grease and faded
with old marches in the mud. They had come
from a long period of fighting ; this was their first
night off for months ; and plainly they were in a
holiday humor. Nevertheless they were most in-
sistent that we cut the formal program next day
to see their new guns — "the best Boche crusher
ever invented, ' ' they said.

The reception finished, I strolled over to a cor-
ner of the square, where the populace was stand-
ing in darkness listening to an impromptu soldier
concert in a cafe. We are so near the Front that
no lights whatever are allowed on the streets; I
knew only by sense of sound and touch that we
were in a crowd. Within, a little soldier, stained,
tanned, hairy, was singing Faust in a beautiful,
trained barytone voice — some professional, I sup-
pose. Suddenly a match was struck near by, a

151

A KEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

cheerful young voice cried " There he is!" and I
was carried away bodily by a dozen arms. The

th Heavy Artillery had captured me. They

were going to have a party, they explained as they
swept me along, and it was going to be a real
party — the first they'd had this summer.

We rushed up to the second floor of the inn,
where every one began calling for Maria, the head
waitress, factotum and presiding genius of the
place. As they stood on the landing — a dozen
handsome, hard-muscled and extremely alive
young Frenchmen in uniform — it occurred to me
that all this looked like Act I, Scene 1, of a mili-
tary melodrama. It looked still more so when,
a moment later, Maria burst through the door.
Maria was young, she was buxom, she was radi-
antly handsome. She had just been serving a late
dinner and she carried a salad bowl and a wooden
spoon. And plainly Maria was in a bad humor.
She had hoped that business was over for the eve-
ning, as I heard her explaining to the porter later,
and here we came to keep her up until heaven
knew when.

Cheers greeted the entrance of Maria. A dark
young devil of a Gascon with black eyes and a
flashing set of teeth stepped up to salute her as
ladies should be saluted in Alsace, where a kiss
is the tribute due to beauty; and Maria hit him
over the ear with the wooden spoon. However,
she consented to light the oil lamp over the table
and to serve us. By this time every one was jok-

152

THE FOUETEENTH

ing Maria ; but she smiled only when she had her
back turned. Scouts, sent out American-hunting,
returned with Eyre, a New York newspaper man,
and Hoffman.

So we seated ourselves, and sang. When Maria

brought the wine, the th introduced its own

special drinking song. The entire company, ad-
dressing itself to one man at the end of the table,
asks him in song what he'd rather do than drink.
He explains in a solo what he'd rather do than
drink. Then the rest of the company sings a long
chord, at the end of which he must have emptied
his glass. So it went round the table. The bat-
tery pennon was brought in and set up with ap-
propriate ceremonies. Then a tall young lieuten-
ant rose and delivered what I take to be a bur-
lesque on a stock lecture that the French officer
gets as part of his military training.

" Discipline!" it began. "What is discipline!
It is the higher force of armies. Very well then
— with one finger — march ! ' ' Every one made one
finger march by tapping the table. Then two fin-
gers marched, then three, four and five ; then the
whole hand charged ; then there was artillery fir-
ing with one fist and with both fists.

By now the glasses were jumping off the table;
and suddenly I received a shock. I alone had my
eyes on the door. It had opened ; and there, with
the mien of an outraged goddess, stood Maria.
No one else saw her ; the racket went on until the
lieutenant ordered "Cease firing I" And then

153

A EEPOETER AT AEMAGEDDON

Maria spoke — one word of awful, portentous sar-
casm— "Fini?"

It was eleven o'clock; out of deference to the

feelings of Maria and the house the th Heavy

Artillery rolled up its pennon with more cere-
monies, and adjourned. Maria, rid of us, smiled
sweetly over the balustrade as we said good night.
I hope I haven't made this look like an orgy. As
a matter of fact we had drunk about two glasses
of champagne apiece. The French gentleman is
not a drinking man in our sense. He does not
need liquor to whip up his enjoyment of pastime
in good company. Possessing a hair-trigger
spirit of joy and song, he can grow convivial over
a table of soda crackers.

All this, to conclude, happened very near to that
yellow gash in the earth where Germany is still
holding the greater part of Alsace. This town is
within easy range of very moderately ranged
guns; and though the Alsace Front is quiet just
at present, we have been hearing distant reports
all the afternoon.

PAKIS, July 16th.

Though I had retired late on the eve of the
Glorious Fourteenth, and though I slept the dead
sleep of one who has been traveling in mountain
air, I did not have to be called in the morning. At
a villainously early hour drums began to beat and
trumpets to blare on the streets outside. I poked
my head out of the window. Soldiers, including a

154

THE FOUKTEENTH

battalion of coal-black troops and another of
chasseurs Alpins — those picturesque little men
who wear the slouching beret on their heads in-
stead of the stiff kepi — were gathering for the re-
view. And everywhere the street was slashed
ith red ; the young girls and the little girls had
>ut on for the day the Alsatian costume. This
consists of a red skirt, a black, tight, embroidered
bodice, an embroidered apron, white stockings and
great wide black bow at the front of the head.
Country folk were driving up in two-wheeled
irts ; over on the town square boys were putting
the finishing touch on an open-air theater. I
Iressed, swallowed my coffee and got downstairs
just in time for the review, which the mayor, the
lajor and their official party witnessed from a
ibune built of fresh boughs and twined with the
;ricolor, before the finest house on the square,
review over, we mixed with the crowd. We
Americans in khaki were as great a show to them
is a girl in full Alsatian costume would be to a
Few England town; we had to pose for every
imera in the village and in the army. Then the
of the solemn old church rang, and every one
went over to attend a mass of thanksgiving. Al-
satian fashion, the men all sat to right of the cen-
tral aisle, the women to the left. 'So also the little
>oys were in the right transept and the little girls
in the left. When in the pauses of the ceremony
I looked to right and left I could see the heads of
the little boys twinkling in perpetual motion and

155

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

those of the little girls gently swaying. I was to
think much and anxiously of those children within
the next half hour.

I walked back from church with the mayor, who
wore still the dress suit and the tricolored sash of
his office. He looks enough like Bayard Veiller,
our American playwright, to be his own blood
brother. And he spoke of many things concern-
ing that eclipse of Alsatian nationality in which
he had dwelt since his youth.

The native Alsatians speak a dialect rather
more like German than French, but still as incom-
prehensible to a German as to a Frenchman.
Though the offense of speaking French was never
made absolutely illegal in that part of Alsace, it
was frowned upon. Teaching the French lan-
guage, on the other hand, was a minor act of trea-
son, punishable by imprisonment. So, also, new
French signs were barred. As a sign or poster
wore out it must be replaced in German ; nor could
a French sign be repaired. But the shopkeepers
used to repair their signs, very gradually so as
to escape attention, in the dead of night.

"There's one, for example,'' said the mayor,
" which lasted from 1870 to 1914!"

For forty-four years the Alsatians lived under
German civil law. The problem of changing
from one code to another, in the midst of this war,
was too much for the French Government to
tackle; so the German code is still enforced, under
native judges. Most property value had been

156

THE FOUETEENTH

reckoned in terms of the mark, which remains the
standard of value in legal transactions. All that,
of course, will change with the end of the war,
when France and Alsace have more leisure.
French always at heart, the younger Alsatians
have perforce grown up Gremans by custom ; and
the transition takes time.

We had reached the public square now; and it
was time to go. I hurried over to get my baggage
and make my adieus. The military band was giv-
ing a concert beside the open-air theater, and the
populace — mainly women and children — was
promenading under the trees.

As I came back to the square I was aware that
a kind of hush had descended on the babble of the
crowd, that I heard the band more and more dis-
tinctly, and human voices not at all. Near me a
knot in a doorway was looking at the sky. I fol-
lowed their gaze. Three aeroplanes, flying rather
low — big, black, sinister! One in the group had
been using a pair of field glasses. He lowered
them.

"Yes — the black cross — Boche!" he said
quietly. Then the guns began to go on the out-
skirts of the town ; smoke puffs broke about these
sinister giant wasps. I crossed the square ; it was
as bare as a bone ; the crowd had melted away like
magic ; the people showed themselves only in knots
about the open doors. The band, never losing a
note, was playing on, as merrily as ever. A
courier ran over and ordered them into a substan-

157

A EEPOETER AT ARMAGEDDON

tial building near by. With decent deliberation
they strolled to shelter. Only officers stood on the
square now; they were looking up through their
glasses, commenting upon the marksmanship of
the " archies. "

It was an air raid — or at least so every one felt.
These were heavy, bomb-carrying machines; and
three machines of that capacity and at that height
could play the dickens with the town. They were
circling as though to get position above us; and
my mind jumped ten minutes ahead. The place
was packed with children — those well-behaved lit-
tle boys whose heads I had seen bobbing in the
transept at church, those pretty little girls in the
national costume. Ten minutes more and we
should be digging in ruins for poor, broken little
bodies.

The planes circled on, nearer and nearer. More
guns were going, and still more ; the clouds broke
faster about the planes. I saw the tail of one of
them lift, saw it shiver and seem to stagger, with
a shell that burst just under its rudder. The
shrapnel would be overhead in a minute more;
even some of the officers were finding places near
doorways, ready to get cover when the real danger
began. Then from a group still standing and ob-
serving under a tree I heard some one cry:

"They are turning — toward Belfort!"

I looked. In fact, they had turned. An instant
later they were speeding away. The band
emerged, the drummer remarking to me as he took

158

THE FOURTEENTH

his place that no Fourteenth of July was complete
without fireworks. On the first strain of the
music the populace broke from alleys and door-
ways like runners from the mark. From one en-
trance came ten boys carrying a piano for the out-
of-doors theater. The excitement had caught
them halfway down a street, but they had taken
pains to get the piano under cover! When, five
minutes later, we waved good-by to that dear,
troubled and merry little town the celebration was
proceeding as noisily as ever.

Why the Germans withdrew without shooting
remains a mystery to me ; and it seemed to puzzle
the officers. Perhaps our anti-aircraft protection
was better than they expected. Perhaps they had
sighted French scouting machines. And perhaps,
being on some other mission, they merely stopped
to look us over. But at any rate we had all the
thrills of an air raid without its tragedies.

We spun across the same fair prospect of moun-
tain and valley ; and on the road our car picked up
a staff captain going our way. He had been fa-
tally wounded three times, he told us, laughing.
His left hand was totally paralyzed. He got all
this in the line, principally at Verdun. Trans-
ferred to the staff, he was spending his leisure in
composing a play for the Theatre Frangais. It
turned out that we were in the presence of a
French poet, one of the names among the younger
generation of writers.

159

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

Now the villages began to show torn walls and
gaping window frames 5 but even from these bat-
tered relics of war the tricolor floated. Finally
we reached the larger town, which was our desti-
nation. Much as I have seen of ruins between
Dunkirk and Monfalcone — and ruins seem to me
now the normal aspect of war, so that I seldom
turn to look at them — this town presented a new
aspect. It had its heaviest shelling early in the
war. Every building, I judge, must have been hit
in one fashion or another. For a time the inhabi-
tants went away ; when the shelling grew less fre-
quent the hardier among them came back, cleaned
out their cellars as shelters in time of trouble, and
resumed a semblance of normal life. Now those
older ruins present the same curious effects of
domesticity suddenly exposed to the world's view
that one sees in every bombarded village. Sta-
tionary washstands occupy the edges of gaping
floors, chandeliers hang from ceilings peppered
like sieves.

But Nature, unhampered, had been at work as
usual for three summers; so grass and flowers
were growing through the cracks of second- story
floors. I saw even a bunch of harebells clustered
about a kitchen sink! This town is nearer the
German line than troubled old Eheims. Its out-
skirts are even within range of German machine-
gun fire. But along the streets — every intact
building provided with a sign telling how many
persons its cellar would hold— veterans of 1870

160

THE FOUETEENTH

still sprang to salute, and village women, in their
best Sunday black with parasols and lace mitts,
waved at us. When we drew up at a certain hotel,
much battered by bombardment but patched up
for all practical purposes, a crowd of civilian men
in black clothes and officers in uniform waited out-
side the door. For the dignitaries from all this
part of recovered Alsace were about to hold a ban-
quet to honor the birthday of the Eepublic — and
deliverance.

I never sat down to a stranger meal — or to a
merrier. The large hall where the tables were
ranged looked very, very battered and run to seed-
There were even dents in the walls where pro-
jectiles which had broken windows had taken toll
of the plaster. A new bust of the Eepublic, such
as stands in every mairie of France, had been
brought up for the occasion; wrapped in the tri-
color it stood above the toastmaster's seat. There
was also a bank of potted palms and growing flow-
ers, assembled from undestroyed houses all over
town. Above everything hung a great tricolor on
a staff; and that, they told me, was a story in it-
self. Made in 1848, the municipal flag of the
town, it had lain under the planks of a floor, be-
tween 1870 and 1914. Another tricolor, draped
over a door, had rested during all the long, dark
time in the upholstery of a chair.

We were scarcely seated before we rose in a
body to give roaring welcome to a general and his
staff. We sang, with all the power in our voices,

161

A BEPOETEB AT AEMAGEDDON

The Marseillaise, that song of hope which had
been chanted in whispers and behind closed doors
for forty-four years. A little boy and girl, hand
in hand, spoke a "piece" of welcome. And we
proceeded to a very good luncheon.

I am not a collector of bills of fare ; but the one
that stood beside my plate at the banquet I shall
keep for a historic relic. "Long live French Al-
sace!" reads the heading, translated. "National
Fete — Alsatian Eevenge — First Banquet given at
Blank, under German Fire, July 14, 1917."

The menu had the usual complimentary names
for the dishes, as potage des Allies, garniture
Lorraine. However, in trying to compliment the
United States, Alsace slipped on American slang.
Homard a la Pershing, reads the second item in
the menu. Now a Jiomard is a lobster !

A moment after we seated ourselves the phrase
"under German fire" became a reality instead of
a decorative boast. For firing broke out — heavy
cannon fire. My neighbors listened just an in-
stant, their soup spoons poised, and then went on
with their joking conversation. I supposed it was
merely some regular and perfunctory shelling by
our own batteries, and I was perhaps the only man
at the banquet who did not understand that these
were anti-aircraft guns, and that the German
planes were over us.

My neighbors were officers and old civilian dig-
nitaries of the region, massive men with broad,
forceful faces. The officers were mostly Alsatian

162

THE FOURTEENTH

either by birth or blood. One, who had been born
in Alsace and lived there through the dark time,
managed to escape on the eve of the war and to
join the French forces. Another had left for
Paris at the age of fifteen, and never returned
until he came with the army that recovered this
bit of his native province. Children born in
Alsace, it appears, were not allowed by the Ger-
mans to leave until they were fourteen; the con-
querors seemed to think that early training in
German schools would make the Alsatians Ger-
mans.

There were many stories as the wine went
round. In this district, the civilians told me, con-
versation in the French language, though it tended
to make one persona non grata with the authori-
ties, was not forbidden, but it was illegal to teach
the language or to publish documents or placards
in French. Nevertheless, when the French school-
masters, following the army, began instruction in
the autumn of 1914, they found that most of the
children were speaking perfectly good French.
In 1913 those same children, if addressed by a
stranger in French, would have turned on him a
blank stare, so well had they been informed of the
danger of what they were doing.

They spoke, too, of the social cut which the
older Alsatian families enforced against the con-
queror. "I was born and educated at Stras-
burg," said an army surgeon. "I have dissected

163

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

a cadaver for weeks at a time with a German stu-
dent, and never addressed a word to him. "

Then one of the civilians told this story, which
he got from his father: In the church of a vil-
lage near by stands a statue of the Virgin holding
a silver mouse in the right hand. At some period
of the Middle Ages, so the legend runs, this town
was troubled with a plague of mice. The people
prayed to the Virgin and were delivered of the
mice. So this little silver mouse was given as a
votive offering. When, after 1870, the Germans
took possession, the mayor was forced to show the
new Prussian commandant the points of interest.
"What's that for!" grunted the German when he
saw the silver mouse. The mayor told him the
legend. "And," he added, "we hope soon to put
in the other hand a little golden Prussian hel-
met!"

There were speeches, of course — the general,
the mayor, the representatives of the other towns.
Finally they toasted the United States, and Henri
Bazin, correspondent of the Philadelphia Evening
Ledger, the only one among us who handled
French with native fluency, responded so well that
the assembled guests carried him away from the
table on their shoulders.

There was much "ranging that afternoon and
next day through other villages, all hung with
flags, all splashed with the red of native costume.
There was much talk of the Alsatian problem from
the persons most concerned; but everything was

164

THE FOUETEENTH

an anticlimax after this singular and stirring
banquet. Finally, and just before we left the dis-
trict, we stood on a dominating height on a clear
morning to view the panorama of the Front. To
the right rose the mountains of Switzerland.
Among the rounded peaks to the left was one
where the trees stood stripped naked or broken;
it was Hartmansweillerkopf, scene of fighting
hardly less intense and heroic than that before
Verdun. And between these extremities, now hid-
den by a peak, now running a long course in a
valley, lay a yellow thread through the blue land-
scape— the line.

The Alsace-Lorraine question is tremendously
complicated. There are the historic argument,
the linguistic argument, the economic argument,
and finally the human argument. The Germans,
pedants gone mad, seem to be running heavily to
the historic argument, the very line of reasoning
that should have least weight of all, since we are
living now not in the past but in a terrible present
and a very uncertain and significant future. It
was theirs once, they say; in 1870 they merely took
it back. Though I have ruled that argument out
of court, let me examine it, for it reveals the men-
tal processes of that peculiar people whom we used
to esteem logical. -»

Alsace-Lorraine was never, before 1870, a part
of Germany, because there was no real Germany
before the nineteenth century. Until that time

165

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

the region that is now the German Empire was a
collection of princedoms and duchies, shifting their
territories with each little war. Not all of these
states even spoke the German language; not all
of them held a population prevailingly Teutonic
in blood. Alsace, which kept on the whole fairly
independent, was at times an appanage of a duchy
which is now a part of Germany; but so once were
Burgundy and the Franche-Comte — now a loyal,
integral part of Eastern France — and even Mar-
seilles. The historic claim of Germany to Bur-
gundy is actually as good as that to Alsace. Fi-
nally, under Louis XIV, Alsace became a part of
France. It was a matter of conquest; that was
before Continental states dreamed of granting
peoples the right to choose their rulers. But this
process, extending over several years, began with
the cession of all Alsace except Strasburg in 1648
— only twenty-eight years after the landing of the
Pilgrims. That, in the American memory, is a
long time. It would be a long time in the German
memory, too, were it not for the blatant pan-Ger-
manist follies of such historians as Treitschke.
In the century and a half which preceded the Revo-
lution, Alsace had already become a loyal and con-
tented part of France. And the Revolution fused
her forever with the Republic. The Marseillaise
was composed, and first sung, at Strasburg. The
Alsatians fought mightily to hold the new Repub-
lic against its external enemies, conspicuously
Prussia. Later Napoleon drew more generals and

166

THE FOURTEENTH

marshals from Alsace than from any other district
of similar population.

The linguistic argument is more moonshine.
The common people of Alsace speak among them-
selves a dialect without a literature, akin to Ger-
man. But the people of Brittany speak Breton;
so they should be joined to Wales! And the
people of the French Pyrenees speak Basque;
since there are more Basques in Spain than in
France, the Pyrenees should all belong to the
Spanish!

The economic argument is simply this: Lor-
raine has valuable iron mines and Alsace rich
phosphates ; Germany needs them in her business.
So do I need a hundred million dollars from JohnJ
D. Rockefeller! ~

The human argument is the only one which now
has weight in the court of civilized nations. Here
is Alsace-Lorraine with one million five hundred
thousand inhabitants of the old, loyal French
stock, and four hundred thousand Germans trans-
planted since 1870. Leave these lands with Ger-
many, even a Germany slightly democratized, and
there is the same old unhappy problem which has
lasted for forty-four years — a people living under
a shadow, their real national life suppressed.
Give them to France, and even that minority of
Germans — should they remain — would be absorbed
in the course of time into French nationality.

For democracies, and especially such liberal,^
tolerant democracies as France, are absorptive.

167

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

We ourselves furnish the best exemplar. Autoc-
racies are not.

Democracy does not try to force the stranger
into its ways except as this is necessary for the
orderly working of law. Autocracies are arbi-
trary in this matter. So, by the contrariness of
human nature, the newcomer allies himself more
easily and readily with a people which does not
demand such alliance. Still further, France has
the quality of attracting aliens; as many have
pointed out before, she is the only nation in this
war with a foreign legion. Germans can rule o ily
Germans ; they are ridiculously incapable of ruling
other peoples. Only one thorough solution is pos-
sible to the question of Alsace-Lorraine: The
restoration of these provinces to the France of
i their love and loyalty.

CHAPTER XI
SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY

BEEN, August 3rd.

LUCK has been with me at borders this trip.
This barrier between France and Switzerland —
the only line of communication for through trains
— is so dreaded of travelers in wartime that re-
ports of its doings make wonder tales for the cafe
gossips of Paris. No matter how good your pa-
pers, how strong your recommendations, the story
goes, you are liable to a detention of one to three
days and to a most thorough search.

However, we were no sooner settled in our com-
partment of the through night train than F ,

of the Eed Cross, looked in. Engaged from the
beginning of the war in Polish relief, with head-
quarters in Switzerland, he has crossed this bor-
der again and again, knows all the officials, and
has established himself as a thoroughly reliable
person. Learning that I was crossing this par-
ticular border for the first time since the war, he
offered his services to help me through.

Early in the morning we were rapped out by
the porter, and deposited with our bags and be-
longings on the scant platform of a little hill sta-
tion which in that direction marks the end of

169

A EEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

France. It was a full train; all trains on this line
run full in August, when the weary and ailing are
scheming to escape from the somewhat anaemic
summer airs of Paris to the ozone of the Swiss
mountains. I had engaged my sleeper passage a
fortnight ahead, and I had applied none too soon.
By the time the station porter had transported
us across the platform into the station building, I
found myself at the end of an amorphous crowd
about two hundred feet long. At the head of the
line was a door in a temporary wooden partition,
guarded by two armed French soldiers. Craning
my neck to look over the heads of the crowd, I
could see the leaders pass through the door; a
long and weary time would intervene before the
soldiers motioned the next passenger from the
line.

To my left was a wide space, railed in with low
tables, on which stood arranged our baggage. As
passenger number two, with an anxious expres-
sion of the back, passed through the little door, I
would see passenger number one cross the open
space and disappear, properly escorted, through
another door in another partition. So we crept
on, a ragged line composed of all nationalities —
save, I trust, those of the Central Powers — all so-
cial conditions, all ages. A step forward became
an event. Marking my progress by a signboard
in three languages, which warned us against car-
rying gold out of France, I calculated that it
would be a matter of hours.

170

SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY

In the meantime I could see my friend of the
Eed Cross talking to an officer and two men in
civilian clothes over by the mysterious second
door. A keen-faced, dapper little Frenchman de-
tached himself from the group, made his way to
me through the queue and led my wife and me to
the first door ahead of the crowd. There, without
any examination, our passports with their vises
were inspected and given a preliminary stamp.
I was led then to the second door, which I entered
alone. I was in a little room of plain, undecorated
pine board, furnished with a table and two chairs
— nothing more. In the chair by the table sat a
Frenchman with a keen countenance that showed
not the slightest trace of expression.

Politely, but a little coldly, he asked me to sit
down; then he questioned me on my business in
Switzerland. I stumbled on a French word,
whereupon he switched to good idiomatic English,
which he learned, I think from his accent, in the
United States. I was visiting the country, I told
him, to write for my publication. Ah, yes, and on
what topics? The general condition of the coun-
try because of the war, the Swiss side of the imr
portation question, and whatever I could learn
there of the meaning in the German cabinet up-
heaval, I replied.

We conversed in general terms on the knotty
question of German politics before, toying with
my passport, he remarked that I had been in
Spain. A neutral vise on a passport is rightly a

171

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

matter of suspicion in these days. I had, I re-
plied— and for the same purpose that brought me
to Switzerland. Had I been to the French Front?
Oh, yes, many times, as these papers showed.
And how did I find things in Spain! I discoursed
for a few minutes on the position of the King and
Eomanones, on Lerroux's attitude toward the
Eevolution, on the German propaganda. Sud-
denly he seemed satisfied; for he folded up my
passport and bowed me out with best wishes for
the success of my mission to Switzerland.

All this time I had a curious feeling of being in
the death house at Sing Sing or in some other
place pregnant with tragic fate. For here, I take
it, the suspects are sifted from the unsuspected;
and through that door, I have not the slightest
doubt, men have gone since this war to the drum-
head court-martial and firing squad, and women to
solitary cells. Sure as I was of my own case, I
found myself drawing a deep breath of relief as I
crossed the threshold. A soldier put the final
stamp on my passport, the dapper little man saw
that my luggage was passed, upon my word of
honor that it contained no written communications
save letters of introduction and credentials, and
we were free to rush to the station restaurant for
breakfast.

Treasonably I will now set down one fact to the
credit of the enemy of the world : The Germans
know how to make coffee as the Americans know
coffee; the Latins don't. The Swiss have caught
the trick from their dangerous neighbors. It

172

SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY

seemed to me that I was tasting coffee for the first
time in four months.

As I sent the waitress for a second cup I asked
my Red Cross friend how he did it.

"Told the truth, that's all," he said. "I said
that you represented the most widely circulated
periodical in the English language, that you'd
been the friend of the Entente long before we got
into the war, and that it would be an act of court-
esy. I'd like to see any one put over any bunk
with those fellows!"

After two hours a somewhat reduced company
of travelers were ranged on the station platform;
we got our baggage aboard, and were off. With-
out the aid of signboards and frontier posts I
should have known, in the next ten miles of run-
ning, that we had passed from a war country to a
peace country. The fields looked better tended.
Men — young, lusty men — were tilling them, not
exclusively women, old men and boys. Soldiers
there were on every platform, for sturdy little
Switzerland is mobilized against all contingencies ;
but they were neat, peacetime soldiers. Their
neutral-gray Norfolk jackets, their long trousers
curiously buttoned about their boot tops, their
double-peaked caps looked bright and new.
Against them I found myself setting the streaked
faded uniforms, the dented helmets, the worn
brown kits of the pollus going home on leave,
whom I had seen at the station in Paris only the
night before.

173

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

There was a contrast, too, in the faces. These
were just young men, ordinary, though somewhat
exceptionally sturdy, young men. Those others,
there in Paris, had in their sun-baked, wind-
streaked faces that look of gravity, of experience,
of resolution, which war brings and which they
will carry to their graves.

We changed cars at Geneva, and there was an
hour's wait, during which we walked down to look
at the lake. Here was contrast again — a contrast
so subtle that I cannot convey it on paper. The
attitudes of the people as they walked, their ex-
pressions as they talked, the rhythm of their
voices when they laughed were all different — more
natural it seemed to me at the moment. The ap-
pearance of the city brought another shock. I do
not know whether Geneva is considered neater
and cleaner than any other European city. I real-
ized how dingy Paris had become externally — that
city which has been too busy these three years in
saving civilization, for the pretty graces of exter-
nal cleanliness. What Paris needs, I realize now,
are paint, whitewash, gilding and new glass.
Scarcely a brushf ul of paint, I take it, has been ap-
plied to any Parisian exterior for three years.
When this war is over not only Paris but all
France must have an unprecedented spree of
painting.

We had been duly warned in Paris that we
would not enter Switzerland without being
watched by the enemy, and that efforts of the most

174

SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY

subtle kind would be made to extract information.
And on the run from Geneva to Bern the signs be-
gan to appear. Two men entered our compart-
ment. One of them, it was noted, had a sword
slash across one cheek. Never speaking to each
other, and paying no attention to us, they settled
down to read newspapers. We talked away — on
general topics, such as the scenery and French
literature. In the corridor which runs the length
of the compartments a sharp-faced person, whose
clothes and bearing gave no hint as to his nation-
ality, loafed, ostentatiously viewing the scenery
—of which there was a plenty — all during the run
to Bern. We caught him watching us with a sur-
reptitious eye when he thought we were not look-
ing.

Searching luggage in hotels is, we are informed,
a favorite trick of the German agent in these
parts. The hotel at which I find myself regis-
tered to-night is headquarters for several of the
Entente legations. It is doubtless safe from that
process. However, I am going deeper in Switzer-
land later and shall stay at other hotels ; so, pla-
giarizing Mark Twain, I have written and placed
in the portfolio where I keep my papers the fol-
lowing sample of cheap American wit :

To THE GERMAN AGENT:

I have arranged my papers for your conveni-
ence. Everything I have that could be of any pos-
sible interest to you, except my passport and my

175

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

credentials from my journal, is in this portfolio.
The passport is the usual American passport ; that
kind has been forged so many times that it would
be of no use to you as a model.

My wife keeps on the table in her room three
notebooks filled with literary notes of no inter-
national importance. She, too, carries her pass-
port on her person. In her hand bag she keeps
her credentials and a few other personal papers,
like her marriage certificate. Usually she carries
it, but sometimes she leaves it in the room. If
you do not find it when you call, kindly call again.

If tftere is anything in these papers that you do
not understand call upon me personally some day.
I am sure that I should be interested in your con-
versation. All forms of life, high and low, inter-
est me.

BERN, August 5th.

Resisting a temptation that will probably be
constant for the next fortnight, to write about
scenery, let me mention that this is the neatest,
spick-and-spannest little city that ever decorated
the earth. The guidebooks tell us that it has more
relics of mediaeval times than any other large city
in Switzerland. One finds those statements hard
to believe. The mediaeval guild houses starred in
the guidebooks look as though they had been built
last year on some rather affected design, so well
have they been repaired and kept up for three or
four centuries. The city stands on both sides of a
gorge bottomed by a rushing, beryl-colored river.
On the lowlands along the river bank stand most
of the older portions of the city. Crossing the

176

SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY

high bridges one looks down on a fascinating
tangle of overhanging, red-tiled, snubbed-off
roofs.

Of course I have visited the bears of Bern. Ev-
ery child knows about them. Concerning which
I record only one curious fact in natural history,
imparted to me to-day by a member of the Federal
Council, wherefore I take it to be authentic.
These bears — at present three old ones and two
cubs — are kept in a pit by the gorge-bank at the
expense of the municipality and the public, as a
symbol of the town — Bern meaning bear.

The city furnishes the quarters, and the public
most of the food. The keeper, at the edge of the
pit, sells you a bunch of carrots for seven cents or
a bag of cakes for ten cents. You proceed to the
edge of the pit and make the bears do tricks for
their provender.

The female bear, mother of the cubs in the other
part of the pit, sits on^her hind legs when she sees
you hold up a carrot and puts her paws together
in an attitude of prayer. Being further teased,
she rolls over onto her back and spreads all her
four paws apart, the great flat soles toward you.
The big male bear begins his performances by sit-
ting up with his paws crossed primly. If you do
not throw him a carrot he rises erect on his hind
legs and jiggles up and down like a man about to
leap from a springboard. That failing, he whirls
himself round with a dance step once or twice, and
then puts his forepaws against the edge of the pit

177

A EEPORTEE AT AEMAGEDDON

and looks up with an expression which says:
"That's all. Come through with the carrot !"
The specialty of the third bear is sticking out his
tongue as he rolls on his back.

Now it appears that no one taught them these
tricks. Generations and generations ago the
bears of Bern learned that such little ways
brought home the money. Succeeding genera-
tions of eleemosynary Bern bears learned them
from their elders. The two half -grown cubs — us-
ually kept apart from the others because their
mother, a low, despicable character, has moods
when she wants to eat them — have progressed
with their education as far as sitting up on their
hind legs.

Bern is flowing chockful these days. I hear
that it is the only city in Switzerland where the
hotels are not closed or failing. Its population, in
fact, has increased by nearly ten thousand since
the war; for it is the capital of the one neutral
country that furnishes the direct link between the
belligerents; and the new diplomatic activities,
legitimate and illegitimate, open and secret, are
without number. The German embassy, for ex-
ample, has seven hundred attaches, besides others
who may or may not be attached ; these, together
with their families, transported by Imperial favor
into a land where one can get something to eat,
make up a good part of the new population.

With such an increase in population houses are
hard to get. One of our attaches, for instance,

178

SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY

has been trying in vain for six months. The over-
flow has taken to the hotels and most conspicu-
ously to this excellent Swiss hotel at which I am
staying. Here also lives the general in command
of the Swiss Army — Switzerland appoints a gen-
eral only in times of national peril such as this —
so before the main entrance stands always a
sentry. At three this morning I was wakened by
tramping and sharp words of command outside —
the sentinels were being changed. j

Here dwell citizens and diplomats of all the! Qy
Powers on both sides of the war, in peace if not
in harmony. At the height of the season, which
is now past for Bern, one of the hotel employees,
who keeps track of such things, counted twenty-
three nationalities in the dining room and the lob-j
bies.

We dined last night with a tableful of our at-
taches and their wives. We sat at the "Allied
end" of the big dining room. Next to us were the
British; far away at the other end were the Ger-
man table — frequented by gentlemen with mus-
taches modeled on the Kaiser's — and the Austrian
table. It has been remarked here that the Ger-
man table and the Austrian table have little com-
merce with each other, and also that the Austrians
seem to have the better time.

Try as you will, you cannot help rubbing elbows
with the enemy. We have a reading room, carry-
ing the Berlin newspapers and periodicals, as well
as those of London. Last night I beheld, in chairs

179

A KEPOBTER AT AEMAGEDDON

almost adjacent, a lean, well-tubbed Englishman
reading the Times with the aid of a monocle, and
a portly German, with a mustache which aspired to
a place in the sun, reading the Tageblatt through
another monocle. If you enter into a conversa-
tion in the lobbies with a friend, some person of
doubtful nationality is almost sure to take a seat
behind you and absorb himself ostentatiously in
a newspaper.

To the English contingent here the Germans are
as things that have no existence. The Germans
are not quite so well controlled. I noticed on the
first evening an elderly gentleman with a hand-
some, artistic hawk face, accompanied wherever
he went by two ladies of ample proportions. I
was told next day that he was a well-known Vien-
nese comedian, who has obtained from his govern-
ment the favor of taking his vacation in a land
where there is something to eat.

Last night my wife found herself in the eleva-
tor with this trio. They stared at her hard. As
she approached her floor she said "Deuxieme" —
second.

* ' Ho ! " said the comedian in French. ' < French ! ' '
I am told that all the scorn an actor knows was
in his tone. "Ho-ho-ho!" roared the ladies.
* 'French 1" and their laughter followed her down
the hall.

I got mine this evening after dinner. From the
first I had marked floating in and out from the
German table a rather handsome woman, but am-

180

SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY

ply proportioned. She wore a wasp-waist corset
of the 1885 period and a pair of enormous dia-
mond earrings — and of course other clothes.
Whenever I passed her she looked me over from
feet to head, even turning all the way round to
continue the inspection. This evening I passed J
her on the way to the reading room. She was
talking with a German man. * * Ho ! American ! > '
she said very distinctly in French. "Ho-ho-ho!
American ! ' ' said he. They have a nimble wit. *\

The top floor of this hotel, I believe, has rather (&*r
thin partitions. One of the English contingent
tells me that he found himself for a time in the
next room to a German. Every morning, and
nearly every evening, he heard something which
excited his curiosity. There would be a splashing
and a sound of running water. Then a booming
German voice would say distinctly several times
"Gott strafe England!" The Briton, rather sus-
pecting that this might be done for his benefit,
finally consulted the valet on his floor. " What's
it all about ?" he asked.

"Well, you see, sir," replied the valet, "he has
promised to say those words twice a day, and he
is afraid he may forget, so he has engaged himself
to do it while he is brushing his teeth. That helps
him remember, sir ! "

We had a big addition to the American contin-
gent yesterday — a party of consuls and commer-
cial men from Turkey, that original kingdom hav-
ing just got round to cleaning out our diplomatic

181

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

representatives. Most of them had been in Tur-
key ever since the war; this afternoon I found a
group playing billiards in the American bar of
the hotel. "The first billiard table I have seen
for years I" said one of the consuls. Also, they
are eating immoderately, and admit it. "I have
a lot of lost dinners to make up," said one of the
commercial men. Whatever they told me of Tur-
key in this war is not, for one reason or another,
to be published. But they were in such a holiday
humor as temporarily to make glad the corridors
of this hotel, where the atmosphere of suspicion
and suppressed hatred keeps things always a little
somber.

At any time of the day one sees the uniforms of
both sides on the streets, for there are thousands
of French, British, Germans and Belgians in-
terned in Switzerland ; and according to the rules
of the game they must wear their uniforms, in or-
der to make the breaking of parole harder. My
first sight of a German Fritz clumping down the
streets in his neutral-green uniform and his stout
military boots gave me a kind of shock of surprise.
It is three years now, lacking a month, since — in
Belgium — I last beheld a free man in a German
uniform. To-day I saw dozens of men in French
uniform pass other dozens in German uniform.
Each party to these meetings would look straight
ahead, pretending that he had not noticed.

For the benefit of the Entente peoples the shops
are displaying such signs as these : ' ' Swiss manu-

182

SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY

facture." "Same composition as - — , the Ger-
man preparation, but of strictly Swiss origin. "
"This line made of Swiss and English material."
Knowingly to buy German goods is the one car-
dinal sin among the French, American and Eng-
lish colonies here.

BEBIS-, August 8th.

My cup runneth over with information, and
probably also with misinformation. This city —
what with its thousands of diplomats, of agents
open and secret, of propagandists, of peace
agents, of charity workers — is the one place in all
this world to gain a proportionate view of the war
—provided you are content to wait long enough
to sift out the true from the false.

An American does not stay here very long be-
fore he is approached with more or less sincerity
by people who represent the other side of the war.
Long ago they gave up all pressure of that kind
on the French and the British ; but we are new to
I the war, and they still have hopes, as I read the
signs, of breaking down our sympathy with the
Entente Allies. They do not come to one as peo-
ple seeking information; they carefully refrain
from trying to pump out facts. What they are
trying is to implant certain ideas. Collating their
remarks, I see that they harp always on two main
lines.

The first is to drive a wedge between us and
the British. They dwell on that point. If en-

183

A EEPOKTEE AT AEMAGEDDON

couraged to talk on the subject most of them lose
their tempers and fly off into loud absurdities.
Twice in the past two days I have been told that
for twenty years England, scheming England,
maintained a press bureau, and that every impres-
sion of Germany published in America came
through that bureau. All of which sounds humor-
ous in the ears of a correspondent who went to jail
more than once in the early days of the war be-
cause he grew too enterprising in his efforts to
prove England 's case.

Eage rises to its climax when you question the
meaning of that hollowest phrase in history,
" Freedom of the seas."

"But aren't the seas free?" you ask mildly.

"Not while one side can blockade the other's
ports in time of war ! " is the answer from a man
who has just told you that if peace comes now
there will never be another war.

The other point, on which they hammer persis-
tently and with better temper, should be rather
more interesting to us. Eemembering that we are
fighting for democracy and for nothing else, they
try to make one believe that the battle of democ-
racy is won — that a democratized Germany is
waiting with outstretched arms to inaugurate the
brotherhood of man. One of them — I believe him
a sincere man too — was in Germany during the
upheaval that shot Bethmann-Hollweg out of of-
fice. He gave a very coherent and interesting ac-
count of events in that crisis. It went to prove

184

SWITZEBLAND THE UNEASY

that the Socialists, the Centrists and the Progres-
sives had combined on the peace program of
no annexations and no indemnities, that they
iad secured a majority of the Beichstag, and
tat they had pledged Michaelis, before he
took office, to support their views. According
to him the democratization of Germany was
jomplete.

I half believed him — there is no question in my
lind that he believed himself — until the next day,
n I quoted his views to several well-informed,
ible and coldly neutral Swiss. They laughed.
'Bethmann-Hollweg went out because he wab-
)led," they said in effect; " Michaelis went in be-
luse he would be sure to take program and be-
tuse he would probably be more firm. A few
>ps were thrown to the people, but the old crowd
still in control. ' '

Let me absolve myself from any charge of hold-
ig intellectual commerce with the enemy. Some
>f these men pretend at least to be neutrals,
lome of them are actually citizens by birth of the
Entente nations. There is a kind of mind which
the German machinery of life fascinates. Some
ten or a dozen American correspondents, of whom
I was one, witnessed the first German drive
through Belgium. Most of us were so appalled
and horrified by what we saw as to became anti-
German for life. But one man was so overcome
with admiration that he threw up his position as
London correspondent, to follow their armies and

185

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

to further their cause by every means in his power.
I It is a matter of temperament, I suppose.

BEEN, August 9th.

p- Though this has nothing to do with the war let
me mention that Switzerland seems to me to do
excellently well with her system of public owner-
ship of public utilities. The tramway system in
this city of one hundred thousand inhabitants is
smooth-running, convenient, comfortable. The
fares are either two or three cents. A few years
ago, when municipal ownership was much dis-
cussed, I remember that its antagonists had much
to say about the inefficiency of the Swiss telephone
system. From an experience of a week with the
Bern telephones I should say that the service is as
good as we used to get in San Francisco — which
has always seemed to me the perfect standard.
Yesterday I had a long talk with one of our repre-
sentatives here. In the course of our conversa-
tion he called up Basel, some two hours away by
train, and Zurich, four hours away. I never saw
a long-distance connection made more promptly
in the United States. "That's a great comfort
about working in Switzerland," he said. "You
can telephone so conveniently to any part of the

(country." Local calls in Bern cost three cents.
I have been trying to run down the report cur-

frent in the Allied Nations, that Germany at the be-
ginning of the war hesitated whether to invade
France through Belgium or Switzerland, and de-

186

SWITZERLAND THE UNEASY

cided on Belgium because of the excellence of the
Swiss Army. That is after all a futile quest. If
the story is true its confirmation will come only
years hence, when state papers become available
and people begin to publish their reminiscences.
However, every Swiss has heard it, and most be-
lieve it. This I find is the popular form of the
story as told in the cottages and wayside inns:
Three years before the war the Kaiser visited
Switzerland and watched the target practice of the
Swiss Army, which is the best in the world. He
saw one recruit make a perfect score — ten bull's-
jyes out of ten tries at three hundred yards.

* Excellent shooting,' said the Kaiser.

'Yes,' said the recruit, 'and we have three
hundred men who shoot as well as I do. '

' 'In that case,' said the Kaiser, 'we will go .
through Belgium!' "

CHAPTER XII

AFTER THREE YEARS

SCHEIDIGG, BERNESE OBERLAND, August llth.

MURREN, where I was dropped yesterday from
the terminus of a dizzy rack-and-pinion railway,
stands at an elevation of some five thousand feet
in a highly picturesque part of the Bernese Ober-
land, which is called the most picturesque part of
the Swiss Alps. The town hangs airily on the
edge of a gorge from which the downward view is
like that from an aeroplane. Across the gorge,
and seeming to rise in your very face, is the
Monk's Hood — a great, black cliff-wall. Craning
your neck, you can see above that a white slope,
vanishing into the clouds. It is part of the Jung-
frau — her majestic peak, which dominates the
whole Bernese Oberland, is hidden by its very
proximity. On the right is a high, white moun-
tain wall; and everywhere above are glaciers.
But stay ! I came very near to writing about the
scenery !

Miirren is now virtually the British center of
Switzerland; for here England keeps her largest
camp of exchanged and interned prisoners. Since
Germany has shown that she recognizes no obli-

188

AFTER THEEE YEARS

gations of honor, prisoners cannot be exchanged
on the old basis, whereby the exchanged man goes
home on parole not to re-enter the war. However,
the Swiss Red Cross arranged early in the war for
the exchange of a limited number on the basis of
internment. Switzerland, afraid of crowding in
these times of scanty food, agreed to provide for
thirty thousand. A commission of neutral phy-
sicians visited the prisons in France, Germany
and England to decide what prisoners, consider-
ing their physical condition, had the greatest need
of release. Most of the men who drew this mel-
ancholy luck were suffering from the mutilation
of old wounds; others had broken down in cap-
tivity. Among those transferred from Germany,
an undue number had tuberculosis, the result of
under-nourishment. Other things being equal, the
men who had been longest in captivity were chosen
for release ; so among the interned men here are
soldiers of the old army — "General French's Con-
temptibles," — who saw only a day or two of this
war, for they were captured in the retreat from
Mons.

Now I must go back for a space of nearly three
years. Two days after the battle of Mons, and in
a brief space between military arrest and military
arrest, I, together with Gerald Morgan, was bluff-
ing my way from Brussels to Mons on an order to
pass German lines which, we knew very well, was
no good in the zone of operations. In a half-
destroyed village between Braine-le-Comte and

189

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

I Mons, we walked suddenly into a picture which I
shall remember as long as I have memory.

Round a corner came a procession of British
soldiers, four abreast, marching like veterans but

ithout arms. Before them, and strung out along
their flanks, were German soldiers, looking stout
and stubby beside the athletic lath-build of these
Englishmen. A very tall sergeant was at the head
of the procession. His blue eye lit on us ; we must
have shown by our features and our clothes,
in that foreign land, that we were one of his
race; for his expression said: "Who the devil are
you?"

Others caught our eyes. One tall Highlander
even turned round to regard us. Whereupon a
little German guard, tagging along with his
shorter steps, burst into a flood of impassioned
language and kicked him. That started kicking
all along the line. The cool British disdain of the
prisoners was beautiful to see. They never
turned their eyes to the kickers nor flinched from
the kick. They simply marched on with uninter-
rupted step, their eyes straight ahead; but now
and then one of them, speaking from the corner
of his mouth as convicts do, expressed himself in
forcible and vulgar Anglo-Saxon.

A wave of hot, primitive rage swept over me at
seeing one of jgv_own race and speech treated in
a manner so brutally cowardly ; for the first time,
I felt the full call nfjfrp KinncLa.nrl Fnew where I
must stand in this war. But what could I do?

190

AFTER THEEE YEARS

An idea came to me. I hoped soon to get out from
behind the German lines and return to England;
I could at least take their names home, that their
people might know. I approached them, and just
dodged a German bayonet. The sergeant in com-
mand spoke a little French — I have no German.
He accepted the cigarette that I thrust at him as
a peace offering, but when I asked for speech
with the prisoners he fell into a wild rage and
made a suggestive pass toward his belt. The
other guards hurried us along. The Germans had
torn off all their insignia as souvenirs, so that I
could not even determine the regiments. The
only mark of identification was the black-and-red
checkerboard about the caps of the Highlanders,
which, I learned later, proved them to be of the \
Gordons. *""*

Later, and after several ticklish episodes
wherein before showing our near-pass, we walked
into weapons with our hands up, we came upon
another convoy, resting. A line of Highlanders
sat upon a village curb, their heads in their hands ;
they looked like men clean spent. Across, the
street, soldiers in the regular khaki lay stretched
out on the sidewalks. Again we approached the
authorities, after showing our pass, requesting
speech with the prisoners ; and again we got only
the same violence of language and gesture. But
as I passed the Highlanders, one looked at me with
a cool, grey Scotch eye and inquired without mov-
ing his lips: "What are you doing here, Jock?"

191

A BEPOBTEB AT ABMAGEDDON

And I answered in the same fashion: "Luck to
you,Wullie!"

1 Three or four days later, locked up in a troop
'train going back to Germany, I spent five or six
hours in the station of Louvain, while the Ger-
mans, with a kind of methodical rage, were per-
forming their historic atrocity. Our car stood be-
fore the arch of the station looking out on to the
plaza ; we saw it all, including the preliminaries to
the shooting of three priests. That glimpse of
Hell, which I shall not stop here to describe, took
my nerve for some time ; I was months getting it
out of my dreams. But among the details that I
marked was a band of some seventy or eighty
British prisoners whom I recognized as part of
I the convoy I had seen near Mons. Bound them
I the Germans were moving in a kind of super-nor-
'mal state of blood-drunkenness. They were in
shadow; but as a new building flamed up with the
bright, vivid explosion of the patent German
house-destroyer, they came out in clear light.
They lay sprawled on the platform or sat braced
against the station wall in the attitude of men
too much beaten by weariness and circumstance
for any emotion. They were the last thing] I
craned my neck to see as we pulled out from the
Hell of burning Louvain to the Purgatory of
.broken Liege.

I expected to meet some of these men again at
Miirren ; this was half of my motive in going there.
But I never hoped for such luck as came my way.

192

AFTER THEEE YEAES

When, yesterday afternoon, I mentioned the mat-
ter to the pleasant, elderly lieutenant-colonel who
commands the camp, he said easily that he had a
few Mons men ; if I wished, he 'd make his sergeant
gather them up on the terrace at seven o'clock.
On the hour, I came out with a easeful of cigar-
ettes to assist conversation. I took one look and
sent back in a hurry for three boxes more. Sixty
men were waiting for me — all Mons survivors, all
taken, wounded or whole, in those first two ter-
rible days when weight of numbers forced the
British back.

We talked for an all-too-short hour. I did not
it, as I had hoped, any consecutive account of
leir adventures ; too many were breaking in with
testimony. The men I had seen near Braine-le
>mte, it seemed, were only half of the prisoners
iken by the British at Mons. The rest were put
>n a train near Charleroi ; but these strangely met
icquaintances of mine were marched for three
lys, from Mons to the Cavalry barracks at Lou-
rain. For two days they had by way of refresh-
lent only one cup of coffee apiece. They were
scarcely established when the Louvain affair broke
it; the first sound of firing made them believe
lat the Allies had come to rescue them. And
that night when I saw them on the station plat-
?orm — it was the second night of the Louvain af-
tair — they were hustled out of the barracks, halted
for several hours in the station, and loaded finally
m the back-going troop train that followed mine.

193

A EEPORTEE AT AEMAGEDDON

The rest is a series of flashes, all the more im-
pressive and convincing sometimes because the
man who spoke was struggling with a small vo-
cabulary for expression: " Kicked us! Yes, sir,
an' worse. Thing I hated most was those bull
whips the artillery uses. They was always curlin'
round my legs. ' ' " The uhlans would take cracks
at us with the butts of their lances. I got one in
the small of the back, sir, and it fair bowled me
over. I was lame for a week.'7

"When you stopped at Louvain, did you see
the old man and the boy that we had with us?
The boy wasn't more than fourteen. They were
handcuffed together and in a dreadful state, sir —
both crying* The Germans said they were going
to be shot. The 'Uns was digging a grave out by
the monument — I don't know whether it was for
them or not. They was shot too — we 'eard the
volley." "Worst thing I saw was the people
passing through the square that night. Could
you see it, sir? Orders had been given that all
the people had to walk with their hands up. Little
babies just old enough to walk — ought rightly to
have been in a perambulator — with their hands
up like the rest ; the 'Uns made 'em. ' '

Many times since the war I have heard that
when the first British prison trains passed
through Cologne the prisoners were moved out to
the station platform, where the populace, men
and women alike, were given the prized privilege
of spitting on them. Some of the soldiers testi-

194

AFTER THEEE YEAES

fied to this event: "Spit and worse I" they said.
Without being snobbish, let me say that an of-
ficer 's testimony to such facts as these is better
than a private's, simply because the officer can be
held responsible for his statement, and he better
understands the consequences of stretching the
truth. And in the course of the day I had much
testimony to the same effect from officers. One
of them, taken a few days after the retreat from
Mons began, was four days going back to Ger-
many by train. This was in the dog days of a
very hot summer, and all the way back they were
given water only once. Water there was, running
from the taps at every station they passed, but
when, their pride broken down, they begged for it,
ley got only laughs. Finally they asked a
roman who stood on a station platform carrying
pail of water. She spat at them and hurled the
rater in their faces. Another, who had not eaten
'.or three days when this incident happened, saw
woman in a Bed Cross uniform serving hot cof-
fee to the German soldiers on a station platform,
te soldiers drank their fill and went back to their
:ain ; there was still coffee in her pail. He leaned
rat and asked in German for coffee, explaining
low hungry he was. Laughing in his face, this
credit to the Bed Cross poured the rest of her
coffee out on the planks of the platform.

Another told me this incident: In their train
was a heavily wounded Englishman, raving for
water in the thirst of fever. Finally, at a station,

195

A EEPOETEB AT ABMAGEDDON

they attracted the attention of a woman in a
nurse's uniform and told her about this man.
She brought water and held it to his mouth. Then
just as he thrust out his lips to drink she pulled
the cup away, spilled the water on the floor, and
departed, tooth-gnashing.

They also had their stories of spitting and
'worse on the Cologne platform and elsewhere.
Such incidents as these, like the wanton and filthy
defilement of French chateaux, have always
seemed to me a worse indictment of the Germans
than the actual atrocities. Massacre may have

I the excuse of battle heat and blood lust. These
things indicate a highly educated spiritual rotten-

jness.

All agreed that conditions in the German mili-
tary prisons during the early part of the war were
unspeakable, but that they had improved in the
past year or so — except for the shortage of food.
That shortage is the reason why many of these
men have been granted transfer to Switzerland.
They broke down or their wounds would not heal.
One captain, taken as a wounded prisoner at Loos,
in 1915, told me that he simply could not get medi-
cal aid until weeks later, when he landed in the
base hospital. He knew that his wound was gath-
ering pus and needed lancing. Though he sent a
request five times he could not get a German sur-
geon to come near him. Finally a medical stu-
dent among the Kussian prisoners opened it with
the razor from a field kit ; by that time it had be-

196

AFTEK THESE YEAES

come an enormous, painful, purple lump. Dur-
ing the eleven months of his captivity the wound
remained open because of his run-down condition.
A few weeks after he reached Switzerland and
good food it closed; and to-day he is playing
tennis.

Shortage of food has been the main cause, prob-
ably, of tuberculosis, which affected some hundred
and eighty men sent out of Germany last autumn
and winter. These cases were sent to a separate
camp far up in the Alps ; and to date, forty have
been returned to the regular camps as recovered.
However, neither officers nor privates spoke much
about prison life except in snatches such as this :
I was standing with an officer admiring a beauti-
ful specimen of the wolf-like German — or Alsa-
tion — shepherd dog. "Wonderful animals !" he
said ; " I 'm taking a pup home. Do you know, the
Germans in the army teach them to bite a man at a
word of command? In our camp the guards used
to amuse themselves, when there was nothing else
to do, by making them bite the prisoners."

Life at Miirren is typically, even amusingly,
English. The town itself has no reason for be-
ing except tourist trade ; besides a few shops and
a few more native wooden chalets, it consists
solely of hotels and cottages. In the main hotel,
whose terraces hang on the edge of the gorge,
dwell many of the officers and the occasional visi-
tors. Other officers have brought their wives over
from England and rented cottages. The men fill

197

A EEPOETEE AT ARMAGEDDON

the lesser hotels, where they live in such comfort
as many of them have never known in their lives.
A Y. M. C. A. building has been hastily con-
structed of wood ; it has a small stage for amateur
theatricals, an overworked billiard table and much
reading matter. The officers are doing what they
can to teach the mutilated men who will never be
able to do hard work again the lighter trades, such
as wood-working and printing; in this they are
handicapped by lack of material and plant. The
camp generally quarrels with the climate. In this
place, five thousand feet high and surrounded by
the glaciers, there are only three months of sum-
mer, and the winter is Arctic. However, the cli-
mate has much to do, I think, with certain miracles
of recovery. Still, the British cherish a general
hope that they will be moved into the valleys be-
fore next winter.

The officers and their families dress religiously
for dinner; they entertain at tea; they have
dances; they conduct themselves, in short, like
Britons. There is a native Eoman Catholic
church for the Irish among the interned; and a
Church of England extension society has estab-
lished a temporary church for the Protestants.

With the men— and this is British again— sport
gives the main interest to life. The only level
spot in Miirren is a kind of plaza between the ho-
tels, in old years covered with a series of tennis
courts. Last autumn the officers, realizing that
the men had no place for the universal British

198

THREE YEAES

game of association football, gave up the tennis
courts, and the ground was remade for a general
athletic field. * Cricket flourishes in the morning,
as well as one-old-cat; the Canadians have not
enough men for two full baseball teams, and they
are disgusted to note that the English take no
real interest in the Only Game. I saw yesterday
the association-football match for the "cup tie,"
between the Eegina and Palace teams — named
after the hotels where the men live. At the end
of the regular time the score was a draw — one to
one ; so an extra period was called, in which Palace
made a goal and won.

With time out they had been playing nearly
three hours ; which is doing well for men who were
declared physical incompetents a few months ago.
As a matter of fact, the officers told me, some of
those men should not have been playing, but it was
nearly impossible to stop them. One of the Pal-
ace players, after a mix-up by his own goal,
flopped over on the ground. "May be serious, "
muttered an officer anxiously. "He had a silver
plate in the top of his head. If he was hit there
— " but it turned out that he had been kicked in
the wind, not the head ; in five minutes he was back
in the game, to the applause of the stands.

Once, late in the game, I marked a quaint group
crossing a far corner of the field — a Swiss peasant
boy, not more than three years old, and his little
sister, not more than two. Between them they
were wheeling a doll's perambulator. iWith their

199

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

thick stubby shoes, with his little wool breeches,
with her long, coarse cotton frock, and with both
their stolid, serious little faces, they resembled a
microscopic old man and woman. Just then the
field changed kaleidoscopically, as soccer football
fields do. The play came their way — surrounded
them. They crouched over their perambulator
while six gigantic Britons struggled round them
to kick a flying ball — but did it so deftly as never
to touch them. The ball dribbled down the field,
and the goal keeper removed them from the shell
zone.

I cannot finish without remarking on the dentist.
Past military age but eager to do something, he
thought on the condition of the prisoners' teeth,
and he asked the War Office to send him as a vol-
unteer helper to Miirren Camp. His services
were accepted, but the War Office strained at pro-
viding the necessary apparatus and supplies. So
he bought them himself. Ever since he has been
working, with his wife as assistant, to put right
every tooth in that camp. It was a big job, for
your Briton of the working class is careless of his
teeth. However, he has just about finished, after
months of hard boring ; and you would know these
English Tommies from others of their class by
their white tartarless smiles.

A pleasant life, as compared with, that of the
trenches or the prison camps ; but still it is neither
full liberty nor yet Blighty. And at this moment
the place is quivering with a new excitement. The

200

AFTER THEEE YEAES

Swiss have arranged with all the governments
concerned an agreement about repatriation of the
disabled. In order to make room for more intern-
ments all men of all nations whose efficiency, on
the strict Swiss insurance scale, has been reduced
fifty per cent., will be repatriated — back; to Blighty
for good. This, it is believed, will cover about
one-third of the cases. Every one now is think-
ing of home. Most of them, indeed, have already
seen their f amiles ; for a British charity has been
sending over wives for a fortnight's visit. But
that was only a taste. Men who a month ago de-
clared that they never felt better in their lives now
mope about, talking of their undermined constitu-
tions. The Swiss physicians, umpires of this
queer game, finished their examination a week
ago ; and there is nothing to do now but wait.

Scheidigg, where I write this, stands at an eleva-
tion of nearly seven thousand feet and is one of
the highest Alpine resorts. That would be con-
sidered no great height in our Kockies; but the
Alps are different. They shoot up from bases
not much higher than sea level ; the eternal ice of
their glaciers runs down as low as twenty-five
hundred feet. Here we are far above the timber
line ; the earth grows only pasturage and abundant
Alpine flowers. Just above us begin the snow and
ice, culminating in the lacy peaks of the Jungfrau.
Over everything to-night lies a wonderful Alpine
stillness, broken only by the pleasant tinkling of
cowbells — the Swiss dairyman, for what reason

201

A EEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

I do not know, puts a loud bell on every cow — and
occasionally the rushing boom of an avalanche.
But peace ! No scenery !

This afternoon, wickedly running away from
my job, I took the rack-and-pinion railroad to the
Yoke of the Jungfrau at an elevation of eleven
thousand feet. This, I believe, does not go so
high as our Pike Js Peak road, the European guide-
books to the contrary notwithstanding; but the
problem is not at all the same. The terrain over
which this road must travel is mainly precipices ;
above Scheidigg the track enters a tunnel that
runs the rest of the way just inside the surface of
a three-thousand-foot cliff. This cliff is pierced
here and there by windows, through which you
see the world we know gradually fading away and
the Arctic world beginning. The terminus is a
primitive inn tunneled out from the rock. With
its piazza as an outlook you can see on fair days
the true peak of the Jungfrau rising some twenty-
five hundred feet straight above.

Once the ascent of the Jungfrau was a two-day
job for thorough experts only, and very dangerous
at that. Now any person with a good head and a
sound heart, provided with expert guides, can scale
the peak from the Yoke in three to four hours up
and two back. Except for the mist above, it was a
fair day, and everywhere one could make out,
against the snow, dots like small strings of black
beads — roped parties of Swiss, now again alone
with their own mountain fastnesses, climbing the

202

AFTEE THREE YEAES

peak or making the less giddy but equally danger-
ous trip across the glacier to the Concordia Hut.
I was wild to go myself; I felt the peak calling me
like a lover. But it was too late in the day; and
unknown to himself the guide who showed me the
way to the Matilda Peak and the View discouraged
me from waiting overnight to make a start in the
morning. Doubtless he did not know what was
agitating my mind or he would have painted a
different picture.

"It has been awful this season," said Adolph,
the guide, being interviewed; "it seems as if
everything were against us. No one comes any
more except Swiss people — and they don't pay
much. Once, sir, we had an American gentleman
who hired six guides to take up his son and himself
and doubled our pay for a pourboire. Nothing
like that happens any more — no Americans, no
Germans, and only an Englishman or two. Now
comes August, which is the month for climbing the
peak. The weather is usually good in August.
We count on two climbing days out of three.
How many good days do you suppose we have had
this August? Two, sir — to-day and one day last
week. Seems to me now that to-morrow will be
bad too — that mist is going to settle down, and on
foggy days it is too dangerous — we're not allowed
to go up with tourists." The prospects of bad
weather on the morrow chilled my intention of
staying over for an ascent.

Adolph the guide did not converse in the lan-
203

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

guage I have attributed to him. His speech was
a mixture of English and French, with a German
or Italian word thrown in here and there. He
continued to gaze over the indescribable vista
across the peaks to the Bern Valley, and his
thoughts seemed tc grow more pessimistic and
discouraging. Three Eskimo dogs, used up here
for winter emergencies but now turned out to play
on their native element, loped over and sat down
in a circle, watching us like wolves. Adolph
packed a snowball and peevishly drove them away,
while he continued to dwell on the rotton state of
business. Many of the guides, he said, had quit
and gone to farming for the duration of the war.
He wished now he had done it himself. He could
have got a job in a factory for the summer. "But
that's hard after this," said Adolph. I agreed
with him. He thought he could make it up in Aug-
ust, so many Swiss people were mountain climbing
now — and then arrived this kind of weather.

Last summer everything would have gone bad
except for the chamois. Because no tourists came
to hunt them any more the chamois, since the war,
had grown plentiful and bold. The open season
is September. "Last September I shot ten, and
got sixty francs apiece for them," said Adolph
with pardonable pride. "But look now — in Sep-
tember of this year I am called to the colors for
my month of military service ! ' '

After all that, what could any man with the
bowels of compassion do but double the fee?

204

AFTER THEEE YEAES

I have refrained, notice, from describing what
Adolph and I were watching while he was inter-
viewed; for I promised not to write about the
scenery. I am rather glad I did. That vista of
the range falling down to the Bern Valley on one
side, that view of the glacier stretching into eter-
nity on the other, transcend any powers of de-
scription that I possess.

This hotel had eight guests for dinner to-night
— and it is the height of the season. Seven of
them speak French, and the eighth, a lone and si-
lent man, may be either a German or a Swiss.

At about nine o'clock, however, seven girls in
their late teens came in together and registered.
They wore heavy spiked boots, knapsacks, and
short stout skirts ; gay-colored silk handkerchiefs
bound their hair. Their blond complexions were
tanned a becoming saddle brown, and they had the
walk of lioness cubs. Swiss girls these, enjoying
the universal national sport of their people — and
enjoying it all the more, perhaps, in that the Swiss
have Switzerland mainly to themselves. Last
Saturday morning, in Bern, I noticed that the
streets were full of children walking in companies,
stout spiked shoes on their feet and knapsacks on
their backs. They, under escort of their teachers,
were off for a climb.

GKINDELWAL.D, August 12th.

This resort, which lies at an elevation of some
two thousand feet in a cleft between the highest

205

A EEPOETER AT AEMAGEDDON

peaks of the Bernese Oberland, has always been a
great center — perhaps the greatest center — for
mountaineering. Here also the Jungfrau domi-
nates the landscape. Scheidigg, where I passed
last night, the Yoke of the Jungfrau, where I stood
yesterday afternoon, are both visible, a sheer and
dizzy height above us.

One who follows that sport can get all varieties
of climbing here, from ascents that are not made
successfully more than once in two years — thor-
ough and dangerous expert work — to ascents that
require only legs and wind. This is probably the
reason why the English, the sporting race, had al-
most taken Grindelwald to themselves before the
war. This is a German canton, but all the street
signs are in triplicate — German, English and
French; and in most cases the English phrase has
precedence. A few years ago Grindelwald made
itself a winter resort; and it was almost as gay
and as well populated in January as in August.

To-day, in the height of the summer season, it
looks like a resort during the last week of autumn.
A few French soldiers, interned, are quartered
here; for them some of the humbler hotels keep
open. The big and famous hotel where I am stay-
ing has four hundred beds, and at present only
fifty guests. The main dining-room is now as
bare as a dancing floor ; we dine in a little break-
fast-room. One English family is registered ; the
rest are all French or Swiss. If the hotel has
harbored any Germans this summer the proprie-

206

AFTER THREE YEARS

tor would not admit the fact. This is the only
large hotel open, and even it was closed during
1915 and 1916. Since the war there has been no
winter season at all.

A resort like this, with many devices for amuse-
ment, must be kept up. In peace time the repairs
to grounds, tennis courts, toboggan runs, rinks
and the like, together with the upkeep of lawns and
gardens, are financed by the system of "kur-
cards." A tax of a few cents a day is added to
the hotel bill of each guest. In return the guest
gets a card which entitles him to a reduction —
usually twenty-five per cent — on the price of ad-
mission to the amusement places. There being no
guests to speak of, there is no kur-card revenue ;
nevertheless, the plant must be kept up. The ho-
tels themselves must meet the expense. That, and
the necessity of paying interest on their loans, are
beginning to drive the Swiss hotels fast into bank-
ruptcy. Why the proprietor opened his hotel this
season he did not tell me, but I think I can guess.
He was speculating on the close of the war this
summer. Switzerland, which wants nothing of
the war except its early finish, took heart last
spring from the Russian Revolution. Now the
Swiss believe that the war has still a long time
to go.

Roped to Conrad, licensed guide, I took a short
but dizzy climb this morning across the Upper
Glacier. Upon the question of his business, Con-
rad, being interviewed, said: "Business is noth-

207

A BEPOKTER AT AEMAGEDDON

ing — nobody comes." Being further pressed he
said that the guides would all have starved if they
didn't, mostly, own little farms. He wanted to
know when the war would end. I held out no
hopes of a finish this winter ; whereupon he fell to
cutting steps in the ice with an extra-vicious sweep
of his ice pick, which showed that he was not
pleased.

INTEKLAKEN, August 14th.

This, I take it, is the most famous of the Swiss
resorts. Perhaps some upstart hotel towns have
achieved in recent years more smartness, but it
may still be described as fashionable. Lying in a
valley with a delicious soft climate, it commands,
nevertheless, a glorious mountain view. Big lakes
— as the name implies — stretch on either hand. It
is no resort for those who want for their vaca-
tions a little of the good, bitter taste of hardship.
Interlaken implies leisure, luxury, dancing, bridge,
boating, swimming, tennis, driving, flirtation and
clothes. Its hotels are the last word in summer
luxury and in over-decoration. Along its main
street run clothes shops which have no equal for
smartness in the big cities of Switzerland. Or
they did run. With one or two exceptions they
are closed now.

The tale is almost the same as at Grindel-
wald. Of six or seven big hotels only two are
open. The one where I am staying has accommo-
dations for nearly two hundred guests, and only

208

AFTER THREE YEARS

eighty people were registered that night. Things
are even worse, the manager tells me, with the
larger and more expensive establishment next
door. Along the famous drive about the Lake of
Thun lie dozens of smaller and cheaper hotels.
Some of these now harbor interned soldiers. The
rest, from the observation I took this morning,
seem all to be shuttered.

Bankruptcy is merely imminent for Grindel-
wald. At Interlaken it is beginning to arrive ; the
weaker establishments are going fast into the
hands of receivers.

Though I did not know it when I left Bern, I
find that I have been making the rounds of the
Entente resorts. I have not yet seen a single per-
son whom I could positively identify as German
or Austrian. It seems that trade follows the
internes. Wherever French, British or Belgian
soldiers are interned there come French, British
and Belgian summer guests. In the resorts about
Lucerne and the Rigi lie the German internment
camps, and it would be hard, they tell me, to find
French or English people there.

I had expected to encounter a class of people
conspicuous in Switzerland, I understand, during
the early days of the war — those soft and selfish
persons who could not endure the stern new atmos-
phere and withdrew themselves from home and
native land in order to go on with the old life.
That class, I should say, is no more. So far as
I can see, the guests in these resorts — except of

209

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

course the Swiss — are war-weary people, driven
by the necessity of health to get a little rest. They
do not appear soft, but just worn out.

There is music in the Casino of afternoons; I
had tea there to-day. This building, I should say,
would accommodate a thousand people about its
tables. In old years, as any one who reads guide-
book fiction knows, the scene here was tremen-
dously dressy if not smart. By actual count there
were present to-day one hundred and twenty-seven
people, mostly women and children. Many wore
mourning. Of the rest no one was fashionable.
The clothes seemed indeed the relics of wardrobes
that dated from before the war. And except for
the children's, no face looked happy.

The Swiss are superb hotel keepers, and I had
no ill-cooked meal in all this trip through the
Entente resorts. But the fare was simple, and the
portions were calculated with an eye to economy.
Usually — and this in hotels that gave a ridicu-
lously long menu before the war — we got soup,
perhaps fish, a meat-and-vegetable dish, salad,
and a very simple dessert and fruit. The Swiss
war bread, which is served sparingly, has more
Indian corn than rye or barley in its composition,
and is therefore more acceptable to the American
taste than the French. With breakfast coffee in
the Parisian hotels there come two lumps of sugar
to each person, and no more. The same rule pre-
vails here, only the lumps are very small — half the

210

AFTER THEEE YEARS

size of the French. There are other restrictions.
For example, eggs and meat cannot be served at
the same meal — ham and eggs is against the law.
From this situation at good to first-class hotels,
one may easily deduce that the shoe must be pinch-
ing in working-class homes.

BERN, August 17th.

This morning a green-aproned boots sped across
the corridor of this hotel, carrying under his arm
a most elaborately embossed brass helmet, to
which, with his palm, he was giving the final polish.
' < What 's that f or !' ' I asked the head porter. < ' It
is the Austrian Kaiser 's birthday, and all the Ger-
mans and Austrians are going to church at eleven
o'clock," he replied. When, later, I approached
the assistant head porter and asked in English for
the address of the church where services would be
held in honor of the Kaiser, his well-controlled
face took on an expression of alarm. Perhaps he
thought he was facing a traitor, and again he may
have thought that I intended to throw a bomb.
All I wanted, of course, was to see the show from
the outside.

A highly spectacular and entertaining show it
proved, too. I had never seen the German Army
except in campaign uniform. I had forgotten how
much millinery the German officer wears on state
occasions. As for the Austrian dress uniform —
if such costumes were displayed for women's
wear on the Rue de la Paix they would be hooted

211

A KEPOKTEB AT ABMAGEDDON

as loud and garish. There were white uniforms ;
pale satiny blue uniforms; garish red uniforms;
sea-green uniforms ; there were delicate pale-gray
huzzar effects, frogged and heavily embroidered
in silver. One person, whom I marked especially,
wore rich sapphire-blue velvet, a long jacket bor-
dered with sable fur hanging from his shoulder,
half a dozen jeweled orders clanking on his chest,
a shako with a straight tuft of feathers towering
on his head.

In fact, I could fill several columns with descrip-
tions of the headgear. One man — a high German
officer I take it — topped off a uniform of white
with gold trimmings by a shining brass helmet,
which came down in a low sweep over his neck.
It supported what looked like a stuffed white
eagle, its wings outstretched and wearing a golden
coronet. On the whole I am inclined to award him
the prize as the best-dressed gent.

In the automobiles rapidly unloading before the
church were women in their best finery, varying
from Viennese smartness to expensive Berlinese
dowdiness ; but the birds of female plumage were
dimmed by the glory of their males. As these
peacocks of war dismounted there was a primp-
ing that would have seemed excessive in the dress-
ing-rooms of a Broadway show.

While they waited for service to begin, the as-
semblage stood on the pavement holding reception.
I have a feeling somehow that this was done by
conscious arrangement, in order to impress the

212

AFTER THREE YEARS

Swiss. Perhaps I wrong them. Perhaps they
did it because they liked it. Every lady had her
best new right glove kissed again and again. It
was a wonderful, sumptuous show — neither Be-
lasco nor Henry Irving ever staged a better.

Yet on the whole the performance seemed lack-
ing in spontaneous joy. One had a feeling that
the Swiss crowd, standing silent about, were think-
ing of the contrast of the trenches. Finally bare-
headed chamberlains in white and gold, who had
been making a way through the crowd for impor-
tant dignitaries, shooed the performers inside.
For fifty minutes the services went on ; then the
church doors opened to pour out a kaleidoscope.

In the crowd were two interned French poilus,
smiling sarcastically. Suddenly my memory went
back a fortnight — to Paris. I remembered the
men of France, and their baggy, ill-fitting uni-
forms. These uniforms come in only three sizes
— large, medium and small. For comfort a man
usually chooses the size too large rather than that
too small. After a little turn in the trenches the
color fades, and the horizon blue is streaked nearly
always with dirty green. A French regiment on
the march looks like a committee of the I. W. W.
in uniform overalls. The officer has a better-fit-
ting uniform than that of his men, and usually
manages to keep it neater. Otherwise only the
inconspicuous galons at his sleeve distinguish him
from the private. And that is true, whether the
occasion is the regular work in the trenches or an

213

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

important public appearance. I saw Joffre on
that great day when Pershing came to Paris. The
fine old savior of civilization wore his perfectly
plain working uniform, well brushed but a little
old, and his simple round kepi, in the colors that
mark him as a graduate of the Artillery and Engi-
neering School. The only high color about him
was the narrow line of service ribbons on his left
breast. Such an exhibition as this of to-day
would have been impossible during this war in
any of the Entente countries.

p "All dressed up like a kitchen stove with a
boiled dinner," remarked the American who
watched beside me. "Say, the unnecessary junk
on one of those fellows would keep a tenement
family for a year."

It would, probably. And the unnecessary junk
on a French officer — whatever the occasion— would
not keep a baby in cigars. I felt that I had seen
with my own two eyes what we were fighting about.

\ Democracy is civilization. Autocracy is drama-

rtized barbarism.

CHAPTER XIII
THE RIOT AT GENEVA

GENEVA, August 29th.

AT dinner last night we formed one of those
curious parties this war is always bringing to-
gether. Between us, we had seen most of the cor-
ners of Armageddon. A British couple present
had lived long in Turkey and the Balkans. In the
brief delay between Germany's declaration of war
and Turkey's, they had escaped from Constan-
tinople to Italy on a crazily overloaded passenger
steamer. A Serbian girl had gone through that
awful retreat to Monastir. A Canadian captain
was in Western Canada during July, 1914. On
his way home to Ottawa he stopped for a little
whirl at metropolitan life in Chicago. War inter-
rupted his vacation. A week later he was apply-
ing for a commission ; eight months later the Ger-
mans picked him up, wounded in five places, from
a shell hole near St. Julien. Then, weary months
of hard captivity; finally Switzerland and peace,
broken now and then by another operation.

The Englishman spoke on the contradictions of
Turkish character, on which subject he was both
wise and amusing. Some of his remarks deserve
recording :

215

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

"The story I'm going to tell you," he said, "is
part fiction and part historic fact; but it's prob-
ably all true, nevertheless. It begins with a little
drama I have made up out of my head.

"Tallat Pasha, Turkish Minister of Foreign
Affairs, sits in his office, going over papers. He
touches a bell, and Kemal, his secretary, enters.
A fine, crafty old bird is Tallat Pasha, and Kemal
is obedient and, for a Turk, very resourceful.

" 'Kemal,' says Tallat Pasha, 'what is a So-
cialist?'

" 'I do not know, Excellency,' says Kemal.
'What in time is a Socialist?'

" 'I asked you!' says Tallat Pasha. 'We must
have some Socialists. Here is a letter from those
troublesome people in Berlin. They say there will
be a Socialist Conference in Stockholm and we are
to send at least three delegates. Find me Social-
ists!'

" 'Very well, Effendi,' says Kemal, and exits.

"A few hours elapse and he returns.

" 'There are no Socialists in Turkey,' he says.
*I do not know what they are; but there are none
in Turkey.'

"'Very well,' says Tallat Pasha. 'Send for
Nassim Masaliah. He is a Jewish unbeliever,
and may be almost anything. He is to be a So-
cialist and bring two other Socialists.'

"Nassim Masaliah is a deuced clever little law-
yer, who has made a good deal of money out of
the war by doing whatever the Government wants

216

THE EIOT AT GENEVA

him to do. So Nassim Masaliah and two of his
friends are dubbed Turkish Socialists and sent to
Stockholm, with plenty of money for expenses.

"So far, the story is fiction; but that's about
how it must have happened. The rest is cold
truth :

"Nassim Masaliah and his two associates, fel-
lows of his own stripe, appeared at Stockholm for
the preliminary conference. They blithely regis-
tered at headquarters as Turkish Socialists, and
got a rousing welcome from their comrades.
Their troubles began when the Swedish President
of the Conference asked them pleasantly what
school of Socialism they represented ; also, he
wanted their credentials.

"Nassim Masaliah is a resourceful man on his
native soil, but here he was a little out of his ele-
ment. He tried to hedge ; but the president
pinned him down.

" 'I don't know,' he said finally.

" 'You don't know!' said the president. 'You
come here as Socialists and you don't know what
school you belong to! Where are your creden-
tials? What is the name of your organization?'

"Nassim Masaliah 's nerve was all gone by this
time, and he said again :

" *I don't know. I was told to come to the So-
cialist Conference at Stockholm; and here I am.'

"Now all this time the German delegates had
been winking and making signals at the three
Turkish delegates. At this desperate moment

217

A BEPOBTEB AT ABMAGEDDON

they created some kind of diversion and led the
Turkish delegation out into the hall. There they
held an inquiry. Nassim Masaliah confirmed their
worst fears. He didn't know the first thing about
Socialism. He only knew that he'd been sent to
Stockholm with orders to do everything the Ger-
mans told him to do. As for his associates, they
knew nothing at all. They'd been eating well in
Stockholm and they 'd enjoyed the travel. .Wasn't
that enough?

"As you remember, the preliminary conference
broke up in a disagreement and the real confer-
ence was postponed. The Germans took the three
Turkish Socialists back to Berlin. They're now
working eight hours a day with a professor of
economics and an interpreter — studying Social-
ism. Back in Constantinople, an assistant of
Kemal's is rounding up the rag-tag and bobtail
of the city and forming them into Socialist locals,
with officers. This is done on the advice of Nas-
sim Masaliah, who wants something to represent
when he presents his credentials again ! " x

GENEVA, August 31st.

The foot of Lake Leman and the head of the
Bhone Biver divide this city into two parts. Half
a dozen pretty bridges connect the New City,
where I live, with the Old. At the head of each

1 1 hare recently seen the German wireless press messages,
Bent out every night from Nauen for propaganda purposes. The
issue of May 20, 1918, had an interview with Nassim Masaliah,
"the eminent Turkish socialist!"

218

THE EIOT AT GENEVA

bridge stands a public Square. I say this by way
of explaining the events of yesterday. Also, heje
and now I explain that I have been keeping to my-
self while doing a job of writing. Consequently
I missed all the preliminary signs of trouble.

I was buying some cigarettes in a little shop of
the Old City when, glancing outside, I saw a crowd
gathered on the quai.

4 * What is that?" I asked, rather glad to have
an opening for a conversation with the pretty
blond little woman who was counting out my
change.

"It is a demonstration, monsieur, against the
high cost of living," she said. "You know," she
continued earnestly, "in Switzerland we have no
king. The people — they are our king. When
things are not as they should be we gather and
protest. The people are the king in Switzer-
land ! ' ' she added, a little defiantly I thought ; and
I perceived that, from my accent in French, she
took me for an Englishman.

I strolled over to the quai. A crowd of all ages
and of both sexes stood about, talking in groups.
Over by the river wall an orator had just finished
speaking and was carrying away the packing box
on which he had stood. The crowd began to drift
away in knots. It seemed as though everything
was over. On my way up to the university, where
I had an appointment, I stopped in an old book-
store. A sound of song interrupted my reading.
I poked my head outside ; it was a procession.

219

A EEPOETER AT AEMAGEDDON

First came men and boys, roughly arranged
four abreast. They were singing the Interna-
tional; and singing it, somehow, as though they
meant business. At the head of each section
floated the red flag of Socialism; here and there
a particularly nasty-looking loaf of gray, hard
war bread was carried aloft on a pole, by way of
showing what it was all about. Behind the men
straggled hundreds of women, some carrying
empty market baskets, some dragging children.
So far, though everything was grim and business-
like, there was perfect order. The policemen,
strung along the pavement one or two to each
block, regarded the affair languidly. I had half
a notion to break my engagement and follow;
but there seemed little possibility of interesting
events.

By making this decision I missed a good deal of
action. Fifteen minutes later, as the procession
approached the Hotel de Ville, a tramcar drove
across its path. Taking this as an affront, the
crowd charged it, pulverized its windows with pav-
ing stones, damaged the conductor and the motor-
man, and resisted with stones and fists a charge
of the police. I arrived on the scene of action in
time to behold a street strewn with broken glass,
and a crowd of people who looked as though they
were suffering from emotional strain drifting
backward before the steady pressure of the police.
On a corner two sergeants of the local force, dig-
nified and elegant in blue uniforms, soldierlike

220

THE KIOT AT GENEVA

kepis, silver lacings and epaulets, were completing
an arrest.

Geneva has no hurry-up wagon, it appears.
The police had just chartered an open horse cab,
wherein they were setting down, with great em-
phasis, a man and a woman. The man, a little fel-
low in a workingman's smock, had a welt beside
his right eye. The woman — large, fat, middle-
aged — had her decent black bonnet knocked over
one ear. She, like the man, was pale and set of
feature; her expression seemed to indicate that
she was in doubt whether to burst into tears or to
bite a policeman. The cab drove away in the di-
rection of the City Jail. Though I ranged the
streets for half an hour, I saw no further action.
A few small groups talked and gestured with great
animation ; and that was all. The riot, such as it
was, seemed to be over.

However, as I left the hotel after dinner, I saw
further signs. This building faces on a street;
at its rear is a wide garden, running down to the
lake quai. In going to town I have been accus-
tomed to walk through that garden and let myself
out on the quai by a gate in the high iron fence.
As I started to take my usual route the porter
stopped me.

"I'm sorry; but you can't go by this route," he
said. "We've locked the garden gate to-night."

I understood this precaution. Beside our hotel
stands another with the same arrangement of gar-
dens ; beside that is the German Consulate. Last

221

"A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

autumn that hotel was the center of a very pretty
riot. Much rumor had been running about Ge-
neva concerning a certain man, whom I shall call
Mr. Koch. He was reputed to be the chief Ger-
man spy in these parts, and he lived in that hotel.
One evening, after a pro-Ally demonstration
across the river, several thousand people came
trampling across the flower beds and formal
lawns, to call on Mr. Koch. By way of a visiting
card they presented a rope. Mr. Koch was not at
home. Scenting trouble, perhaps, he had gone the
day before to a resort in the mountains.

The mob, it appears, was not yet beyond listen-
ing to reason. The proprietor of the hotel made
a speech from the balcony, assuring the crowd, on
his honor, that Mr. Koch was not in his hotel and
would not be allowed to return. The mob hesi-
tated ; the police, taking advantage of the psycho-
logical moment, began a steady pressure and
cleared out the garden. The crowd dispersed,
pausing only long enough to smash some windows
in the German Consulate. Our hotel, it appears,
was taking no chances; for we do harbor some
Germans, besides an Austrian prince and a Turk-
ish pasha or so.

Yet, when we reached the Old Town, where such
troubles always start, all was peace. The lake
surface glittered back rows of electric lights ; the
moon made mystery of tangled, narrow hill
streets. The cafes ran brimful to the sidewalks,
and crowds, with the gait of leisure, strolled along

222

THE EIOT AT GENEVA

the quais, singing and laughing — lovers mostly, or
family parties.

A cinema show with an American program
flashed a luminous invitation. We entered, and
grew homesick while watching stock saddles and
Indians, and trains threading the Colorado
Eockies, and homes of wealth and fashion fur-
nished with trading stamps, and Charles Ander-
son foiling the sheriff, and Charlie Chaplin eating
pie. Then, weary of a French three-reel domes-
tic-triangle drama, we strolled out toward a
Square that heads a bridge on the Old Town side.
A block away from that Square we caught the
murmur, the mixture of scream and roar, which
emanates from a mob. We ran out into the
Square.

It was packed with men — mostly poorly dressed
and young. Under the arc lights I could see their
faces working, their arms waving. As yet there
was no action. Then, off by the lake embankment,
I could make out some kind of struggle. From
that direction the roar increased. And immedi-
ately the mob started — with what purpose I do
not know. I doubt if they knew, themselves.
From the rear, yelling men pressed against me,
and I must set myself to the task of getting my
wife out of the current to the curb. It was diffi-
cult, for she is a small woman; I had to protect
her with my own body while struggling against
the general rush.

When I had reached security and was getting
223

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

my breath I saw that the crowd was milling about
some center of disturbance and that the police
were charging. They came across the square at
a dogtrot, their silver braid and their epaulets
making splashes against their dark uniforms.
Each was carrying a long club, like a pike-staff
sawed in two. On their flank skirmished some big
fellows in citizens' dress, whose very feet be-
trayed them for plain-clothes men. A second later
they were plowing their way through the mass.

At that moment I chanced to glance behind me.
We were before a large and splendidly lighted
cafe. Along a balcony on the second floor a group
of men and women in evening dress — doubtless a
private dinner party — watched the row with chat-
tering interest. Beside me were two gilded young
Genevese men about town, whose form-fitted eve-
ning clothes gave them the effect of being cor-
seted. They had taken chairs from the sidewalk
section of the cafe and were mounted thereon.
Their faces expressed languid contempt.

"What is happening over there?" I ventured to
ask the nearest.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Much fuss for nothing!" he replied.

Doubtless he believed this, too. He had dined
well. We had no more conversation ; for a plain-
clothes man, feeling that our section of the crowd
was too far advanced, charged us, and the gilded
youths got down from their chairs just as he kicked
them from beneath their feet. By this time the

224 i

THE RIOT AT GENEVA

police were coming back with their arrests. I
have grown accustomed of late to the ways of the
Parisian police, who handle a peppery people with
the maximum of tact and the minimum of force.
These Swiss police, however, seem to hold with
the ideas of Bill Devery in the old days of the
New York force. The first man, in charge of two
policemen, seemed to have been knocked out. As
they hauled him along, half erect, his feet were
dragging on the ground. The second, shoved
ahead of his captors, resisted arrest. He was dig-
ging in with his heels. Boside him trotted a plain-
clothes man who, at regular intervals, cuffed him
on the side of the head. The next one was walk-
ing, with forced willingness, before a policeman
who had wrenched his arms behind him in a jiu-
jitsu hold.

The rest of the police were clearing the square.
I admired their method; they took advantage of
the terrain. They split us into four sections, thus
obtaining, like the German Empire, the advantage
of inner strategic lines. One, with which I was
numbered, they sent to the right along the lake
embankment ; another they forced to the left ; an-
other was herded up the narrow dark street which
runs into the Old Town; and still another — this
the largest and most dangerous — they clubbed
along the bridge. Halfway across the bridge, the
police formed their lines. Beyond them, in the
moonlight, we could see the crowd weaving and
rushing.

225

A EEPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

Ten minutes passed. Our part of the crowd was
quiet and orderly ; I perceived that the trouble, if
it came at all, would come on the bridge. I ap-
proached a sergeant and tried to explain that I
was an American journalist and wanted to see the
show. I got the same response that a Swiss jour-
nalist would have received had he approached a
Broadway policeman holding fire lines with a
parallel proposition. And just then the murmur
on the bridge turned into a roar. A flying squad-
ron of policemen detached itself from the Square
and ran to reenforce the hard-pressed line on the
bridge. Dimly we could see forms piling up in the
center of disturbance. Suddenly the crowd broke
and went backward ; the police cleared the bridge
to the other side.

This looked like the finish. But it wasn't; for
the crowd, driven backward, seemed to be rushing
of its own motion along the opposite bank. ' ' Go-
ing for the Germans ! J ' chuckled some one in the
crowd; and I got the point. Across there stood
the German Consulate; the disturbers, with logic
rare in a mob, had started for the true fountain-
head of their troubles. I ran down to the next
bridge and crossed; but I arrived too late. In
the region of our hotel all was peace, save where a
policeman or two kept stragglers moving along.

However, as I learned this morning, the best
fight of the evening occurred near the German
Consulate. A body of reserves had been drawn
round it by way of precaution. As the mob came

226

THE EIOT AT GENEVA

on, the reserves charged out to meet it. By this
time the rioters, so often baffled by superior strat-
egy, were in an unpleasant mood, and they showed
fight. The reserves held on until the police from
the bridge, swinging round the crowd, joined them
and beat the rioters back with their clubs. One
policeman had his arm broken, and two more are
in the hospital this morning with internal injuries.
The receiving hospitals worked all night with
blackened eyes and cracked crowns. Seventy citi-
zens of Geneva, including six women, are in jail
this morning charged with disturbing the peace or
violently resisting an officer of the law. I learn,
also, that demonstrations, though none so violent
as this, occurred in other Swiss cities — it was a
joint plan of the Socialists and the Syndicalists,
who represent, roughly, our I. W. W.

I could not help but sympathize with this dem-
onstration ; for the cost of living is ruinously high.
It goes without saying that Switzerland has more
food and better prospects of getting food in the
future than Germany. But the prices of most
commodities are higher here than across the Bor-
der. This is because the German Government has
taken hold of the situation and enforced maximum
prices for many standard commodities.

Here, the Government, perhaps because it has
carried along from month to month the thought
of an early peace, has taken but few measures to
insure reasonable prices. It has stopped the spec-
ulator; but before this happened the food gam-

227

A EEPOETEK AT ABMAGEDDON

biers had pretty nearly stripped the country of its

accumulated supply. The people showed their

teeth last night ; and since, as the girl in the cigar

istand said, the people are king in Switzerland, the

/federal authorities will doubtless be forced to take

tardy measures of relief.

CHAPTER XIV
THE LAST OF THE TOURISTS

MILAN, September 2d.

CEOSSING the Border from suspected Switzer-
land to suspicious Italy was hardly a pleasant ex-
perience. I have myself to thank. Usually, in
crossing between belligerent and neutral countries,
I keep on my person or in my baggage only such
written matter as I need to establish my identity.
The rest of my necessary documents — such as let-
ters of introduction, notes and unfinished manu-
iscripts — I post to myself at my new address, so
that the mail censor may examine them at his
leisure.

This time, my caution lulled to sleep by recent
'good luck at the Spanish-French and French-Swiss
frontiers, I carried everything — letters of intro-
duction, letters lately received from America,
copies of old manuscripts, and notebooks. Hence
a disagreeable hour of stripping, turning out lin-
ings and pockets, hot debate and fruitless explana-
tion. I might have been there yet, and I should
certainly have been forced to leave my papers be-
hind, had it not been for an American in the Dip-
lomatic Corps who was making the same journey.
He had peeped through the windows of the deten-

229

A EEPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

tion shed to see what was delaying the train ; and
he observed my fix.

At once he sought out the authorities and
vouched for me. So, when things looked blackest,
I was suddenly released, with papers and luggage.
Truth to tell, my passport — the fifth I have carried
since the war began — makes me an object of sus-
picion. The vise of either Spain or Switzerland
counts against a traveler at any Allied frontier —
and my passport has both !

So they loaded us on the train which travels
from the Italian side of the Simplon Tunnel to
Milan. In peace time the fastest express service
runs from Geneva to Milan in six or seven hours.
This run, to-day, takes nearly fourteen hours.
The train had been held for the settlement of our
case, it appears ; for as soon as we established our-
selves in the last vacant seats of the first-class
section it started.

In the passage through the Simplon Tunnel,
which runs under the Swiss-Italian frontier, we
had crossed into a new climate. As we climbed
the Alps on the Swiss side we were in rather cool
and bracing summer weather ; now the baking sun
of Italy beat oppressively down upon us. During
the burning middays of their hot summers the
Italians keep interiors cool by pulling down all
window shades. The same rule, we found, is en-
forced on the railroads. Our seats were on the
sunny side. Whenever, in order to glimpse the
terraced mountains, we tried to lift the curtain a

230

THE LAST OF THE TOUKISTS

little, a relentless guard rebuked us sharply and
pulled it down.

On the other side ran a long corridor, its cur-
tains raised, since it was on the shady side.
Through those windows we could, at first, catch
glimpses of the scenery ; but at every way station
a crowd of passengers piled aboard, with that
wealth of hand luggage which the economical Eu-
ropean carries in order to evade the tariffs of the
baggage car. Since there were no seats left in the
compartment, they disposed themselves on their
baggage in the corridor — men, women and chil-
dren ; soldiers, civilians and officials.

One more station, and I had given up my seat
to make room for a party composed of a mother,
a peasant nurse, and two well-behaved little black-
eyed girls of one year and three years. A plump
and pleasant old Italian who sat beside us followed
suit. The mother, a Milanese — pretty, young and
smart — took her eldest on her lap; the maid ac-
commodated the baby. She looked — this maid —
as though she were made up for a costume party.
Covering her coarse black hair she wore a kerchief
of figured satin, coffee-colored. It was fastened
by a pair of silver pins, with heavy, embossed
heads. Her waist and stockings were white, her
skirt was red, and her apron was a kaleidoscope.

The plump old Italian gentleman made the ac-
quaintance of this party at once ; and occasionally,
when the mother grew weary, he would relieve her
of the three-year-old, whom he would entertain

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A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

with his watch chain or with the bunch of evil- eye
charms hanging from his wrist.

The ladies found that by squeezing they could
make room for another; and so a seat was found
for a raving beauty, an Italian blonde, who, the
focus of every eye, had been sitting on her suit
case in the corridor. She had the true blond hair
— not washed of color, but shot with light. She
had a skin like clotted cream; a melting delicacy
of feature; and great violet eyes, both fiery and
soft. In her gray rajah traveling dress, her little
hat, her neat American shoes, she was the last
word in smartness. It was no surprise, there-
fore, to learn that she was just returning from
Paris.

Immediately she opened conversation with the
mother and the plump elderly gentleman. Being
northern Italians of the educated class, they used
Italian and French with equal facility, slipping
from one language to the other so often and ab-
ruptly that I doubt if they could have told which
they were speaking. When it was French I under-
stood; when it was Italian I understood just the
same — by the gestures.

Now the two women were talking clothes. How
did I know? By the sweep of their hands across
their figures. The beauty had seen such a dress
in a window! How did I know that? Her white-
gloved hands outlined the window and the dress.
About the neck it was marvelous — such lace ! Her
two hands flopped to her own fair breastbone and

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THE LAST OF THE TOURISTS

a rippling motion of the fingers spun out the lace.
By similar pantomime I learned that she had en-
tered the store, had inquired the price of a haughty
saleslady, and had found it frightfully, incredibly
high. It is useless for northern peoples to study
gestures ; we can never attain to the heights of the
most stolid Latin.

Shifting to French, they spoke on social topics,
and men. Such was the scarcity of men in Paris,
observed the beauty, that officers on leave must
dread the ordeal ; they are pursued so shamelessly.
Last week she had attended a tea where there were
twenty women and two officers. Those women
didn't give them a chance to breathe !

"In Milan," put in the mother, "in Milan, so-
ciety resembles one of those chases in the moving
pictures!"

We crawled and stopped, crawled and stopped ;
and at every station we crammed on still more
passengers. We were running now past the Ital-
ian lakes, a region of such incredible beauty as
to resemble the vision of some fantastic painter
rather than a combination of trees, earth, water,
brick and stone. Whenever, peering past the
crowd in the corridor, I could glimpse the land-
scape, it seemed to me like a region asleep. Sep-
tember is usually the height of the season in the
northern Italian resorts. Now the placid sur-
faces of the lakes were unbroken by boats; the
driveways were deserted; the hotels had their
shutters closed.

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A KEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

Already I could perceive the change that had
come over Italy .since, in the late spring of 1916,
I last saw the country. Then the war — for Italy
— was less than a year old. Then trains ran and
hotels accommodated guests as ever. Turin,
where I first stopped at that time, seemed even a
little more gay than usual; coming there from
Lyons was like coming from war to peace. But
this train looked like war; and so, by little signs —
such as the condition of the stations and the
dinginess of all painted objects — did the country
in general. I noticed, too, the shabbiness of
the uniforms in comparison with their fresh
smartness a year before — a sure proof of hard
service.

As we slid into the Lombard plain it became
chokingly hot. I grew weary, very weary, of
standing. So, of course, did the Italians. But
they made no special sign. Jn their sociable Latin
fashion they had all got acquainted; to the very
end they chattered like magpies and gesticulated
like electric fans.

At the Milan Station I had further proof that
Italy is at war. I could get no porter to assist me
with my hand luggage, which is complicated by a
heavy typewriter. A flagman, just off duty, saw
me toiling along loaded like a pack mule and of-
fered, for the tip of a lira, to assist. When he
dumped me on the sidewalk outside I found that
the hotel omnibuses had been hauled off the run
months before. It was useless for me to take a

234

THE LAST OF THE TOUEISTS

tramcar, as I was new to the city and had not the
slightest idea where my hotel lay.

The rest of the first-class passengers, I found,
had lined up on the curb with bag and baggage,
and were struggling for the little one-horse cabs
which occasionally loomed in sight round the cor-
ner. I joined the struggle. On account of my
ignorance of the language, it was half an hour be-
fore I secured at last a free taxicab, and was
whirled to that old-fashioned hotel where Verdi
lived out the last twenty years of his life, and
where, as a tablet shows, he died.

This hotel is famous for its cooking, which was
why Verdi, gourmet as well as composer, lived
there. But when, being by now very hungry, I
asked for the dining-room I found it was closed
for the period of the war. "We simply couldn't
keep it going in view of the high prices and the
scarcity of guests, " said the manager. "And we
didn't want to let down our standards — our best
cooks are all mobilized. "

We sought a restaurant down the street, where,
encountering an Italian friend, we were intro-
duced to the great dish of the country — fresh figs
and thin-sliced smoked ham. That sounds like a
strange combination — but try it! If you cannot
get fresh figs, melon does almost as well.

MILAN, September 5th.

Industrially and commercially, this city is the
heart of Italy; in fact, the practical, energetic

235

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

Lombard, with that local pride which always
marks the hustler, will tell you Milan is first
among Italian cities, and the rest nowhere.

"A Milanese, " runs a modern Eoman legend,
"was trading conundrums with a Neapolitan.

" 'My first/ said the Milanese, 'is E 0; my sec-
ond is M A ; my whole is the capital of Italy. '

" 'That's easy/ said the Neapolitan; 'Eoma' —
Eome.

" 'Not at all!' said the Milanese. ' Milan !> "

Center of a great industrial region, which man-
ufactures nearly everything, and especially silks,
it is to the visitor the most pleasing industrial city
in the world. Because it uses much electric power
it is not sooty, like Pittsburgh or Lille ; nor is it
dour, like Manchester and Glasgow; nor matter-
of-fact, like Lyons. The architecture and the gen-
eral plan have the qualities of lightness and
gayety, expressed in brick and stone, which sug-
gests Paris. The old wars that surged over the
rich Lombard plain spared some of its antique
monuments, which still dot the center of the
city.

Concerning the Cathedral, that pretentious ex-
hibition of stone lace, I need not write. It is one
of the famous buildings of the world; if for no
other reason, because architects differ so widely
and bitterly concerning its merits. Two hundred
yards from the Cathedral you are in a patch of
the Middle Ages — an old market piazza, sur-
rounded by palaces. At the end of a main street

236

THE LAST OF THE TOUEISTS

rises the battlemented castle that used to defend
the town.

The thing, however, which distinguishes Milan
in my esteem from all other cities I have ever seen
is that singular institution, the Galleria Vittorio
Emmanuele.

Imagine, first, four city blocks of shops and busi-
ness buildings surrounded by arcades. Now it
stands to reason that through these four blocks
run two streets, crossing each other, and each two
blocks long. Imagine, then, that the sidewalks of
these streets have been extended from curb to
curb, covering the space usually devoted to wagon
traffic. Imagine that from cornice to cornice of
the four-story buildings — all of equal height — run
arched skylights of frosted glass, completely pro-
tecting the pavement from rain and sun. Imagine
that over the center of the Greek cross formed by
the skylights is a high dome, also of frosted glass.
There you have the Galleria.

No wheeled traffic traverses it, but only pedes-
trians. It is cool in the most blistering summer
weather; it is bone-dry in the spring and autumn
rains. In spite of pretentious ornaments and
mural decorations it is not beautiful. It has none
of the simple majesty of the Pennsylvania Station
in New York, a conception quite similar. But
that is comparing it to the absolute. At the risk
of seeming a spread-eagle Yankee, I register my
opinion that the best architecture produced in the
United States during the past twenty-five years

237

A BEPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

is the world's high-water mark for the period.

What brings you back to the Galleria again and
again is the human note. It surges life. Along
its borders run the principal cafes. No Latin
eats or drinks indoors if the weather permits ; and
one may, with comfort, sit in the Galleria during
eight months of the year. So chairs and tables,
almost always occupied, block half of the space
from curb to curb. Between the cafes stand fash-
ionable shops. The Carrier a delta Sera, for
power and reputation the leading newspaper of
Italy, has its office in a corner under the dome.

Sit down before one of the cafes at any hour be-
tween nine o'clock in the morning and midnight,
and you behold a fascinating procession, which
comprises every element in north Italian life, from
peasants with gaudy headdresses to smart and al-
ways beautiful women of the bourgeoisie. By
habit, soon acquired, you come to make all your
appointments for the Galleria. Here, rather than
to his club, repairs the tired business man of Milan"
for his aperitif and his chat before dinner. Al-
ways there resounds from wall to wall the musical
bubbling hum of Italian conversation.

Now, because of the war, the Galleria has be-
come doubly interesting. Soldiers, in the varie-
gated styles of Italian uniform, give color to every
group. A detachment home on leave, still stained
with the mud and filth of the trenches, and still
festooned with rusty packs, strolls past, looking
at shops, cafes and pretty women with grateful,

238

THE LAST OF THE TOUEISTS

animated eyes. Groups of officers give the cor-
rect military touch — your Italian is likely to be a
well-set-up man and the uniform has attractive
lines.

Dining in the Galleria last night, my attention*
was called to a plump and pleasing woman of mid-
dle age who was eating spaghetti with her knife
and smacking her lips at every bite. The Queen .
of Sheba never wore more jewels ; and inspection ]" A
convinced me that they were real, not imitation. <$•
Whenever she wielded her knife her many brace- « 1. ^
lets — all of gold, set with gems — rattled like «* -
armor. °

"Munitions!" said my Italian friend. "But
from early in the war, mind you. In the begin-
ning our government didn't see the munitions situ-
ation clearly, any more than the other govern-
ments, and fortunes tumbled into the laps of peo-
ple who never had money before. That wasj
stopped long ago."

Milan is in this war up to the neck. She is
working all the more earnestly in that she be-
longed to Austria only a generation ago and holds
a long memory of old misrule. She has borne her
share of the burden of losses in this war of un-
precedented killing. In Paris no cafe orchestra
has performed since the war began. Up to last
spring, it was a breach of good manners to play
the piano in your own home. Once, on my way
down the stairs of an apartment house, I began
humming a tune. A Frenchman who accompa-

239

A KEPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

nied me gave me a mild rebuke — people who heard
me would be offended, he said. But in the cafes
of the Galleria two excellent orchestras play after-
noon and evening, and crowds block the footway
to listen and to applaud. All the evening, voices
singing in the full, high Italian tenor float through
the windows of our hotel.

I realize now that the Italy of the tourist is, for
the present, dead. It was not so last year. Ex-
cept in the war zone, every gallery was open,
every church crypt. The few people who had the
leisure and the permission to travel roamed in
luxury through the beauties of Italy, feeling that
they had the country all to themselves. Your
tourist is the most exclusive snob in existence ; he
is happiest when relieved from contact with his
own kind.

Now Milan, although preeminently industrial,
is yet a station of any art pilgrimage through
Italy. That most famous of all paintings, Leo-
nardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," is here, irre-
movably fixed in the plaster of the Dominican
Monastery. In some respects its galleries are
second only to those of Florence and Venice. But
the little refectory which holds the Last Supper
is double locked, and the picture, I understand,
has been thoroughly protected with either sand-
bags or steel. The galleries are all closed to
the public; and the priceless pieces, such as
BaphaePs Marriage of the Virgin, are gone to
some safe and secret place.

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THE LAST OF THE TOUEISTS

A treasure of the Cathedral was its set of
stained glass windows which streamed glory on
its marble floors. The light of the Cathedral is
now dun and commonplace; the old stained glass
has been taken out and replaced by plain, brown
panes. Here and there a spot of blue or gold does
splash the floors; it is cast by a piece of inferior
modern glass not considered worth saving. And
the sculptures — even to one whole altar — are con-
cealed by solid banks of sandbags.

Milan, within a fairly easy aeroplane flight from
the lines, is taking no chances. The city has, in
fact, been raided once; and other attempts have
been frustrated only by the vigilance of the Italian
fighting aeroplanes,

FLOKENCE, September 9th.

I shall have to take back a little of what I said
about the Italy of the tourist. Florence, the City
of Beautiful Things, still keeps a fairly open
house for all who come to see. In this, however,
she is unique among Italian cities. Her past is
her main reason for existence. By displaying
what her giants of art left behind them, she gains
her sustenance and her importance in the world.
Close utterly her galleries and her palaces, and
you would destroy what amounts to her main in-
dustry. And, though we are at war and the tour-
ist flood is dammed, still there are drippings.
A few women students of art, untouched by the
war, remain ; to shut up the galleries would drive

241

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

them away and give the final blow to the hotels
and pensions, already nearly ruined. It is hard
for any one with the love of beauty in his nature to
pass by Florence; so Italian soldiers from other
parts of the Peninsula often find occasion to spend
part of their leave here, thus bringing tips to the
custodians and meager revenue to the hotels. A
year ago last spring I found that everything was
running as wide open as ever. Shortly after that,
Italy, hitherto at war with Austria alone, declared
war on Germany. Instantly the Germans worked
up a tooth-gnashing hate against Italy. And Ital-
ians began to receive letters from hitherto
esteemed German friends telling them what the
aircraft of kultur were going to do to Florence.

As the Florentines tell me the story, those fiery
missives always threatened two structures in par-
ticular— Giotto's Tower and the Pitti Palace. It
is easy to see why the Germans picked Giotto's
Tower. A vote among painters and architects
would probably elect this as the most beautiful
piece of building in the world. It is almost the
symbol of Florence — its "lily." Its destruction
would be an irreparable calamity.

The Pitti contains one of the three greatest
Florentine art collections ; the Germans appear to
have picked it, rather than the more meritorious
TJfnzi and Belle Arti, because it is also a royal
palace. Thus, to deliberate injury they would add
delicious insult. Though a pretty long flight from
the lines, Florence could be reached by bombard-

242

THE LAST OF THE TOURISTS

ing planes ; and it would be nearly impossible to
drop a bomb anywhere near the center of the city
without destroying something irreplaceable.

So, with due regard to her practical necessities,
Florence too, took precautions. In the great gal-
leries, you miss some of the most famous and valu-
able of the large canvases — perhaps I would bet-
ter not say which. Of course, the beauty and
value of a painting is not determined by its size.
Many of the greatest, including most of Fra An-
gelico's, are tiny pieces of canvas or wood which
could be carried away under a man's coat. These
smaller pieces are still on exhibition ; the guards,
I believe, have been instructed what to do in case
of a raid.

Such great structures as the Cathedral, Giotto's
Tower and the Signorial Palace cannot be pro-
tected as a whole. However, the most valuable
carvings and sculptures in the Cathedral are cov-
ered with sandbags. Some eight or ten feet from
the ground, Giotto's Tower has a frieze carved by
the master himself — that same frieze over which
Buskin raves through chapter after chapter. A
scaffolding, heavily sandbagged, protects it.
Across the square is the Baptistery, with its fa-
mous bronze doors. They also are protected
against the heaviest explosion.

Next to the Signorial Palace is the Loggia dei
Lanzi, a little gem of an open gallery where, be-
fore the war, the unemployed of Florence used to
sun themselves about the bases of a half a dozen

243

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

great statues. The two most valuable of these —
Cellini's Perseus with the Medusa Head and the
antique Rape of the Sabines — are covered by
peaked sheds packed with neat rows of sandbags.

Michelangelo's Tombs of the Medici, the height
of the master's performance and of Renaissance
sculpture, are protected too, but in such a man-
ner that they may still be seen. This has been
done very ingeniously. I shall not go into de-
tails, but it is probable that a direct hit from the
heaviest bomb would not even scratch them. Most
of Giotto's remaining Florentine work, being in
the form of frescoes low down among the orna-
ments of great churches, is already protected by
layer after layer of heavy masonry. These pic-
tures, therefore, are still open to inspection.

A few other famous pieces are shut from sight
owing to special necessities of the war. For ex-
ample, the old Palace of the Medici, with Gozzoli's
joyous Procession of the Magi in its private
chapel, is now police headquarters for the city.
The police are too busy to bother with tourists;
and so the chapel is closed. Yet when all is said,
these few exceptions are scarcely missed in the
general beauty of Florence.

Living by art and the tourist, the city is hard
hit. What has happened to the hotels, I have de-
scribed before. Retail trade had mostly to do
with commerce in art or near-art ; that too is flat-
tened out. I should say that half of the dealers
in art, antiques and curios have closed their doors.

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THE LAST OF THE TOURISTS

One goes down streets of drawn shutters, which
recall those of Paris in the first winter of the war.
Ten thousand people, skilled and usually high-
priced workmen, were employed in the business of
reproductions. Honest workmen all, it was not
their fault if the middlemen worm-holed one of
their Medici-period chairs and worked it off on an
American millionaire as a genuine antique ! As a
matter of fact, there exists a legitimate demand
for reproductions — from museums and from peo-
ple who love the genuine enough to want the imi-
tation. This trade is dead. One or two work-
shops are still making pieces, on order, for mu-
seums ; and that is all.

For a time, as hotel after hotel, shop after shop,
went into bankruptcy, war suicides were common.
Sad among these cases was that of the Man Who
Looked Like Eoosevelt. The resemblance, they
say in Florence, was so startling that our Teddy,
on his trip round the world, called on his double —
he kept a book shop— and presented him with a
signed photograph. With the horror of the war
and the state of his business, he went mad. He
tried to drown himself in the Arno, and was pulled
out; he tried to hang himself, and was cut
down. His second attempt at drowning himself
succeeded.

Finally Florence, driven back on her own re-
sources, found ways and means. A humble can-
ning factory helped most of all to revive pros-
perity for this home of art ; for Tuscany, of which

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A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

Florence is the metropolis, bursts with fertility,
and these are the days when all perishable foods
must be consumed or rendered imperishable. So
Florence has taken a little heart, and has settled
down to the condition of an average Italian town,
living on itself — not on the outside world. The
cafes at night, the avenues and squares in the cool
of the evening, have even a little touch of gayety.
It is all native; for, though she keeps open house
for the tourist, he comes but little. Of which I
can give no better proof than this :

Yesterday I visited San Marco, the convent first
made famous by Fra Angelico, the Heavenly
Painter, and afterward by Savonarola. Once, the
tourists came by hundreds every day. It is still
open, for the fee of a lira at the door. Fra An-
gelico, as all the world knows, decorated with a
sacred painting every cell of his fellow monks.
Now in that cell which holds the painting of the
Annunciation I brushed away a spider web,
stretching from post to post of the door !

FLORENCE, September 12th.

I am, I profess, ordinarily quite indifferent to
what I eat, provided only that it comes in sufficient
quantities and at fairly regular intervals. My
friends and family say that I never know what I
am eating. That period of my life is past. In
this war world, I find, the matter of primitive food
occupies a good deal of my thought and attention.

Breakfast, as we understand the meal, is an in-

246

THE LAST OF THE TOUEISTS

stitution unknown in France, Italy and Southern
Europe in general. Upon rising in the morning
you have coffee, with a roll, and perhaps fruit or
marmalade. Luncheon comes early, usually at
twelve or half past; there the Continental makes
a hearty meal. Americans and Englishmen, resi-
dent in France or Italy, soon get the habit of the
country and lose the taste for a heavy breakfast.

Our coffee at Milan came with bread, but no
butter. To make up for that we had a little pot
of honey. On a saucer beside the cup was one tiny
square of lump sugar. Eeally, the little thing
would not have looked unduly large or loud if set
in an art-jewelry ring. It mildly flavored the
coffee.

That very day we found a way to beat the game.
Feeling indisposed, in the hot weather, toward
dinner, we repaired to a cafe in the Galleria and
ordered hot chocolate, with biscuits. The choco-
late was sweetened in the pot; but the waiter,
through some flaw in the system, brought, also,
two little sealed wax-paper bags, each containing
a mathematically measured teaspoonful of sugar.
Glancing carefully about, lest the police should
discover me in the act, I slipped the two little bags
into my pocket; and so we had enough sugar for
breakfast next morning.

Thus every afternoon while we were in Milan
we had hot chocolate, whether we wanted it or not,
and held out the sugar. In Florence, however, the
afternoon chocolate comes unsweetened. Our al-

247

A EEPOETER AT ARMAGEDDON

lowance of sugar with morning coffee is that same
measured teaspoonful.

Last night I heard a woman, who owns houses,
lands, motor cars and jewels, talk long and earn-
estly with her attorney over a purchase of sugar.
She had been offered at private sale twenty-five
kilos, or about fifty pounds. The question was,
first, whether it had not been stolen — so great a
quantity looked suspicious, she thought — and, sec-
ond, whether she could legally have so large a
quantity in her possession.

This has been a red-letter day in my gastro-
nomic history of the war. I have eaten white
wheat bread for the first time in six months — and
have done so legally. I went to tea at the villa
of an American. Like most of the famous old
Florentine villas, it was once half country resi-
dence and half farmhouse. The farm and the ap-
paratus for working its products have come down
intact through the ages. He makes his own wine
on the place ; he presses out his own olive oil ; and
every autumn his workmen thresh out his wheat
with a flail and grind it in a primitive mill.

Now the war law of Italy provides that a man
may keep for his own use flour made from wheat
grown, threshed and ground on his own place.
Not for him the eighty per cent milling and the
mixture with other grains ! He may grind as he
pleases. So he grinds it white. He has not
enough for steady all-the-year consumption, but
only for special occasions. At this moment I

248

THE LAST OF THE TOURISTS

contain three genuine American beaten biscuits
and two slices of lemon layer cake. Even after
this excess, I found it hard to be a hypocrite and
say that I had enough ; but I felt as though I was
wantonly wasting gold dust.

Let me not imply that I am not getting enough
to eat. Italy is taking care of the food supply,
seeing that all get enough and that no one gets too
much. I am merely pointing out that when a man-
is deprived of his accustomed rations he realizes
how much of a slave he is to his most primitive
appetite.

CHAPTER XV

THE VOICE OF ISRAEL

SOBKENTO, September, 1917.

VESUVIUS, in the background of the sea view,
was streaming a plume of smoke across that white
splotch on a distant hill which was Naples. Three
hundred feet below the terrace where we sat,
lateen-rigged Neapolitan boats were unloading
melons at a stone breakwater, which slashed into
the deep blue of the bay. On one side of the
breakwater bathers splashed and wallowed;
against the black bottom, visible to a great depth
in that clear water and from that height, their fig-
ures seemed to crawl like worms on dark cloth.
On the other side, fisherwomen, their heads bound
in red handkerchiefs, pulled rhythmically at the
ropes which terminated the great loop of a gill net.

Everything was incredibly picturesque; but
more — everything was soaked in history. Just
beyond the headland on our right you could see
the long slope of Vesuvius fade away to a beach.
There, a profile of stone pines marking the spot,
lay the buried and resurrected Pompeii. On that
headland beyond Naples, now buried in mist, now
peeping vaguely through, was Baise, where Brutus

250

THE VOICE OF ISEAEL

and Cassius plotted against Caesar ; where, in the
tale of Anatole France, Agrippina the dabbler met,
twenty years after, old Pontius Pilate. Eow for
ten minutes from the breakwater and you could
see Capri, soaked with memories of Tiberius, of
Agrippina, and of Nero.

History, I suppose, stirred in David Lubin, as it
did in me ; for I am an observer and he an actor in
a crisis of history beside which the crises that had
surged over these quiet waters and enchanted
shores were as a schoolboy's tug of war. Then
again, Lubin is a poet, though he usually trans-
lates his thought not into meters, but into actions.
So we fell to talking, he leading the way, on this
troubled world and its future. As he talked I
realized that I was getting, at last, a singularly in-
teresting interview. I had come down from
Naples to ask him, as American delegate and mov-
ing force of the International Institute of Agri-
culture, about the present condition and future
prospects of the world's food supply. And I had
found that the Institute, whose main usefulness is
its interchange of facts between nations on the
world's production, had already told all there was
to say. It occurred to me now that I had in Lubin
expression, the most eminent expression, of the
international point of view. That was what he
was — the world's greatest internationalist; and
yet an American — a Jew in religion, and with the
controlled imagination of the Hebraic race.

He had been many things, but mostly a depart-
251

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

merit-store owner and farmer in California, when
he conceived the idea that gave the larger use-
fulness to his life. A philosopher, tilting at all
the follies of this world, he had perceived that
agriculture is the foundation of civilization, and
that it was not getting its dues in the social organ-
ization. He saw that the lack of official informa-
tion on the supply made it possible for the profits
of farming to be gobbled up by middlemen; the
world's staple supply of food to be cornered at the
will of crafty and irresponsible manipulators.
The trouble here, he concluded, was largely lack
of accurate data. A man in Kansas, getting ready
to market his wheat, had no certain knowledge of
the wheat crop in Argentina or India, or the whole
world; and yet the state of crops in Argentina,
India and the whole world was vital to his busi-
ness. Some sources of information there were;
but all were unofficial, imperfect or insincere.

He passed this quandary up to Secretary Wil-
son, of the Department of Agriculture. "It's the
one great problem about farming," said Wilson;
"heaven knows how it can be solved ! " To Lubin
the problem was solvable ; the remedy, he felt, was
simple, as all great things are. An international
bureau of information should be officially supplied
by the Government, with reliable data on the
staples; should assemble and summarize them;
and should make them available to farmers and
all who handle the produce of farmers. An en-
thusiast, Lubin hammered Wilson with this idea.

252

THE VOICE OF ISRAEL

Wilson could not see it. He did much for agricul-
ture in his time ; but here he missed a chance for
immortality.

The time came when Wilson would receive
Lubin no more. So, like a Columbus on the back
trail, Lubin packed up and started for Europe.
He tried the English. The slow British imagina-
tion did not grasp his idea. He tried the French ;
and, but for a stroke of bad luck — the misinter-
pretation of an interpreter — he might have landed
his scheme in Paris. But it fell through. He
sent out feelers toward Germany and found that,
though the Germans welcomed any idea which
would improve German agriculture, they were less
than indifferent to improvement in world agri-
culture. He brought up at last in Rome. The
enlightened King of Italy listened to him ; in 1908
the International Institute of Agriculture, with the
principal nations of the world represented, was
inaugurated at Rome. Since then, the remotest
rancher in the world may know, if he cares to, the
world situation in his particular staple.

In this crisis the Institute has been of infinite
help to the civilized nations of the world. Had
the war occurred ten years ago, the warning that
food supplies were running low, that we must har-
bor and economize, might have come too late. It
would have come, also, only after elaborate and
costly search by special commissions. In 1916
and 1917 one had only to consult the monthly
crop-reporting cables of the Institute to know that

253

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

the wheat crop of such-and-such a country, from
a normal of one hundred had shrunk to seventy-
two; that the barley crop of that other country
was only eighty-three.

The Institute has done many other things, which
I shall not catalogue here; but the regulation of
the world's food supply, through accurate and of-
ficial information, has been its special service.

The man who made the Institute sat there be-
fore me, his eyes wandering now and then toward
the panorama of history, or leaping back to my
eyes with a glint of humor or of enthusiasm. He
has a face both strong and whimsical — a wide
mouth, firm, yet humorous ; a full head of unruly
iron-gray hair; a short straight nose, rounded at
the point. His frank and candid blue eyes gaze
at you from under eyebrows as thick and as white
as rolls of cotton wool. His broad and stalwart
figure belies his real condition; for he is not in
robust health — is, in fact, harnessed to one place
at a time. Now and then, as he talks, his words
die away; he closes his eyes and breathes heavily
for a minute — one of his heart spasms has caught

* him. Two minutes afterward, as likely as not,
he is bursting out on some folly of his times with

V^ a vehemence of voice and gesture which gives his
listener an uneasy concern lest he injure himself.

r A p Now he was running free on one of his special

>J^ hobbies — the confederation of democracies against
war. Long before that idea grew fashionable, he
had been exploiting it to whomsoever would listen.

254

THE VOICE OF ISEAEL

Indeed, his International Institute of Agriculture
was only a cog in his general scheme of world ma-
chinery; of an ultimately dominating world de-
mocracy. And at this moment he was speaking
not as an American, but as an internationalist.

" This war was bound to come," said Lubin;
"bound to come! Two forces were running op-
posed to each other, like two express trains.
When they get on the same track what happens?
Collision had been avoided again and again; but
they were bound to get on the same track some-
time. And those two forces are — "

Here he paused and, smiling whimsically,
turned his eyes upon my face. He expected an
answer, I saw.

* ' Democracy and autocracy ? ' ' I ventured
weakly.

He threw out his arms with an explosive ges-
ture.

"No!" he cried; and his voice exploded too.
"Judaism and paganism! I am a Jew," he went
on. "I've heard Germans say: 'You can't un-
derstand this Jcampf; it is the world's Jcultur-
Jcampf. You 're a Jew I9 And I say: 'Patience!
We had the law when you sat in front of your
cave, sucking a bone. You filled the skull of your
enemy with beer and drank ' ' To our chiefs in Val-
halla!" until you rolled over dead to the world,
and your squaw came and dragged you into your
cave by the foot !' I'm not speaking loosely. I'm
talking by the book. It's all written down in

255

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

Cassar's Commentaries. And we had the law —
had it for centuries — when you Anglo-Saxons
were coming down out of the trees. It's written
there— "

Lubin rose, with one of his sudden alarming
shows of force, vanished from the piazza to his
sitting room, and returned with an armful of
books. He dumped them down on the table and
selected a King James Bible. I opened it at ran-
dom. And my eye lit on this passage in Revela-
tion:

And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and
set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more,
till the thousand years should be fulfilled.

I read it to Lubin.

"It's an old Scotch superstition — * pricking the
Bible' — that if you open it at random and take the
first passage your eye lights upon, it's a prophecy
or a word of guidance," I said. "I hope that's
true!"

"The beast!" said Lubin, ignoring the supersti-
tion, but grasping at an idea. He waved a hand to
indicate a world beyond the bulk of Vesuvius,
trailing her smoke plume out to the north.
"That's what it is up there — the beast. But it's
only one manifestation. We've had these two
tendencies always — the angel and the beast. Did
it ever occur to you," he went on, shifting his
point of attack abruptly, as he has a way of doing,
"that there's hardly a word about politics from

256

THE VOICE OF ISEAEL

cover to cover of the New Testament? Only one
that 1 think of — and that has been terribly mis-
handled, misinterpreted, misunderstood — 'Bender
to Csesar the things that are Caesar 's, and to God
the things that are God's, and Paul's commentary
— to obey the powers that be, for they are or-
dained of God. But the Old Testament is a politi-
cal document. For we understood righteousness
in masses ; we taught that righteousness exalteth a
nation. Oh, yes; we were untrue to our faith
often. Who isn't? We had kings. We made
wars. But we were the first, the very first, to
conceive the idea of big corporate morals; that
nations like individuals were to be under the yoke
of the law.

"When my boy was at Harvard he sent to me
for a volume of Blackstone. I looked it over be-
fore I sent it on. And I read this — written only
a little over a hundred years ago, mind you —
4 Land is vested in the king.' The law of Israel
vested land in God. No one — not even the king —
could remove the landmark without being respon-
sible to God — which was, in this case, manifested
in the will of the people. For removing the land-
mark the prophet Elijah removed the crown from
Ahab, and Jezebel was thrown to the dogs. The
farmer was not to be deprived of his land ; there
were to be no renters — only free men, not serv-
itors. The Jews were forced to become wander-
ers on the face of the earth ; but they carried this
idea of freedom with them. Equal opportunity, a

257

A EEPOKTER AT ARMAGEDDON

fair chance for all, justice — and, above all, the
Messianic idea of justice between nations. But
there was the beast — the pagan beast drinking
from his enemy's skull. And the beast had many
forms. He was not only murderous kings and
lying diplomatists and Caesar and Napoleon ; they
were queer indirect forms — opinions."

Lubin suddenly snatched two books from the
table and held them up. One was Spencer's
" First Principles"; the other was the " Guide of
the Perplexed," by Maimonides.

" You know Spencer, I suppose," he said. "Do
you know anything of Maimonides? No? Let
me tell you about him. This Maimonides was a
Jew. Therefore he had, of course, a crafty dis-
position. Spencer had finished the first hundred
pages of his book. Somehow — I don't exactly
know what trick he used, but he was a Jew and
crafty, as I say — Maimonides sneaked into Spen-
cer's study, stole these first hundred pages of his
book and plagiarized them. There they are ; read
them when you have time. The circumstantial
evidence seems absolute. There is only one thing
about the story that puzzles me" — Lubin leaned
forward, transfixed me with his clear blue eye, and
smiled — "Maimonides died seven hundred years
before Spencer. Still, I suppose you can explain
that little discrepancy — how Maimonides came to
know so much of what is contained in Herbert
Spencer's ' First Principles' — if you take time
enough. Perhaps a German Kulturist could.

258

THE VOICE OF ISRAEL

"Maimonides was the mentor of Spinoza; but
look what Spinoza has written ! ' '

He opened another book, and I read a passage
from the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which I
quote from memory :

Therefore, the sovereign state is not under the moral law. Acts
immoral or punishable in an individual may be considered moral
when performed by the state.

* ' And there you ar e ! " said Lubin. ' ' And there
you are ! The creed of the pagan state ; the creed
of the beast! But it's logical— mind you that!
A missionary, just arrived, asked a heathen chief :
'What is good?' 'That I may take my neighbor's
wives and oxen,' said the chief. 'And what is
evil?' 'That my neighbor takes my wives and
oxen.7 In the beginning the world was void and
there were no morals. The strongest savage went
out with a club and brained his neighbor, and took
away his ox and his woman. 'Well,' people said,
'we can't get along like this; it's too disturbing.
If this keeps up there won't be anything left of us
but just that fellow.' So they got together and
had a powwow, and passed rules of conduct.
Then they agreed that the first fellow who broke
the rules should have the whole tribe on his neck.
So we began to have morals ; and then came Israel
ind the law, and the commandments. Thou shalt
tot kill ! And if you do society will take care of
rou. But get this — it couldn't exist without the
reement of society. It needed force ; corporate
259

A EEPOETEB AT ABMAGEDDON

force — every one getting together and agreeing
that if John was wronged by James all the rest
should come down on James hard. We had the
law inside the nations; but in the relations be-
tween nations — each was sovereign — there was
anarchy ! Anarchy ! ' '

Lubin burst out in another of his alarming ex-
plosions of voice and gesture. His heart troubled
him after that, and he closed his eyes for a minute
before he resumed :

" Isn't it logical, then, that, under paganism,
Germany should have torn up the treaty regarding
Belgium? Isn't it logical, under paganism, that
any nation should tear up a treaty when it op-
poses its interests? Spinoza says that it is to be
so as long as the nation claims to be sovereign;
outside of the yoke of law. ' '

With a feeling that he was leading me into some
mental trap I flew to the defense of my side in
this war. Governments, I admitted, were at times
terribly immoral. I felt sometimes that the ethics
of any government were lower than those of the
lowest person in the government.

' ' And yet, ' ' I said, * ' look at England. Perhaps,
in going to war for the defense of Belgium, the
British Government did not think of the treaty
obligation, but only of convenience — with Ger-
many established on the Belgian coast, England
was done for. Let us say that, for the sake of ar-
gument. Nevertheless, the British people would
never have permitted the government to ignore its

260

THE VOICE OF ISRAEL

treaty obligations or to have sanctioned that out-
rage. If the government had wanted to keep out
of the war the people would have forced them to it.
Four Englishmen out of five who enlisted in the
Kitchener army joined because of their indigna-
tion against Germany for tearing up that treaty. ' '

"And why?" asked Lubin. "Why can Ger-
many tear up a treaty when England can't? De-
mocracy— Israel triumphant, if you want to call
it that. A hundred years ago that great anar-
chist, Napoleon, was devastating this country be-
cause he wanted it — just like the savage who
thought that good was being able to take his neigh-
bor's wives and cows. Not so long ago as that,
England, as a government, also did rotten things.
But they've gone over the bridge; have had their
Passover — democracy. Democratic government,
can't get the people to stand for national anarchy;
such things are gone and we are nearer the Jew's
ideal. We went over the bridge from the first.
Yes; we've been untrue to our faith, sometimes—?
who isn't? You see, people have been under the
moral law a long time. Governments have never
been placed under the moral law. Hebraism and
paganism are the opposing forces now in deadly
embrace in the world's great JculturJcampf. Oh,
yes ; you may state it in many ways.

"Christianity is all right, " he added, running
suddenly up one of those little intellectual bypaths
that, with him, always come back in the end to the
main track. "There is nothing to criticize in

261

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

Christianity whenever it is grandly Christian ; for
then it is also Hebraic. But it is often otherwise
in some of the applications of Christianity. It's
when they trot out the banners of a king who's
going to conquer some innocent little country, and
bless them — bless robbery and murder in the name
of Christianity — that the reasonable Jew objects.
It's when some upper class, in the name of a per-
verted Christianity, says to the poor: 'Oh, yes, I
know you're miserable; but think of the glorious
time to come ! If you thank God that things are
as they are, and behave yourselves, and leave us
the fine clothes and the champagne, and the leisure
and the glory, you'll be rewarded in heaven/

" Israel's prophets and teachers always tried to
bring the Kingdom on earth, as well as in heaven.
And that's what I'm getting at when I talk of a
confederation of the democracies creating the
Kingdom. That is Jewish; that is Christian; it
is not pagan. We've made progress within the
nations. A man can't kill his enemy because he
feels like it. If he does all society gets together
and jumps on him — sees that he doesn't do it
again. The nations ought to do, and can do, the
same thing. They couldn't have done it a cen-
tury ago, maybe. They weren't in touch. They
couldn't understand each other. Now they are —
they can understand each other if they will. De-
mocracy hadn't conquered a century ago. It has
conquered now in the allied nations. It swept
China, and it swept Russia this year. Democracy

262

THE VOICE OF ISRAEL

is peace and justice — very close to the Kingdom.

' ' I wish I could get it to our boys over in Uncle
Sam's country — how different this war is from
other wars! It isn't in our nature to kill. You
don't see an American boy naturally taking a knife
on the end of a gun and jabbing a man with it until
he dies, and then going on and jabbing another
man — doesn't fit, somehow. Other wars — what
did they matter? They'd spent their thousands
of lives and the millions of money — for what?
Ask them. "We don't know. Has it helped any
one? We don't know. Why did they do it then?
We don't know. But this — this matters! It's
worth your life and mine, and every one's life.
It's the war of the Kingdom!"

Lubin had been talking too fast and hard. He
rested a moment, panting, and then broke out, with
one of his whimsical smiles :

"Doesn't sound very original to you, does it?
Well, it would have been original ten years ago,
and plumb crazy about the time when Napoleon
was ravaging that city over there. What did they
know of the confederation of democracies ; of the
Messianic age ; of the predictions of the prophets ;
of the beating of swords into plowshares ; of the
time when each was to sit under his own vine and
fig tree, with no one to make him afraid ? And the
struggle is eternal" — Lubin 's arms flew out; his
voice roared in one of his alarming explosions of
internal energy— " eternal ; or until the Kingdom /
is here on earth as it is in heaven !"

263

CHAPTER XVI

OFF SORRENTO

SORRENTO, September 21st.

THERE'S no use in trying to guide the conversa-
tion of this man Lubin ; it blows uncontrolled. He
is riding a special benevolent hobby in these days,
and, though it absorbs most of his energies, it does
not always govern his thought. So, though he
had dwelt for half-hour passages upon his plan
for a national system of agricultural chambers
of commerce in America, he never got down to a
full discussion of the subject until yesterday after-
noon, out on Naples Bay.

Sometime in the middle of the day the sirocco,
that enervating, sticky heat wind, had stopped
blowing, and the late afternoon came off cool and
pleasant. We had taken a little lateen-rigged sail
boat, commanded by Luigi, a skipper who can sail
round a ten-cent piece, and tacked out on a dying
breeze to the point where Capri raised her double
crest from the mists on one bow, and the grottoes
on the other make black slashes in the brown cliffs.
And here Lubin fell to talking of his hobby, whose
expression in America is the Sheppard Bill, now
before Congress. How much of a ripple that bill
has caused at home I do not know. Very seldom

264

OFF SOEEENTO

do I see an American newspaper or periodical in
these wandering, homesick days.

Lubin reached into his pocket for a pencil, found
none, and drew out a cigar instead. Balancing
that across one finger, he began to talk.

"Do you know the foundation for Alexander
Hamilton's idea of protection?" he asked.
' ' Well, it's a governing principle, as good now as
it was then. There's the city" — he indicated the
pointed end of the cigar — "and there, at the other
end, is the country. They're opposite poles.
They always have been and they always will be.
The city means progress. The country means
stability. A peasant nation, like some of the Bal-
kan kingdoms, is stable; but not progressive.
Things are in danger of going so" — he pulled the
cigar by its blunt end until it tilted and fell.

"No progress. Other peoples go ahead. They
don't. Fill up the cities, strengthen them, at the
expense of the country, and things go the other
way. You have progress — mad progress, with-
out stability. Like this" — he pulled the pointed
end of the cigar until the state, thus illustrated,
fell.

"So Hamilton fought for the protective tariff
when we were just a peasant nation, in order to
build up industrial cities and make a balance.
But now the balance has swung the other way.
Have you watched the Statistics on agricultural
ownership? Well, the last census showed that
thirty-five per cent, of the American farmers were

265

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

tenants. That meant, really, that thirty-five per
cent, of them were working for some fellow in the
city. Things have gone fast since the last census.
From the most reliable information I can get, it's
about fifty-fifty now. The city is getting ready
to own the country. When that happens" — he
picked up the cigar again, balanced it, let it fall
— "we go! Of course, when it comes to a finan-
cial transaction, the average farmer simply isn't
in it with the city man. The city man doesn't
have to be told how to market the set of harness
or the suit of clothes he has made. He gets that
. in the very atmosphere he breathes. Any city
* man can do a farmer in a business transaction.
Doing the farmer is his pet sport.

'Now look at Germany. She had to face that
problem and another one too. Twenty or thirty
years ago the bosses of Germany began to notice
that socialism was getting a terrible hold/ They
said among themselves: 'They say they're after
capitalism; but capitalism means us. If this
thing keeps up, we go ! ' Germany is a scientific
autocracy ; and for that reason it is the most dan-
gerous autocracy the world ever saw. It's the
beast, educated and made intelligent — and, there-
fore, a worse beast than ever. So they said:
'We'll take the wind out of this socialism. We'll
steal its thunder.' What they cared for was po-
litical control — autocracy. They could afford to
make an economic democracy if they only kept po-
litical autocracy. That looks all right to modern

266

OFF SORBENTO

Germans. I don't need to tell you the flaw, I
suppose.7'

He had no need to tell me, who had been over
here for three years, observing the thought of
Germany as made visible through her works. Be-
fore the war people used to say, carelessly, that
all this noise about politics was foolishness; that
it made little difference by what system a country
was governed so long as business kept running
and people were reasonably prosperous. We
know better now. The fruits of a bad political
system in Germany have been nine million dead,
twelve million cripples, and the destruction of
happiness for an entire world !

"But there's no reason why a free people! j?
shouldn't copy the best of her economic machin-1
ery, is there ? ' ' pursued Lubin. ' * The foundation \
of life is food and the foundation of civilization
is the farmer. They must keep the farming class
strong, as a balance to the city. So they started"
— here Lubin paused and smiled — "the Land-
wirtschaftsrat. There ! I was a long time learn-
ing that word and I have to set my face every time
I say it. They chartered a system of agricultural
chambers of commerce, or unions, or whatever you
want to call them, all over the empire. There was
a little chamber in each farming community, which
was under a central body in each district. The
district bodies were under a larger central body
in each kingdom, and the whole thing ran up to
a governing body for the empire.

267

A BEPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

" Every one of these bodies, from the smallest
to the greatest, had a paid professional secretary,
a specialist on agricultural conditions, market
conditions — everything the farmer should know.
The city man could not do the farmer any more,
because the farmer, unless he was a natural fool,
consulted his local secretary, who had accurate
knowledge on almost everything a farmer wanted
to know; and if he hadn't, he passed the question
upstairs until he got his answer. The middleman
began to knuckle down. And the farmer kept his
hand. Everywhere else the percentage of owning
farmers — peasant proprietors they call them over
here — went down, down; even in France. With,
us, it 's now about fifty-fifty. But the German per-
centage is still away up in the eighties.

"The farmer vote!" Lubin proceeded, making
one of his quick shifts of attack on the subject in
hand. "The farmer vote! We haven't any
farmer vote. It's a political myth. The farmer
doesn't really know what he wants — he only knows
that things are wrong and ought to be remedied.
But the farmer vote in Germany counts, because
the — that organization — don't make me pronounce
it again — has found out for him and instructed
him.

"They call the Eeichstag a debating club. It
is and it isn't. Politically it is. It can do nothing
to prevent a declaration of war by the governing
aristocracy, or to make peace, or to decide by
whom the nation shall be governed ; but the policy

268

OFF SOEEENTO

of that dangerous scientific autocracy has been
to allow economic liberty. So the Eeichstag can
make laws for the economic government of the
country. Now when they came to a law affecting
agriculture they have to submit it, before passage,
to the Landwirtschaftsrat."

"Can the Landwirtschaftsrat veto it then?" I
asked in my ignorance.

"Oh, no! It doesn't need the power of veto.
What it does hold over the Eeichstag is a political
terror. If it disapproves of the law, and says so,
the Eeichstag knows that any member who voted
for the bill has got himself in bad with the farmers
and will lose the solid farmer vote at the next elec-
tion; for they hang together because they know
what they want and the best means to get it. And
they know because their expert secretaries, all
the way up the line, have been studying the situa-
tion and informing them.

"We have the Grange. It has done something.
It has accustomed farmers to organization, for
one thing. But you probably know what a Grange
meeting is like. Brother Smith gets the attention
of the chair : 'Mr. Chairman, I wish to make a few
remarks about the money devil in Wall Street.'
Brother Smith is all right. The money devil is
there. But the Grange can't fight the money
devil, because it doesn't know how and it hasn't
the machinery. The Grange is unofficial, for one
thing. Nothing prevents rival organizations,
which scatter the efforts of the farmers; in fact,

269

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

there are such rival organizations now. Its secre-
taries, as a rule, are not experts. Theirs is more
a social job than a business one.

"Our organization, like the German, ought to
be semi-official. It should be chartered by the
Government. That is because only one organi-
zation at a time can work in this field — it must be
exclusive or it's nothing.

"What if Hoover, when he took hold of the food
situation, had possessed such an organization as
this ? He could have learned in a week the senti-
ments and needs of the farmers; he could have
passed advice straight down to every farmer in
the land — he could have had them mobilized before
he began. He can do it yet if Congress will pass
that bill. "•

"Never change horses while crossing a
stream," I objected.

"Unless the old nag under you is giving out,"
replied Lubin. "As a matter of fact, the French
have done that very thing. Back last year they
organized the peasant farmers on the German
model. And right now France is in better shape
for native food than any other nation on this side.
"Without her farmers' organization, Germany
could never have held out. The machine was
ready from the first month of the war. She has
made mistakes in food control; but the fault was
with a few politicians who did not know how
to use the machine, not with the machine itself.
That has worked perfectly.

270

OFF SORRENTO

"Will the farmers see it, even if Congress does?
I don't know. Some one will have to educate them
and organize them, of course. I suggest that as
a career for some young man. We're all at heart
terribly suspicious of the new thing. There was
Arkwright, who learned how to knit by machi-
nery. His fellow workmen smashed his machine.
They thought they did it because it threw them
out of work. They did it, really, because it was \
new.

"When I was a boy in the West the Digger In-
dian women were troubled with insects in their
hair. So they used to mix in a kettle a fine mess
of adobe mud. They'd plaster their hair with
that and then sit in the sun until the whole mess
made a regular brick helmet. After three or four
days they'd go down to a stream and wash out
their hair. Yes; it got rid of the insects. But
they could have done it in a quarter of an hour
with a comb and a little medicine. However, if
you 'd have shown them the comb and medicine and
tried to explain, they'd have thrown you out of
the tepee. "

Luigi, the skipper, brought the boat round on a
sudden tack, and skimmed the entrance of Queen
Joanna's Bath so narrowly that I could have
reached out and picked a bunch of red lichen from
the rocks. The rest of the party was peering out-
ward for a glimpse through the entrance into that
fairy grotto, the ruined plaything of some luxuri-
ous lady whose very bones were now dust. But

271

A BEPORTEK AT ARMAGEDDON

Lubin, as I saw when I looked back, was still gaz-
ing out to sea.

"It's an awful job — changing this world — isn't
it!" he said.

NAPLES, September 24th.

The landlord of the hotel at Amalfi, where, the
day before yesterday, we broke our journey for
luncheon, is an old gentleman, wearing the side
whiskers of a past era, between which gleams an
expression of geniality set thereon by fifty years
in the hotel business. When he welcomed me I
thought he spoke good English. Only when I
tried for deeper acquaintance did I learn that he
knew merely a few stock business phrases — like
"Do you wish a room, sir?" or "Luncheon will be
served at one" — which he spoke with that trick
of accent common to his race. Whereupon I took
to French, which he spoke fluently.

Amalfi hangs on a cleft along the Tyrrhenian
shore. Were I writing a mere account of travel
I should stop here, with page after page about its
startling beauty. There is a short but broad strip
of fine beach, and in the old years it was a resort
where strangers came in winter, and natives,
driven out by the baking heat of interior Italy,
in summer. The winter season is no more, as the
landlord informed me when we shifted gears to
French ; but some Italian families came this sum-
mer. A few bathers, braving the midday heat,
were even then swimming in the blue water below.

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OFF SOEEENTO

He seemed so glad to see strangers, after all this
dreary time, that he followed us about, talking.
He was joined presently by a sixteen-year-old
granddaughter, with the dark pagan beauty so
common in Southern Italy, and a little hunch-
backed grandson.

We fascinated the girl — we beings from the
outside. The very situation of Amalfi, shut up
in a cleft between mountain and sea, and the very
strangeness of its architecture, make it appear a
world apart, as though it belonged to another
planet. It had been more than two years, we real-
ized, since she had seen many strangers ; and two
years is a long time when one is sixteen. She
could speak no language we knew; but her great
soft eyes were always on us, interested and wist-
ful.

So, when luncheon was done, we joined the fam-
ily at coffee in the parlor of the inn, a room deco-
rated with high-colored Italian gewgaws, with
models of ships, and with signed photographs of
honored guests. Among them I picked out Long-
fellow, with his familiar signature. Yes, that was
true, said the host; Longfellow had visited this
house, and had written a poem about it. Behold
the poem! He produced a leaflet, printed, with
many a typographical error, in English.

Many other eminent persons had visited his
house. He rattled off the list and came out with a
fine climax on the name of Garibaldi. Yes ; Gari-
baldi ! He came in the sixties, on a secret mission.

273

A KEPOBTER AT AEMAGEDDON

"And my father, who was a patriot, knew; but
kept the secret. I saw him sitting where you are
now — our Garibaldi ! I was only a boy then, and
my father kept this house."

Gazing from picture to picture, I came at last
to the photograph of a stout young Italian in a
cook's apron and cap, standing amid the papier-
mache glories of cheap country photography.
Framed beside it was a letter in German, the
paper bearing a coronet.

"My son," he said. "Ah, he was a cook!
Listen ! That is a letter from a prince. He came
here. I said to my son: ' It is a prince; do your
best ! ' His dinner that night was a true creation.
The prince sent for him. 'You must go to Ger-
many to be my head cook,' he said. My son went.
But after six months he came back. He did not
like Germany. Voild! His letter from the
prince.

"You do not read German? 'The best cook I
ever had — an artist ! ' it says. There is his other
picture."

Above the mantelpiece hung an enlarged crayon
portrait. As I turned back I saw that the eyes of
the girl had brimmed over with tears.

"Dead two months. Before Monte Santo,"
said the father. "He was cited. They sent me
his decorations. ' *

"He was your only son?" I asked.

My host shook his head.

"I had six — all in the army. One" — here he

274

OFF SORRENTO

smiled a little with pride — "has been wounded
twice, and is a captain now. He" — my host in-
dicated the crayon portrait — "left five children;
they are with me. He would have taken my place
here, as I took my father's; for he was such a
cook, monsieur — such a superb cook!"

While Antonio, the driver, waited for the cool
of the day before bringing out his horses, pretty
well spent by the work of an unexpectedly hot
morning, we braved the direct-beating heat of mid-
day, to see the town. Only dogs and foreigners,
the Italians say, walk in the sun. However, on
the first street we were joined by an eight-year-
old girl, blond of hair, as these Southern Italians
often are, but brown of eye. She attached her-
self to our persons and never left us until she
waved us good-by at four o 'clock.

I regret to say that at first I took her for a
beggar; but when I offered her a sou she simply
put the back of her hand against her mouth and
shook her head. At the cathedral she was al-
ways underfoot of the verger; she skipped ahead
of us, like a sprite, down every street. She,
too, I think, was taken with the fascination of
the unknown world. Who knows that we did
not start an impulse which, ten years from
now, shall draw a girl immigrant through Ellis
Island?

You cannot go far in Southern Italy without
running against traces of American influence ; and
the contrast is always odd, since this region is

275

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

unimaginably different from our world of bright
hard airs, wooden houses, steel construction, sani-
tary plumbing and efficiency. We were going
over the cathedral, our faithful little hench woman
trotting after us, a finger in her mouth; and the
verger led us into the vestry, a room venerable
with age when Columbus sailed. There, like a
Puritan in a group of Neapolitan fishermen,
among the embossed silver candlesticks, the heavy
embroidered vestments, the venerable sacred
paintings, stood, stark and stiff, a regular eight-
eenth-century New England Chippendale-pattern
grandfather's clock! An inscription on one side
stated that it had been presented to the church by
the natives of Amalfi resident in New Haven, Con-
necticut, Stati-TJniti. Framed on the other side,
in one large group picture, were the photographs
of the donors — in American clothes, with their
front hair all carefully cowlicked !

Antonio, the driver, sprightly, gray-haired,
conversational, was himself a trace of America in
Italy. I noticed when we started that he spoke a
little English ; and presently I found another item
of peculiarity. Your Latin loves small animals,
like dogs and cats, as witness the tenderly cher-
ished trench dogs which are the soldier's consola-
tion along the Great Line. To them they are kind.
If they seem unkind to horses, it is not the un-
kindness of cruelty, I think, but simply of incom-
prehension. The horse nature somehow fails to
dovetail with Latin nature. "The Latin," said a

276

OFF SOREENTO

British cavalryman to me, "is naturally a poor
horse master."

But it delighted the soul of a horseman to see
Antonio care for his team all through that hot
drive. He carefully accommodated their pace to
the hills. Before watering them he took out their
bits, cleaned their nostrils and their slathered lips
with a sponge which he carried under the seat,
rested them a bit, and, his fingers on that horse
thermometer under the crotch of the foreleg, saw
that they did not drink too much. Before start-
ing he wiped down their slathered sides with a bit
of sacking or a wisp of grass, and made sure that
the harness did not rub.

It was no surprise, then, when, during a stop for
watering, Antonio suddenly volunteered :

"I spik English good one time, mais I become
bad because I no talk. I learn him in Hoboken,
New Jersey."

He volunteered further — speaking a patois of
English, French and Italian — that he learned the
livery business there, and practiced his trade for
a time in New York before returning to Italy and
setting up in business for himself.

"I no like New York," he added. "Peo-
ple all right — yes. Winter — snow — effroydble!"
And Antonio blew on his fingers and gave a series
of realistic shivers very refreshing on that blis-
tering day. The rest of his remarks had to do
with business. It was hard to keep livestock in
condition at current prices. He took down a nose

277

A EEPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

bag from under the seat, and showed a mixture
of bran and coarse beans — supper for his team.
It cost four times what good corn used to cost, he
said — ' i And regard it ! ' '

We pulled along that Sorrento-Amalfi cliff
drive, double-starred in the guidebooks as the
most beautiful road in the world, until we came
out above Positano, situated, like Amalfi, in a
cleft, but even more picturesque. Here Antonio
grew communicative again. ' ' Few men here, ' ' he
said. "They go to America when they get old
enough ; the rest go to the war. ' '

Indeed, as we drove through the upper fringes
of the town we saw, by way of men, only two or
three old fellows, bent of back and rheumy of eye.
At all the doorways sat groups of women, sewing
or resting — young women, with the startling pa-
gan beauty that is the common endowment of all
Southern Italy ; old women — beautiful themselves,
after their fashion, under the wrinkles. About
them played innumerable brown children in few
clothes or none at all. In the patches of festooned
vineyards which interspersed the houses, girls,
coifed with red handkerchiefs, were gathering the
grapes and carrying them away in huge baskets
balanced on their heads. The only young and
stalwart man in sight was the sentinel who, with a
click and a flourish, stopped us at the corporate
limit of the town.

Below lay the domelike roofs of this city of
stucco and cement, the long white lines of houses

278

OFF SORRENTO

broken by the dark green of luxurious semitrop-
ical vegetation. Across the valley, on garden
patches a little apart from the town, stood two
half-built houses, already roofed, but with their
walls gaping between the beams. Antonio indi-
cated them with his whip.

"American houses," he said, and laughed. I
thought this merely one of Antonio's little pleas-
antries until to-day, when I mentioned his remark
to a man who knows Italy. I find that the Ameri-
can house is an institution in these parts. A peas-
ant from Southern Italy emigrates to America
and finds work at railroad construction or har-
vesting. He stays four or five years and saves his
money. When, some November, he takes steer-
age passage home for his first vacation, he invests
his savings in a patch of land close by his native
town. He returns, and is cleared at Ellis Island
during the early spring rush of immigration. In
four or five years more, if he be ordinarily lucky,
he returns for the winter, in order to start his
house. It remains half built for another working
period. Finally he comes back with the money to
complete it. Then, if he follows the ordinary
course, he settles down to live in his native town
as a house-holder and a traveled person of con-
sequence.

In some of the old conservative South-Italian
towns these American houses are the only new
construction for one or two centuries. Occasion-
ally the new peasant proprietor observes and in-

279

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

troduces an American wrinkle. For instance, in
a little village down by Salerno dwelt an Italian
who in America became a plumber's assistant.
He brought back with him and installed in his
house an American bathroom. Tourists came
miles and miles to see that town for its Roman
ruins. The natives came miles and miles to see
Giuseppe 's bathtub !

Southern Italy, if one may judge by the Sor-
rento-Amalfi peninsula and the region about
Naples, takes the war with the resignation of an
old people which has lived through such troubles
many and many a time before. No flags fly in its
towns, and yet one sees no symbols of grief. Life,
except for the absence of men and a general dead-
ening of all activity, seems to go its attractive,
loose, smiling pace as before the war. It is not
at all like Lombardy and Piedmont at the north,
where one feels the nervous stress of war. Yet
the southern peasant has fought magnificently at
the Front. ' ' It has been a peasants ' war, really, ' '
said an Italian staff officer. Within these white
stucco houses hang many and many a soldier pho-
tograph of the boys who will not return — like the
one I saw at Amalfi. But in the doorways the
women still gesticulate with emotional sociability
over their work and smile a pleasant welcome to
the stranger on the road.

The landscape now is beaten hard and brown;
it resembles California just before the autumn
rains begin. Not for a generation, I suppose, has

280

OFF SOKRENTO

Southern Italy been so dry. Here and there An-
tonio pointed out the bare bottoms of streams
that always before, in his memory, had run bank
full. The weather last spring and summer played
us all a villainous trick. It has been many years
since grain crops fell so far below the average.
Lack of fertilizer and of labor accounted for some-
thing ; a mistake of the food control — all European
food controllers made their initial mistakes — ac-
counted for still more. But the drought was tire
main trouble. America must supply a deficiency
of millions of quintals.

This is all the more necessary because the Ital-
ians are and always have been a bread-eating
people. Julius Caesar's unconquerable legions of
Italian peasants lived and conquered the world
on wheat and barley bread, eating meat only oc-
casionally, when a raid on the barbarians threw
cattle into their hands. For the fatty element
necessary to human nutriment they relied mostly
on oil — the olive oil of Italy and Southern Gaul.
That characteristic has persisted. Your Italian
of common occupation can live from year's end to
year's end on bread and oil.

It is a mistake to suppose that macaroni is, for
the average Italian, a regular, necessary dish.
Macaroni is a luxury of the rich and well-to-do —
a pleasant though expensive way of dishing up
breadstuffs. The Italian peasant is more likely
to take his bread in the form of polenta — corn-
meal mush kept long in the pot, and cut out and

281

A EEPOETER AT ARMAGEDDON

warmed over as needed. To no people of the
world is bread so much the staff of life.

Just now, when in the natural course of things
Italy is depending a great deal on fruit and fresh
vegetables — perishable commodities — the food sit-
uation appears a little spotted; some districts are
doing better than others. In general the country
seems to eat sparingly but sufficiently. Let me
begin with my own hotel and restaurant experi-
ences, admitting in the beginning that hotels and
restaurants are only an imperfect guide to the
general conditions of any country.

Restaurant prices generally have gone up from
seventy-five to one hundred per cent. You can get
no butter, and there is far less oil in Italian cook-
ery than formerly. With breakfast or tea you get
a little measured teaspoonful of government sugar
— the real stuff mixed with saccharin. This mix-
ture tends to leave a greasy aftertaste in the
mouth. You find beside your plate one chunk of
war bread about as big as a man 's fist. That is all
you get unless you specially ask the waiter for
more — and pay for it.

As a matter of fact, one grows accustomed to
the rhythm of war rations, and I have never asked
for more; nor, I notice, have any of my dinner
companions. You are allowed only two main
dishes — as macaroni, fish or meat; desserts and
soups do not count. The portions, however, are
ample ; I do not rise from the meal hungry. For
dessert I have had nothing but fruit since I entered

282

OFF SORBENTO

Italy. One does miss sweets ; at least, an Ameri-
can does, for we are great sugar eaters.

The human race worried along without sugar
until two centuries ago, getting the saccharine ele-
ment from fruit and a little honey. The taste
for sugar is, in one sense, an unnatural one; the
starchy elements in grains and vegetables, supple-
mented by animal or vegetable fats, are enough
for human nutrition. When one grows really
ravenous for sugar he can buy candy — chocolates
are about one dollar and fifty cents a pound with
the inferior grades of candy correspondingly
cheaper. These confections are supposed, at
least, to be made from honey. However, filling up
on candy is not considered exactly a classy thing
to do — one 's conscience develops new and trouble-
some ethics in a world war. Buying candy when
sugar is short seems like cheating. Myself, I have
fallen only once in nearly a month.

ITALIAN CORRESPONDENTS' HEADQUARTERS,

October 18, 1917.

The Italian Army, last to admit foreign corres-
pondents to its lines, has now perhaps the most
smoothly working press system of all. It seemed
to me that I had scarcely arrived at the beginning
of my ten days' permission to the Front before
I was installed in a fast motor, with an escorting
officer and two others of my kind, and was running
at breakneck speed for a visit to the Bainsizza
Plateau, and — if fortune and the course of battle

283

s. A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

favored — to the Italian positions about Monte San
Gabriele. This was the territory captured by the
Italians in their last gigantic effort of August,
the greatest single victory won on the Fronts of
the Western Allies since the Battle of the Marne.

p- To-night, as I sit scratching off these notes on
the rickety table of a very dark little hotel room,
I am in a state of embarrassment common to all
who try to write about the war. I have seen
enough to-day, as one does every day at the Front,
to write whole volumes. It is hard to express it

; all in a few hundred words. The psychology of

I war is a kind of intoxication, a huge intensification
of life. Some of its moments produce on the mind
and the senses an effect more poignant and per-

^nanent than those of years of peace.

My impressions may edit themselves in time,
retaining only the really significant scenes and in-
cidents ; but to-night I am mainly struck with my
memories of war revisited; for a year ago last
April I saw the hinterland of this country at a
time when it was still a field of desperate and con-
tinual battle. And to-day I was struck especially
with its grotesque and queer transformations.

First, there was a little town, still unscarred by
shells at that period, where we passed the
night last year before trying to get into
the house at Zagora. It was headquarters
then, and a general in command of artillery
had been kind enough to give us a bed. He warned
us at the time that we might be wakened by a

284

OFF SORRENTO

"whizbang"; for, though the town had not been
shelled as yet, we were within easy range of the
enemy guns, and military works on one side had
been suffering of late. As for the town, it was a
little hill village, like a thousand others in North-
ern Italy, and yet with its own individuality. Its
three or four narrow streets centered about an
old Renaissance church and a tall slender cam-
panile. On the little public square stood an old
four-pillared shrine of some pagan god, an inherit-
ance from Roman times, now reduced to the con-
dition of a capstone for the drinking fountain.
On one border of the village was a wide and
pleasant chateau, its outer walls gayly decorated,
Venetian fashion, with flowery wreaths and cupids.

The town, at first sight, seemed to stand as I
remembered it, intact, untouched. Only after sev-
eral minutes did I begin to perceive the new stone.
Everywhere, in the gray spaces of walls that had
been white when the builders worked on them, cen-
turies ago, there was the gleam of white patch-
work. The painted chateau proved best of all
what had happened. The great irregular patches
of white crossed the running decoration of flowers
and cupids, and broke it. There had been time
and spare energy for rebuilding, but none for
decoration.

This town, in short, had been clear through the
cycle of war. Intact when I saw it in April, 1916,
it had been heavily bombarded afterward and had
half crumbled under the shells. In May and again

285

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

in August, 1917, the Italians swept on across the
ranges dominating the town and relieved it from
artillery fire. The canny home-loving Italian
natives — Italian still, though for centuries the
town had been under Austrian dominion — had im-
mediately set about rebuilding, with the help of
soldiers quartered upon them. Conservative to
their finger tips, they had rebuilt exactly and
mathematically on the old lines. As we swept on
toward one of the toughest and most cruel aspects
of this war, it seemed to me that I had been
touched by a little breath of the coming peace.

So we motored on over a wooded range, rusty
with the dull browns and yellows that October
brings to Europe; they do not know, in these
lands, any violent autumn tints like ours. I had
seen this range last in its tender spring dress;
but it had undergone a greater transformation
than that. Where it had been before an un-
trodden wood, it was now a world of intense mili-
tary activity, and of rude temporary buildings.
Everywhere, too, it was creased with new military
roads — those wonderful roads at which the Italian
engineers are so clever.

Here I must touch briefly on geography. We
were going north of the key town of Gorizia, into
the foothills of the Alps. They are called foot-
hills, but in the East of the United States they
would be called mountains ; they are fully as high
as the Catskills or as Mount Tamalpais, which
hangs over San Francisco. On the other side of

286

OFF SOEEENTO

Gorizia, stretching to the sea, lies the hill desert of
the Carso — a red, barren soil, in which nothing
grows except a few stunted scrubs. That un-
promising soil is spotted everywhere with great
outcroppings of rock, red or white, and studded
with dolinas, which are regular flat-bottomed
holes, like the craters of the moon.

The Carso is supposed to end at the fertile
valley in which stands the troubled city of Gorizia.
As a matter of fact, when, on the other side of
this town, the terrain sweeps up into the Alpine
foothills, this barren formation persists. In
places the lower Julian Alps are sweet with chest-
nut woods and underbrush ; but the plateaus and
many of the slopes partake of the character of
the Carso.

We crossed the summits of the nearest range;
we were looking, from a height of perhaps two
thousand feet, on to the gorge of the Isonzo.
When I saw it before, in the early spring of 1916,
the river was of a clear opalesque blue, in spite
of the early rains. Now it rolled muddy and
opaque, like one of our Western rivers when the
placer diggers have been at work. Indeed, the
landscape was transformed since the time when
the lines rested at Zagora, low down on that slope,
and when Plava, on the other side of the river,
was the opening to the communication trenches.
In those days the grotesque scars of war showed
only on the slope below Zagora, in a maze of yellow
ditches and walls and back trenches.

287

A EEPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

Now the whole landscape was so scarred. New
roads ran everywhere. They were alive that
morning with transports crawling through a light,
cold autumn rain. Everywhere — not going too
closely into details — hut settlements, banked with
yellow earth or with sandbags, broke the green
of the hills. The forest had disappeared in great
bold patches. Piled everywhere were military
materials. It looked not like war — except for the
uniforms — but like the preliminaries to such a
great engineering job as the Panama Canal or the
Assuan Dam. And, indeed, it looks what it is.
The Italian campaign in the mountains is the
greatest engineering job ever undertaken by man.

When I visited this field before I came to see
the famous house at Zagora, a military position
long unique on any Front. For at Zagora, on the
first abrupt slope of Monte Cucco, the lines locked
after the stubborn battle of November, 1915. The
Italians had crossed the Isonzo at this point and
were trying to force their way up Monte Cucco.

In a stone farmhouse on the outskirts of the
village they were definitely checked. As things
settled down, the Italians found themselves liter-
ally in the back rooms of the house, the Austrians
in the front rooms ; the Italians in the kitchen, the
Austrians in the coal cellar; the Italians in the
spare back bedroom, the Austrians in the dining-
room. On that spring morning last year we
sneaked in at dawn for the chance to put our
hands on a wall only a foot away from the enemy,

288

OFF SOEEENTO

and to crawl down a trench line where, through
the loopholes, you could see the walls of the enemy
trenches rising in your face only ten yards
away.

That morning, too, we were caught under a bom-
bardment for our pains, and forced to stay nearly
all day. The situation had rested so for nearly
six months when I visited the famous house; it
seemed incredible that it should exist much
longer. As a matter of fact, it did exist for thir-
teen months more — until the attack of last May,
which outflanked and took the Austrian positions
on Monte Cucco and forced the enemy back over
the mountain. For a year and a half men crawled
and whispered through the broken walls of that
house, chucking or dodging grenades, engaged
simply in the business of killing. It was never
shelled ; neither side could do that without the risk
of killing its own men. But it crumbled under the
constant vicious little explosions of the grenades,
until in the day of Italian victory it stood as it does
now — a foundation with two fragments of saw-
edged windowless wall rising brown against the
hillside. The rains have washed away the stains
of battle; when I saw it last it was black with
burned powder.

I could not quite understand, then, why neither
side blew up this house or attacked to relieve the
position. I understood to-day, having a chance to
look about. The house — -two stories on one side
and three on the other — occupied an abrupt hill

289

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

slope. But on the Austrian side a flat little piece
of hill plateau formed its front yard and kitchen
garden. Had the Italians broken through into
that field, they would have been slaughtered like
lambs by the Austrian machine guns bristling from
the reserve lines. On the other hand, had the
Austrians broken through they would have come
out on the abrupt hill slope controlled by hundreds
of machine guns from the Italian positions on the
mountains across the river. Only a great general
attack, like the one that came last May, could ever
have relieved it. There it stands, still unrepaired,
a monument of an episode unique in the history
of wars.

We crossed the river at Plava, where still stood
the wrecks of pontoons by which we crossed be-
fore— there is a real bridge now. To Canale we
traveled for three miles literally over the old
Austrian front-line positions, for in all the early
stages of the war — in fact, until the great sur-
prise attack of August — the river itself had been
No Man's Land; the trenches of either side ran
level with its banks. Much had been talked in
Europe about the rush of tourists, after this war,
to witness the trench lines of the battlefields.
As a matter of fact, there will be little to see. A
trench is only a deep ditch ; it takes constant work
to maintain it against the attrition of Nature.
Everywhere these ditches, even where they had
been wattled with willow branches, were filling up
or falling in. Grass was springing on their para-

290

OFF SORRENTO

pets and late autumn flowers were blooming. A
road, bordered regularly with trees, had evidently
run on this side of the river bank. These trees
had been scarred, stripped of their branches and
broken here and there by two years of constant
firing.

Yet with the autumn rains their foliage had
freshened before its fall; they looked no more
ragged than thousands of trees clipped for fire-
wood which one sees along the European roads in
peacetime. I observed the same thing in the old
trenches near Soissons, abandoned by the Ger-
mans early last spring. Nature will not be de-
nied ; and except for places like the Somme Battle-
field, where the soil has been chemically trans-
formed by the constant shell explosions, she is fast
healing the wounds of the earth.

Canale, which must have been a beautiful river
town before it became a point of support in a
trench line, looked so much like all those war-
battered towns, which every one has seen in the
cinema, that I shall not stop to describe it. From
Canale, Cadorna began last August the first move-
ment of his surprising attack, which relieved all
the mountains above us and took the Bainsizza
Plateau.

And now we were climbing on a perfect road,
metaled and graded at its innumerable hairpin
turns, which we could see winding above us to the
mountain summit. The Twelve-Day Eoad, the
Italians call it; though for most of the distance

291

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

it had to be blasted out of the hard Alpine sand-
stone and gneiss, the job took exactly twelve days
from the arrival of the working parties to its per-
fect completion. So we climbed, the guns, which
we had been hearing all the morning, growing
more and more distinct — climbed until we shot
about the corner of a cliff and came out in sight of
the Bainsizza Plateau.

What a terrain! For monotonous barrenness
it resembled the Carso. It rolled away, a mono-
chrome of reddish brown, rumpled here and there
by little ranges of hills. Even the foliage of the
few desert shrubs, touched with autumn, had
taken on the prevailing color. Only the white
rocks broke the monotony. These rose in ridges
and patches, making the landscape appear as
though snow had fallen and was half melted. We
shot into sight of a hill village, half destroyed like
the rest. Across the road lay a field where soil
had settled into a hollow of the rocks ; there stood
rows of cornstalks stripped of their ears.

"The Austrians did not destroy that crop!" I
remarked. "Why?"

"We came on too fast," said our escorting cap-
tain. "It was a surprise, you know. We were
streaming over this part of the plateau before they
knew we had started. The women and children
took to the hills. We rounded them up afterward
and sent four hundred of them back to the safety
zone. For days after the attack small knots of
Austrians were wandering round the plateau or

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OFF SOEEENTO

the forest, trying to find a chance to give them-
selves up."

This was the last sign of permanent human
habitation ; the rest were dugouts or huts wedged
in between rocks and sandbagged. But always the
roads were perfect. We came, in the end, to the
rear of a low hill range that closes the plateau on
the Austrian side. Beyond this range, half or
three-quarters of a mile away, lay our trenches.
Guns were going behind us ; sometimes, if you were
watching, you could see just after an explosion a
slight puff of mist overlying a clump of rocks, but
of the gun you could see nothing, so cleverly was
it camouflaged.

We pulled up finally before the dugouts of an
advanced dressing station to talk things over with
a fine, stalwart Milanese surgeon in charge. The
night before had brought an adventure, he said.
He was operating on an emergency case in that
board-and-corrugated-iron building there, when
the Austrians began shelling them with shrapnel.
He pointed out the little ragged holes in the roof
where the bullets had pattered about him as he
clipped and tied. It was a case of life and death ;
so he had kept right on. In the morning the
wounded man had gone back by ambulance.
"And, except for complications, he will get well
too!" said the surgeon. "But they won't get me
to-night, for we have just finished our little play-
house over there." He led us to the gaping
mouth of the tunnel in the rock. We pushed on

A EEPOETEE AT ARMAGEDDON

for forty or fifty feet to a chamber where the
tunnel widened. We were in an operating room,
complete even to the X-ray apparatus! And as
we emerged we saw we had another case.
Down the road came four soldiers with the Red
Cross brassard on their arms. Shoulder-high
they carried a stretcher made from inter-
woven willow branches. From a heap of gray
blankets peered the face of the wounded man ; he
looked, as the wounded generally do, not espe-
cially agonized, but just dazed and a little uncom-
fortable.

We ran our machine into the protection of a
hill after that, and made a basket luncheon. Our
trenches were on the other slope of the hill, half
a mile or so away, and now and then a shell from
our guns or the enemy's whistled overhead. And
we chatted of things personal, including the fail-
ings of absent fellow men; but scarcely a word
about the war.

We had to make a quick run past a dangerous
corner as we came away; on this point the
Austrians, who must have suspected the presence
of a road, could bring fire to bear from two direc-
tions at once. We had scarcely passed it, in fact,
before the slight, dull, yet sinister, sound of a
shrapnel burst caused us to crane our necks and
observe, a hundred feet back, a pretty smoke cloud
trailing down toward earth. Now we were skirt-
ing a hill; the full glory of the Isonzo Gorge
showed below us ; but I shall omit description until

294

OFF SOREENTO

I come to the point where, having abandoned the
machine and taken to our legs, we found ourselves
on the ruined crest of Monte Santo.

It is called a mountain; to-night I think of it
more as a crag, so steep is it, except for one side,
up which, through innumerable military works, we
had wormed our machine. On the very summit
once stood a convent. You could see that it had
been built of stone, because some of the fragments
showed that they had been shaped by the quarry-
man's saw; but you could tell neither its old shape
nor its dimensions.

Jeffries, of our party, had visited this summit
a short time after the battle, when the slopes were
still dotted with the unburied dead. Poking about
among the ruin that day, he had discovered a
child's toy automobile — a relic, after two years of
war, from the days when this ruin harbored nuns
and children. Jeffries was poking around again
when I was hailed in a perfect cockney accent by
a little soldier in very rusty olive-gray and a
trench helmet.

"Are you the Dyly Myle man?" he asked, his
animated Italian expression contrasting queerly
with his accent. I indicated Jeffries as the
anointed representative of the Daily Mail; and the
soldier, who, it appeared, was a constant reader,
addressed him in terms which brought the blushes
to his cheek. He was a performer at the London
Hippodrome, the soldier told us — an acrobat.
Also he had married an English actress. He

295

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

dived into the depths of his battered uniform, and
brought out her photograph in a frame, to prove
his assertion that she was a beauty. Having, it
appeared, nothing special to do at the moment, he
joined the party and was with us most of the way
over Monte Santo.

Yes, the visible dead were buried ; but there were
other dead still there, as the sense of smell told
from time to time. For the earth below us was
a honeycomb of caverns, where Italian and
Austrian lay festering side by side. It was these
caverns, more than the nature of the hill itself,
which made the taking of Monte Santo so difficult.
Two companies of Italian Arditi stormed that
crest in the beginning; they had secured it to all
appearance; they had even sent back prisoners,
when — they vanished, and the Austrians were
back. The enemy had simply disappeared into the
caverns, popped out at the proper moments, and
made captives of their captors. It took wave
after wave of assault troops to secure that sum-
mit and to make the caverns untenable.

Then a peep through a camouflage screen — a
view that told us what this position was all about.
On our right, far below, ran the Isonzo. Across,
a twin height to ours was Monte Sabotino. Monte
Santo, as we approached it, had shown yellow-
brown ; the hot breath of battle had stripped it of
trees and of most small vegetation. But Sabotino
had been taken more than a year before, and a
green-brown autumn forest still clothed it. Its

296

OFF SOEEENTO

precipitous sides were banging, banging, banging
with concealed heavy artillery.

Before us, less than a mile away, was a perfectly
bald cone-shaped mountain, only one ragged dead
tree near the summit showing that it had once been
clothed with a forest. That was San Gabriele,
now the chief obstacle to Italian advance in this
region. Honeycombed with caverns, as Monte
Santo was, the summit where the dead tree stands
sentinel is a No Man's Land. Neither side has
been able to hold it. The opposing trenches run
together up its slopes, widen out to curve round
each side of the summit, and come together on the
other side.

On the right ran that gracious valley, now over-
laid with golden mist, where stands Gorizia.
Gorizia looked white, beautiful and inviting; dis-
tance had blotted out her ugly stains of war.
Before the city, and hiding a little the farther view
of the valley, lay a cluster of tawny barren hills.
That is the range of San Marco, held by the Aus-
trians. Take it, and the Italians have an open
pass into Austria. But San Gabriele commands
San Marco ; hence the struggle which has been go-
ing on since August about that barren cone
crowned by its one dead tree. Farther on
stretched the whole red range of the Carso; and
finally, a glint in the Nile-green mists of that misty
afternoon, the Adriatic, right wing of the great
European battle line. On the Italian Front alone
can one see the whole scheme of battle.

297

A EEPOKTEE AT AEMAGEDDON

I realized that fact again a few minutes later.
We had crawled behind a camouflage screen about
the more precipitous slope of the mountain, for a
nearer look at our own front trenches and the
Austrian position. Our path took us through a
wilderness of military works, not to be described
here, past the yawning mouths of the old Austrian
caverns, past soldiers on guard with the keenly
alert expression of battle — for here it is always
a battle, more or less intense. Shrapnel was
breaking all the time along the mountain slope
below us; now and then, through the screen, you
could observe the yellow puff of a premature burst.
The soldiers told us, reassuringly, that it was only
a matter of time before the Austrians raised their
range to sweep our present position. We came at
last to a dugout, where an officer, who looked, in
his knit and wound winter cap, like an especially
handsome Sikh, of Northern India, led us to a
peeping place.

We were above a bowl-like plateau in the hills
— so far and directly above it that I felt I could
have thrown a baseball onto the roofs of the town
below. It was a little, huddled, stone hill-town,
not especially battered, but deserted. The plateau
behind it was threaded with roads. Before us
loomed San Gabriele, the double trench line,
yellow amid the brown, trailing down it to the
slopes of a little valley, where it was lost from
sight. The landscape looked barren, deserted,
lunar, and nothing more; of the thousands and

298

OFF SORKENTO

thousands of men who inhabited those hills and
that plateau, there was not a glimpse.

Then things began to happen which showed that
this was not a desert, but a battlefield. Here and
there an electric spark twinkled an instant before
the vision — the flash of a gun. Along one of the
roads black puffs began rhythmically to burst and
settle. We were trying to trace the Austrian
trench line, at a spot where it seemed obscure,
when it was outlined for by one — two — three —
four bursts of white smoke, shot with black — the
Italians were shelling. Monte Sabotino was
shooting harder than ever; three-inch field guns,
with their vicious little snap, opened from some
point below us ; the spitting hum of a mitrailleuse
joined in.

The day was getting so warm that it was
prudent to retire, I thought. The captain must
have thought so, too, for he started us back. But
not before I had my own reunion. A tall, stalwart
fellow, in the uniform of a lieutenant of a machine-
gun company, hailed me in United States English.
" Where do you live?" he asked. "New York-r-
when I'm at home," said I. "So do I," he said;
"or did. I was taking a course in Brown's busi-
ness college when I came over here to this war.
Say, who won the World's Series?" Unfortu-
nately I had but imperfect reports on that great
sporting event and could only tell him that, at last
accounts, it stood two-all.

And then — we missed our Englishman. The
299

A EEPOETEE AT ARMAGEDDON

fourth member of the party, he represented the
Foreign Office. He is a man of wit and parts— a
novelist, a garden expert, a searcher of this earth
for botanical specimens; the war, in fact, called
him home from somewhere on the boundaries of
Thibet. "We had just scurried fast round a corner,
where we were a little uncertain of the camouflage,
when we noticed that he was not among us. The
captain muttered something about wishing they
would not loiter in dangerous places. It occurred
to us, too, that he might have been picked off by a
sniper; so there was nothing to do but go back for
him.

We came round a corner of rock and caught
sight of him. On the hillside was one of the
patches of ground the shells had spared; it grew
a few sickly herbs. Eeaching up, flat against the
hillside, he was digging with a garden trowel,
which, I understand, he always carries in his
pocket as another man carries a knife. We hailed
him, and he faced us, the trowel in one hand and
two bulbs in the other.

"Cyclamen!" he exclaimed. "And jolly fine
specimens, too ! 9 9

"Hurry along. Englishman/' I said, "or you'll
be a bulb and get planted, and have a chance to
grow."

He gazed back over the harassed landscape.

"I haven't the slightest idea where those shells
are going," he said, "which intensifies the confi-
dence with which I view the situation."

300

OFF SOEEENTO

So we scrambled and scurried back to that pro-
tected spot under the hill where the car waited.
I can never conquer that feeling of relief with
which I depart from a place like Monte Santo ; but
my relief is always tempered by shame when I
think of the army I am leaving behind to endure
it day after day and night after night. It seems
a little like running away.

ITALIAN HEADQUARTEBS, October 23d.

For three days ,the Englishman and I, under
proper escort of an officer who knows this Front
like his own bedroom, and driven in a fast, agile
mountain-climbing car, have been ranging the
Trentino. There has been no time for taking
notes. When, after dark, we rolled into our
quarters at Verona, we had just enough energy
left to dine and tumble into bed; before daylight
we were dressing and off again. Perhaps it is
just as well. Through this delay I have got the
geographical details all twisted up in my mind
and shall not unload them upon the reader a mass
of names in a foreign language. Instead, I shall
confine myself to general observations and to a few
scenes that stand out in the memory of a crowded
three days.

One main impression lingers of those three days,
almost effacing any others : It is of the mighty,
the unprecedented engineering work the Italians
have performed in order to take and secure these
mountains. I could wish that I had technical

301

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

training as an engineer in order properly to con-
vey what they have done.

First and foremost come the roads. There
one is tempted to grow epic. When I was with
the army in the Alps about a year and a half ago,
getting to most of the peaks — even the lower ones
— involved much travel by mule up mere trails,
much hard climbing, much disagreeable swinging
across gorges by teleferica. Even in the higher
Alps the visitor need do little of that work to-day.
He goes almost to the summits by perfect
mountain roads in a motor car. Last Sunday I
went so, from the six-hundred-foot level almost to
the six-thousand-foot level, up the slopes of a
mountain so precipitous that I grew giddy every
time I looked down.

These roads of necessity take the sharpest kind
of hairpin turns. They are scientifically banked
at the corners ; they are metaled ; and usually at
the most dangerous turns a stone wall or a row
of deeply planted stone buttresses guards the in-
expert chauffeur from a tumble with his car into
infinity. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of
such roads have been driven during the process
of securing the Alps. The direction has been in
the hands of Italian engineers, mostly from the
north; and I know a man high in that profession
who has always maintained that the Northern
Italian civil engineer is the best in the world.

The labor, for the most part, has been performed
by reservists, though civilian workmen, too old for

302

OFF SOKEENTO

military service, are employed here and there ; in
fact, last Saturday I went up one perfect road
which the Italians call the Chemin des Dames, or
Ladies ' Eoad — a play on the name of the famous
position over which the French and the Germans
fought so long last summer. The work here was
done by stout Italian peasant women ; and I hereby
assure my suffragette sisters that it is an excellent
road.

Indeed, the road-making organization has be-
come so expert that Italy is considering it in her
after-the-war plans. The southern part of the
peninsula is still suffering from the lack of really
good highways. While that condition of affairs
exists, it seems a pity to let such an organization
go out of existence. Like all the other belligerent
countries, Italy will surely have her struggle with
unemployment during the period of readjustment.
And certain of the great industrial men are sug-
gesting to the government that the organization
shall remain intact until it has provided Southern
Italy with all the roads she needs.

Concerning the more obviously military part of
this great engineering job, I must write with more
caution. In places it is startling and incredible.
Coming to the abrupt rocky peak of a little moun-
tain, I found myself facing a series of tunnels. A
reservist lit a miner's lantern and guided us
through a dark rock passage. We came out finally
by the breech of a gun. Daylight showed beyond
its muzzle. I peeped out. I was looking down the

303

A EEPOETEK AT AEMAGEDDON

face of a cliff; across the sweep of a deeply cleft
valley lay the line of the Austrian trenches.

Again we wound up a road toward a summit
and came presently to a camouflage screen, show-
ing that we were within range of the enemy fire.
In the corner formed by two mountain slopes, so
placed that it had good protection, was an electric
power house. The Austrian lines, I was told,
were only a mile or so across the summit. "That
power plant, " said our captain, "not only fur-
nishes light for the caverns up there; it
sends the compressed air to drive two hundred
drills!"

Everywhere, in some places looking like spider
web, ran the threads of the telefericas. That de-
vice of Italian warfare has been so often described
that I need only give a reminder here. A tele-
f erica is an aerial tram — merely a cable on which
runs a wire basket, a gigantic version of the cash
carrier used in department stores. These shoot
from position to position along slopes or across
gulfs. In most cases it would take hours to make
the same transit by road. The teleferica carries
up the emergency supplies, for it works much
faster; and everywhere roads and telefericas sup-
plement each other. If one breaks down through
accident or enemy fire, the other takes up the
job.

Finally, on a trip to one of the highest positions
that bar the road down the Asiago Valley, I got an
idea of what Italian engineering has done for the

304

OFF SOEEENTO

comfort of the men ; how Alpine warfare, from the
point of view of the soldiers who must endure it,
has become transformed.

This was a six-thousand-foot mountain, and we
climbed to it in our motor car by one of the regu-
lar new roads. That kind of climbing is not so
prosaic as it seems; it has its sporting side.
Never have I so sympathized with a chauffeur as
with the stout young Italian mechanic who drove
us. During almost any straight passage — if you
happened to be on the outside seat of the car — you
could look down hundreds of feet and speculate on
what a skid would do to the car and passengers.
There was danger of skidding, too ; for it rained
most of the way and snowed the rest. But
straight stretches of road were few. No sooner
were we past one hairpin turn than we ran into
another.

In most cases the other leg of the hairpin was
quite invisible, and the danger which kept our
driver's eyes on the road and his hand firm on
the controls \vas that a camion, making up time,
should shoot round the corner at a pace too fast
for control. Two or three times we did have such
encounters, and the cars seemed to dig their tires
into the road as they avoided collision by feet and
even inches. On these occasions our chauffeur,
skillful though he was, could not make the turns
without backing ; and usually before he started up
he would have the rear wheels within a foot of a
thousand-foot slope. At those moments there

305

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

would be just a tiny break in the thread of our
conversation while we caught our breath and dug
our toes into the soles of our boots. Then we
would resume talk with that calm which one al-
ways assumes in a state of war.

At last, with the world far below us, we were
running on a final stretch of road just below the
ridge of this knife-shaped mountain and parallel
with it. There we had luncheon with a bronzed
and cheerful headquarters' mess. Finally we
walked to the summit, which was tunneled and gal-
leried in a manner so thorough and complex that
I could not describe it if I tried. But the inter-
esting thing to the Alpini is the fact that these
tunnels and galleries furnish them comfortable
winter quarters. Once they had to lie out for
weeks and sometimes months together in the eter-
nal snows, with no fires — for smoke would have
betrayed their position — and no hot food. When
I visited the Adamello in April of last year, the
thermometer at night always went down to zero;
and in the dead of the previous winter it has been
forty degrees below. Yet there they were — fight-
ing without fire !

In these tunnels the men are sheltered from the
blizzards. Stovepipes can be carried out to some
harmless neutral position, where they will not be-
tray the location of the men; consequently if the
telef erica is kept working, with its supplies of fuel,
they may have both warmth and hot food. True,
the front patrol trenches must be held under the

306

OFF SORRENTO

old conditions; but these, in the nature of this
fighting, may be lightly occupied, and the men can
be very frequently relieved; so they need endure
the old conditions only two or three days at a
time.

CHAPTER XVII
THE ITALIAN DISASTER

ITALIAN HEADQUAB.TEBS, October 25th.

THE grand tour of the Carso day before yester-
day was to have finished my period at the Front ;
I had kept an Italian military car very busy for
a week and had dipped into the line all the way
from the Trentino to the Adriatic. Yesterday and
to-day, according to program, I was to write ; and
to-morrow and Saturday I am to finish out my ten
days' leave with a look at beautiful, tight-shut,
harassed Venice. But yesterday morning a party
of correspondents going forward to Gorizia found
one of their number missing and I was offered a
seat in their car. I had not yet, as it happened, set
foot in Gorizia itself. It turned out to be an ad-
venture— as much of an adventure as I want in one
day.

As we rounded the heel of Monte San Michele —
green with trees and grass again after the terrible
blasting it received in the attacks of last year —
the town came out white against the red hills of
the Carso about it and the Nile-green mists of its
own valley. There was a lot of shooting. Our
guns were banging or booming on every hill. As

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THE ITALIAN DISASTER

we waited by the door of a certain headquarters
for permission to enter the sector, I was certain
I could hear continually the slighter but more dan-
gerous noise of arrivals.

Being but a soft civilian, I grew a little nervous.
I was ashamed of my nerves — I forgot them com-
pletely— when we came out into the main streets of
this pretty Venetian town and found civilian life
still going on calmly under the pouring rain and
the whistling shells. Women in shawls and pat-
tens scurried along under umbrellas, paying no
more attention to the great whistling overhead
than they did to the raindrops.

Through an open doorway I caught a glimpse of
a butcher cutting meat, while a crowd of waiting
women chattered over the counter — the next day
would be meatless, and buying was brisk. We
dropped into a stationer's; he was doing a lively
business with post cards for the soldiers to send
home. A bookshop displayed the latest shockers
in Italian, and even in French, together with the
illustrated papers. A haberdasher had dressed
his window with shirts and cravats in brilliant
greens and pinks, and had lettered the sign : This
lot a bargain ! — or the Italian equivalent of those
words. Yet here and there, between these centers
of trade and activity, were buildings wholly ruined
by shells; were peppered walls; were shattered
window panes. For the Austrian lines on San
Marco are scarcely two miles from the center of
the town.

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A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

This destruction is all recent. When the Aus-
trians held the city the Italians forbore to bom-
bard— this was an unrescued Italian population.
It was taken, a year ago last August, by a surprise
attack in which it suffered very little. Since then,
however, the Austrians have been searching it
with intermittent flurries of shells. In spite of all
this, some two or three thousand courageous peo-
ple have come back to see it through in their own
town. I regretted much my ignorance of the lan-
guage and my haste ; I wanted to talk to these peo-
ple, for each one must have had a great story. In-
deed, as we passed a certain shop our captain re-
marked :

"That family is interesting. They had four
grown sons. Two of them, when war was de-
clared, managed to get across the Austrian border
and join our armies — one of these has been killed
fighting for Italy. Another was caught by the
Austrians and hanged — they are great hangmen.
The fourth was hidden for fourteen months in a
cellar; he never came out until we entered Gorizia,
rescued him, and took him into our army."

We drove on through the town and up the wind-
ing way to the citadel, which overlooks the San
Marco lines. Parking our car in a sheltered spot,
we climbed on, past walls and buildings which
showed more and more the marks of war. The
guns were now going very heavily on both sides
and before us. While we stood in the plaza front-
ing the church of the citadel, now pretty badly

310

THE ITALIAN DISASTER

battered, a machine gun, from far below, began a
rat-a-tat-tat- tat-tat. "It sounds like a little at-
tack/' said the captain. "Perhaps we may get a
look." We pressed on upward to a certain dirt
parapet. It was raining heavily. "I think it is
misty enough so that we may look over," said the
captain; "I don't believe we can be spotted on a
day like this."

Through the mists rose San Gabriele, and below
us lay tawny San Marco, now spitting fire. The
captain pointed out the Austrian line. He
scarcely needed do that. Whip, whip, whip — puffs
of white were breaking along the trench line with
wonderful mathematical alignment and rhythm.
It was scarcely a mile away. I adjusted my field
glasses to see whether I could catch a glimpse of
the gray line when it broke from the trenches.

I must stop here to tell how we were arranged.
I stood at the right of the group, with the captain
close beside me ; Thompson was on the other side
of him. A little farther to the left Cortesi and
Ward-Price formed a group of their own.

Suddenly, among the whistling shells, came one
that whistled ten times as loud as the rest. I had
a human impulse to duck. "No," my mind said,
working in a flash; "that is passing overhead."

Something with all the force, the overwhelming
monstrous force, of a wave on the beach, struck
me on the shoulder and back. I could feel it roll
up, up, over my head. The world was black. I
was only aware of my mind, traveling with in-

311

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

credible rapidity over every part of my body and
assuring me that I was not hurt — not in the least
hurt. I was now in a trench below the parapet' —
how I got there I did not, somehow, know. I was
standing, looking at the captain; he was talking,
but I could not hear him, at first, for the ringing
in my ears.

"Was it a three-inch shell ?" I asked, trying to
be professionally calm — for I was not at all certain
that this shell was not going to be followed by an-
other. "Oh, no; a hundred and fifty-nine — six-
inch, English measurement," he said. "We
shouldn't have heard the whistle of a three-inch
shell. They don 't announce themselves. " " Only
about six yards, ' ' announced Ward-Price.

I looked back. A little on my right what had
been the smooth line of the parapet was a trash
heap of tangled iron, splintered boards and tossed
earth. The soft wet dirt had smothered the ex-
plosion. I looked again and was aware that
Thompson did not look natural. I realized then
that he had lost his nose glasses and that a trickle
of blood was running down from his temple to his
right cheek. We informed him that he had lost
his glasses and that he was hit. "Have I? Am
I? » he said.

The captain and Ward-Price went back to the
parapet and picked up his glasses, and we took
him to the dressing station ; for even a little wound
like that may be infected. Thompson protested,
until he remembered that he has one son in the

312

THE ITALIAN DISASTER

army and another in the navy, and that he should
be able to boast the first wound in the family.

Not until we were waiting under a shelter in the
company of half a dozen Italian soldiers did I
realize that I had been knocked down. Cortesi and
Ward-Price had seen the rest of us tumble at their
feet — I knocked down the captain, he knocked
down Thompson ; we all went over like a house of
cards.

Thompson had evidently been hit by a flying
piece of rock. To this moment I have no memory
of going down ; neither, curiously, was I conscious
of hearing the explosion. However, I found my
upper lip swelling ; that must have been the mem-
ber with which I hit the captain.

As we waited, the bombardment dying down a
little, we remarked that this, which seemed a great
adventure to us, was what soldiers in the trenches
get all the time, as a part of the day's work; and
Ward-Price quoted what a French officer had said
to him of the visitor to the Front. "He seems to
me," said this poet of the trenches, "like a little
girl who sits before a lighted candle, thrusts her
finger into the wick for a moment, says, * See ; I am
burned I' — and smiles at you through the flame."

Under the hill we cleansed ourselves of the worst

of the mud — I am still picking it out of neglected

corners of my clothes — and motored back for tea

in the Cafe del Carso ; for Gorizia has a fine going

jafe, managed by a resident who used to be a

ihemist before the war, but who started this estab-

313

A KEPOBTER AT ARMAGEDDON

lishment in order that the civilians and soldiers
in Gorizia might have a little touch of normal life.
In most respects it was a regular Italian cafe,
even to the row of liqueur bottles back of the tiny
bar and the files of illustrated papers. The effect,
however, was very dark; for at least a third of
the window panes had been blown out and replaced
by poster advertisements for a certain Dutch
liqueur, which happened exactly to fit the sashes.

We stopped to write and post souvenir post
cards ; for the postmark of a town only two miles
from the line is a war souvenir worth having, and
the Gorizia postoffice has been doing business for
more than a year. Then we scurried out, past the
section that was getting shells.

It was a lively afternoon; we could perceive
that, even when we got into the rear zone. Twice,
when the motor stopped in little villages, I got the
crack of arrivals. The preliminaries of an attack,
which may come in a day or may be delayed for
a fortnight — such is the way of attacks — have be-
gun along this line. For several days we have
known that not only Austrians but Germans,
brought from the stripped Russian Front, are
along this line.

My permission to go forward is over for the
present ; but this morning I had half a notion to
give up Venice and spend my two remaining days
of war-zone pass at Headquarters, listening to the
gossip in case the attack does come within forty-
eight hours.

314

THE ITALIAN DISASTER

VENICE, October 26th.

The last words I find in my notes of yesterday
rise up to reproach my judgment. The attack
came last night and the news is not so good as
heart might wish. This afternoon I was having
tea on the Piazza of Saint Mark's, the most fa-
mous, the most pictured public Square in the
world, with Mr. and Mrs. Carroll — he is our consul
in Venice. It is a transformed Square now, the
painted spires and pinnacles of its old beauty half
hidden under sandbags and plank barricades.

It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and perfectly
clear, and all Venice was strolling through the
Square, chattering and lovering. I noticed that a
crowd had gathered under the arcade behind me.
"The afternoon communique is always posted
there, ' ' said Carroll. 1 1 Let 's have a look. ' ' Cran-
ing over the heads of the crowd, he translated it
for me, his voice getting low and serious as he
came to the final chilling paragraph: "The
abandonment of the Bainsizza Plateau is to be ex-
pected."

When, having joined the rest of our party and
talked a little of our disappointment out of our-
selves, we grew conscious of our surroundings, I
was aware that a curious change had come over
the appearance of the crowds. Ten minutes be-
fore they had been streaming across the plaza.
Now there was no movement. They had congealed
into groups, talking low and seriously. Do not
get the idea that there was any panic, or any sign

315

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

of one ; but it was a blow, and Venice was taking
it seriously, as well she might. All that Italy had
gained so splendidly in the August offensive gone
in one stroke! If it would only stop there !

ROME, October 29th.

On Saturday evening, the inexorable law of mili-
tary permits forced me to leave Venice and the war
zone. I had spent the day ranging the town, which
is almost as beautiful in its war dress of sandbags
as it used to be in peace dress, when it was the
heaven of tourists. Probably it has been the most
consistently air-raided town in Europe. The
enemy, with that streak of bad boy which seems to
exist in every modern Teuton, has tried as hard for
the ancient and irreplaceable monuments of Venice
as for more useful destruction. There is no doubt
that beautiful Saint Mark's has been a steady tar-
get. It has escaped damage so far — the religious
believe through the intercession of the Virgin,
whose miraculous statue stands on one of the few
altars not now covered with sandbags. Indeed, as
the records of injuries show, Venice has been very
lucky.

The gondolas still ply as of old, and with very
little increase over the old tariff; but the gondo-
liers are no more the young, romantic, dark-eyed
Italians, wearing sashes, whose prototypes we see
at every fancy-dress ball. They are old fellows;
they look like city cabmen, wielding oars instead
of whips. As you glide down the side canals,

316

THE ITALIAN DISASTER

where you sit level with the basement windows,
you see here and there regular piles of sandbags
crowded tight up against the window bars. These
are private shelters — no home, really, is complete
without one now.

Even our hotel has its own shelter for guests.
The hotels of Venice are not serving meals ; but
one eats very well, nevertheless, at either of two
large cafes. On Friday night, when we expected
an air raid, a Venetian friend warned me that, if
I was dining late, I might do well to ask the head
waiter where their shelter was. "I believe they
reserve space for their customers," he said. But
Venice is not in the least terrified. Lire Gorizia,
she has grown used to high explosives.

When I visited the city last, eighteen months
ago, I found that the antique shops were selling
beautiful goods at almost any price, in order to
get ready money. That has changed; I imagine
others have found this out and bought out the
stocks. At any rate, the selection is now rather
poor, and the prices are back where they used to
be. War has queer effects on trade. One would
suppose that the demand for Venetian glass would
be dead. As a matter of fact, the glass factories
complain not of the lack of business, but of the
struggle to find workmen. One glass man told
me his factory had orders ahead for more than two
years.

You go from the hotel to the station down a dark
canal. The porter of our hotel, who had come

317

A REPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

over with us, could get no satisfaction whatever
from a sadly worried station master about the
arrival of the Udine train. Being bribed, he cir-
culated about, collecting and reporting rumors:
The train was coming from Udine as usual. No
train was coming from Udine. The sleeper was
on the way from Udine, but was three hours
late.

We grew a little too curious about the move-
ments of the troops, and a military policeman, in
spite of our military passes, herded us into a wait-
ing room. It was packed with disheveled civil-
ians. One pale, worn woman, bareheaded, sat in
the corner, with four children, including a baby
at her breast, huddled about her. From old mem-
ories of Belgium, I picked these as refugees.

Yet, at midnight a train did arrive from some-
where— and it included a sleeper. We had to do
some lively dodging through military trains before
we got our places. The blinds of railroad trains
are strictly drawn in the war zone. From the mo-
ment I entered, all observation was shut off.
When, finally, I woke and compared the stations
we were passing with the map, I found that we
had been shunted far off on a side line; and the
trip to Rome, which should have taken twelve
hours, took twenty-five.

ROME, November 2d.

Tragic things have happened, as all the world
will know by the time this reaches America — not

318

THE ITALIAN DISASTER

fatal things, but tragic. They were going on witli
incredible swiftness during those two days when
I was in Venice. I can believe the news, but I can-
not really imagine it. Udine, where I had dined
in good company on Wednesday evening — Udine,
which I left on Thursday leading its usual busy,
calm, confident life of a war-zone town, was in
process of evacuation on Saturday ; to-day it is not
an Italian headquarters, but an Austrian. Gor-
izia, where we had our shell adventure on Wednes-
day, was, in forty-eight hours, empty of its brave
civilian population, which had stood by. We were,
I dare say, the last visitors of Allied nationality
for the present.

I spoke somewhere in the beginning of these let-
ters concerning the transformations of war —
how certain little cities I had seen under shells
were, as the Italian lines pushed on, restored to
the semblance of peace. Another and hideous
transformation has followed the want of the black
magician, War— Gradisca, San Lorenzo, Monfal-
cone and Cormons are all German or Austrian to-
night.

How it happened, except that something broke,
I shall not try to say here. I have seen the Ital-
ian Army, however ; I know how stalwart it is, how
efficient, how well-organized; and I believe it is
only a set-back, coming on a stroke of bad luck, on
a wave of low morale.

I lived in Paris through the first fortnight of the
Verdun battle. Paris of those days was like Eome

319

A EEPOBTEE AT AEMAGEDDON

of these — the same serious crowds ; the same eyes
that gaze and see not ; the same — exactly the same
— rumors in certain irresponsible places ; and the
same gathering of heroic determination. Kefu-
gees are already coming in from the captured
province of Friuli; the newspapers are collecting
funds; the government has cleared out a series
of small hotels to house the destitute.

In one of those refuges lives a man who, a week
ago, was the magnate of the country about Udine,
rich in lands and factories. To-day he has not a
franc to his name; nor does he know whether he
shall ever have. Country people, in the strange
peasant dress of the northern provinces, wander
about the streets, dragging their children behind
them and gaping at the sights. And the groups
through which they weave are heavy-eyed.

Several circumstances add to the poignancy of
the human tragedy : When, at the beginning of the
war, the Germans drove through Belgium the in-
habitants had several days of notice, after all. It
was known that the German Army was coming on
like a steady flood, and people were prepared for
the final hour when they packed their little bundles
and departed. Here it was a bolt out of the blue.
One hour, you were going about your occupation
as usual ; the next you were running away.

A further personal burden lies on the hearts of
civilian Italy. In these times accurate lists of the
killed, wounded and missing are impossible. The
army is too busy with something else. It will be

320

THE ITALIAN DISASTER

long before these facts can be collated and the
people at home can know.

Yet the army is standing; it is a good army, a
great army; and we who lived through the days
before the Marne and Verdun know the strength
of a free people with the enemy on its soil. That
is the thought which is stirring Rome and is put-
ting the last ounce of fight into Italy — the enemy
is in Friuli ! An Italian friend put it this way to
me yesterday :

"I have seen," he said, "that American moving-
picture film which showed the invasion of America.
I remember that I could not be stirred by it as were
my American friends; to me it was only a show.
Now Italy is invaded. It is not a show. It is a
reality. You sympathize — but you cannot know/'

CHAPTEB XVIII
A WARTIME JOURNEY

PARIS, November, 1917.

BAILROAD travel, though very uncomfortable in
these days, is so interesting that one is tempted to
record every little suburban trip. All day, on the
second stage of the journey from Borne, we were
encountering French and British troops going for-
ward to the defense of the Piave line. From cattle
cars along the sidings fresh blond English faces
grinned good-humoredly under trench caps and
British cheers thanked us as we pitched cigarettes
from our car window.

Not putting too fine a point on where and how
I saw them, there were Frenchmen also, waving
greetings and blowing kisses to the ladies or lilting
snatches of song — the Frenchman is always merry
when he sings, as the Englishman is lugubrious.
Here and there we had a chance to talk with them ;
and we found a certain Boman rumor to be
founded on truth: Both the British and the
French are glad, very glad, to be going into Italy.

" You see, monsieur," said a poilu, shifting his
pack to get a light from my cigarette, "one grows
weary of the same old trenches. Perhaps we can

322

A WARTIME JOURNEY

get them in the open, and then — pouf!" A gunner
of the British Army, his cap festooned with the
flowers bestowed by dark-eyed Italian maidens,
remarked on the climate. ' ' Puts joy in your 'eart,
it does ! " he said. * ' Ypres in winter is 'ell ! ' '

Everything, on the Italian side, wore a holiday
air. It is the land of winter flowers, and some of
the detachments marched, like the army in "Mac-
beth," under a wood, not of forest green but of
floral green and red and white, so handsomely had
the ladies done by them. Every building flew pa-
vilions of French, British and Italian flags ; every
wall bore municipal proclamations welcoming the
victors of the Marne and Somme. Now and then
an American flag showed amid the others, and
when I investigated I always found that the shop
or house belonged to some Italian who had worked
in the United States. "When will the United
States declare war on Austria?" these citizens of
the two countries always asked.

We stopped for the night at Nice, after an eve-
ning run past Monte Carlo, whose lights, seen on a
promontory across a dark bay, still rim the ter-
races with their old brilliance. Nice, be it known,
was, before the war, the largest resort, perhaps
the most fashionable, on the Riviera — the winter
playground of Europe. The Riviera is a more
cultivated and finished version of the Californian
coast ; and Nice is similarly a more permanent and
better-built Atlantic City. Even in peacetime,
November is a little out of the Riviera season ; as

323

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

it was, when we came to luncheon next day in the
hotel we found only three tables set.

Along the Promenade des Anglais, the mag-
nificent sea road that in peacetime more than
matches the boardwalk at Atlantic City for display
and for sweep of life, one sees only the old or the
very young, the mutilated, the ailing. Here an old
Englishman, too feeble for any usefulness in the
war, is rolling along in a chair propelled by an an-
tique valet, himself well beyond military age.
There sits a woman in widow's weeds, her eye on
three well-behaved French children. All along are
men in uniform or in civilian clothes, with the rib-
bon of the War Cross in their button-holes, lolling
or strolling with the weak motion of convalescence.

As for fashion, there isn't any; the people wear
old clothes, just barely neat. The town may
freshen up a bit in the season, for even last year
French people of means were still sometimes giv-
ing themselves the luxury of a short holiday ; but
just now Nice is as dead as an abandoned bird's-
nest.

In Eome it was impossible to secure sleeper res-
ervations on the French trains. When I applied
at the Nice station I found that one sleeper was
going through to Paris every night, but that the
berths were engaged for eight days ahead. In
the present state of French passenger traffic I
could not arrange an all-daylight schedule. It was
a case of sitting up all night — a feature of travel
to which one grows accustomed in the war coun-

324

A WARTIME JOURNEY

tries — or of getting couchettes from the conduc-
tor. The couchette I have explained before. It
is a substitute for a berth in these days and circum-
stances, when there is no energy or labor for wash-
ing extra sheets or caring for extra bedding. The
two parallel seats of a European first-class com-
partment made very good couches. In certain
carriages upper couches may be let down from the
walls ; this gives, all together, accommodation for
four — a sleeping compartment without bedding.
By energy and diplomacy I secured two couchette
tickets just as we pulled out for Marseilles, with a
train crowded almost to standing capacity. So
great was the demand for passage, indeed, that the
girl conductor, doing the best she could to accom-
modate every one, was obliged to disregard the
distinction between first, second and third class
passengers; and a group of poilus, going back
to the line from their leave, were permitted
to grab standing room in the corridor of our car-
riage.

This line still runs a dining car; and the fare,
being cooked by Frenchmen, is good, though
simple. However, it was switched on to the rear
of our train, some five or six cars away from us ;
and when the porter announced dinner and we
filed out we found that we must fight for our meal.
Getting along the corridors was like bucking the
line. You edged and crawled about people; you
climbed over soldierly bags, packs and kit trunks ;
you remained stuck for five minutes at a time while

325

A BEPOKTER AT AEMAGEDDON

the press in front arranged itself to let you
through.

Coming back, heavy with food, was even worse.
On the return trip I collided with the group of
poilus packed into the end of our corridor. They
had been dining from their packs. I am not sure
but that their relatives, on bidding them good-by,
had slipped in something a little stronger than
army red wine, for they were still singing, while
the officers farther down the corridor regarded
them indulgently. One of them, a magnificent,
strapping Alpine Chasseur, asked, as he rose to let
me through: "English? Ah, the English are
our brave allies ! ' '

"No — American!" I replied.

"Ah!" he roared, opening his arms and taking
me in. "The Americans are my comrades.
Listen! You must sing with us — French and
Americans together — to beat the dirty boche. Is
it not so?" Therefore, I must remain for five
minutes, being instructed in the words and music
of a song which will never be reprinted in the
hymn books.

He is a cold and reserved person who, in these
days, does not get acquainted at once with every
one in his compartment. Two of our fellow
travelers were especially interesting — a slim, neat-
stepping, clean-cut Scotch engineer, and a big
blond French captain. The Scotchman had been
down to a Southern port in pursuance of the only
trade a Scotchman may have nowadays — beating

326

A WARTIME JOURNEY

the Germans. He looked as though he had ac-
quired a new and aggravated case of sunburn,
That was caused, he explained to us, by a flame-
blast which hit him in the face during some of
his experiments. He had recently been working
in England with submarines, and he dropped some
general observations which help to explain why
Germany is having so much trouble getting vol-
unteers for her submarine crews.

"It's the monotony that kills in that game," he
said. * ' Nothing to do but sit cooped up in a nar-
row little hole, with the sea pounding all around
you, for hours and hours. You sleep lashed to a
beam and you eat standing up. I used to say to
myself: 'I won't look at my watch again until
I'm sure an hour has passed.' I'd look finally —
and it would be ten minutes."

The captain spoke good English, for until the
war broke out he was chief engineer of a French
liner running into New York Harbor. He came
from a town near Lille, where his family is yet
cooped up by the Germans.

"But my mother is dead," he went on; "the
news came from some people who were repatriated
through Switzerland. So are most of my uncles
and aunts. One of my brothers has gone into this
war. My home town has been nearly destroyed;
the old family house where we have lived for gen-
erations is gone. It doesn't much matter now
what happens to me."

He might have gone on with his old job, since
327

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

France needs seafaring men. But six months
after the war began, he enlisted and worked up
from the ranks. For more than a year he has
been steadily at Verdun, where really the great
battle has never ceased ; and he wears on his right
sleeve two of the notches that designate wounds.
Before the evening was over he had given us a
really precious souvenir of the war — a paper knife
made from the copper of a German shell bane
which he had hammered out in a dugout under
shell fire — ' ' to keep my mind engaged, ' ' he said.

We stretched ourselves out finally, fully dressec
and covered with what wraps we had, on the
shelves of the couchette compartment — three men
and a woman. The two others were an Ameri
can ambulance man, who had gone South on the
matter of a commission, and a bossy middle-agec
Frenchman. Why we three Americans let him
dictate to us I do not know, unless it was the fact
that he was in his own back yard. He dictatec
how much, or rather how little, ventilation we
might have. He dictated that I should not snore
and I, wakened, lay and meekly listened to his
snores for half an hour.

The compartment growing too stuffy for Ameri-
can lungs, I rose and went into the corridor to see
whether I could get a breath of fresh air. I gave
it up for humanity 's sake. Stretched all along the
floor lay officers, wrapped in their fur coats, their
heads pillowed on kit bags. Far up were my
Chasseur Alpin and his friends, lying in a pictur-

328

A WARTIME JOURNEY

esque heap of dark and light blue. These were the
unlucky, who had been late in applying for couch-
ettes; and this was the Nice-Paris express, in old
winters one of the world 's trains de luxe !

Our bossy Frenchman dictated the hour when we
should wake up. The porter appeared at the door
and the Frenchman dictated that he should not
fold up the top couchettes. What was the use
when we were getting near Paris? We worms
were about to turn, when the Scotch engineer
entered. He had brought along only a light over-
coat by way of a wrap, and he had found that the
floor was too drafty for health; so he had been
standing up all night. Obeying the Frenchman,
we left the top couches down, and he turned in
under my ulster for an hour 's nap. So, in a gray,
humid, cold November morning, we came into
Paris.

PABIS, November 25th.

I have been away from the heart of the civilized
world for nearly four months. Chance travelers,
coming down to Italy, had described to me the
new American invasion, saying that Paris had
become almost a Yankee town ; and indeed, before
I left in August, I seemed to meet an old acquaint-
ance every time I ventured on the boulevards. I
had expected, therefore, a recrudescence of old
gayety — the cafes more lively, the theaters and
cinemas more crowded — the irrepressible Ameri-
can whooping it up a little, war or no war.

329

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

Never has the issue so disappointed my expect-
ations. There is a kind of grimness, a sense of
reality, about the American colony nowadays — a
state of mind that has communicated itself to the
newcomers.

In the first two years of the war the Americans
permanently resident here took their war work,
if not lightly, at least with good spirits and a kind
of sense of adventure. They were helping
France in every way they knew; they were
tremendously sympathetic; but, after all, it was
not their war.

All that is changed. The young men among
them have gone into khaki ; to a great extent the
older men, past useful military age, have found
places as interpreters, as Y. M. C. A. and Red
Cross workers. Women who formerly merely
dallied with their workrooms and the hospitals
have buckled down to their eight hours a day. All
this leaves small time for gayety and frivolity.

As for the newcomers — people on special service
or lately arrived officers — they merely skim
through Paris, usually so busy with practical
matters that they have little time for frivolity.
There was a tendency, noticeable last summer, for
loafers in khaki to hit up the pace at two or three
famous Parisian bars. The army sat down hard
on that. On the whole, this American invasion has
rendered Paris, if anything, a little more dour and
determined in appearance.

Circumstances have worked with the policy of
330

A WAETIME JOUBNEY

the army. The alluring cocktail, chief tempta-
tion of the American on the loose, may be had
no more in appreciable quantities. France now
manufactures no gin or whisky, and of late the
importation of those liquors has been forbidden.
The gin stock is virtually all gone; not once in
a blue moon can one find a cafe with the basic
material for a Martini or a Bronx. Whisky also is
growing scarce ; soon the tempting Manhattan will
tempt no more. Champagne cocktails and various
mixtures of French brandy are the rounder 's only
hold. At the famous bars I have mentioned be-
fore, custom is falling off to such an extent that
some of them talk about closing for the war.

And when you do find a group about those bars
the conversation is not about things frivolous and
trivial, but mostly about what they. intend to do.
Billy, who has run an ambulance off and on since
the second year of the war, is in aviation, and vis-
its among us for a day or so while he awaits his or-
ders to the school of acrobatics. Bob has his
brevet as a chasse pilote; he drops in during the
course of a two-days' leave, granted that he may
complete his kit before proceeding to the Front.

Johnny, wearing a captain's uniform in spite
of his gray hairs, is beyond military age ; but he
speaks the language perfectly, even the latest
Parisian slang. So he became an interpreter,
until it was discovered that his knowledge of the
people and their business methods eminently fitted
him for a job in the quartermaster's department.

331

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

He stops only between trains. He is on his way
to hurry up a consignment from the South.
Harry is still wearing his ambulance uniform and
hanging about a little disconsolate while he waits
to see whether he is going to get the commis-
sion to which his education and his year 's experi-
ence in shell-dodging with a jitney car entitle him.
If he fails in this, he is going into the ranks.

The American over here means business. His
external appearance, his revised way and manner,
prove that.

CHAPTER XIX

OUE OWN TROOPS

AMERICAN FRONT, December 1st.

I AM doing a turn with oratory for a week, talk-
ing at the various Y. M. C. A. huts to the Ameri-
can soldiers. This evening, after two changes of
cars, I was dumped down on this hotel, in a certain
town of Northern France, centering a district of
camps. The hotel, I could see at first glance, is
going through one of those periods of hectic
prosperity and of general strain which have at in-
tervals struck all hotels in Northern France since
the great war began. It has a tiny lobby and of-
fice, a fair sized dining room and two floors of
simple chambers upstairs.

A time-expired guidebook of ante-bellum days
tells me that the price for pension — which means
room and board — used to be eight francs a day.
The guests, I suppose, were mostly commercial
travelers or dealers up for the cattle market. It
costs more now; and yet, when I consider the in-
creased price of commodities, I cannot greatly
blame pleasant white-haired madame the landlady
for assessing us three or four francs for a bed.
At dinner to-night we had three sittings, and an

333

A EEPORTER AT AEMAGEDDON

overflow dined at a table with a turkey-red cloth,
set in the lobby.

I write now at that table, by the light of a sus-
pended oil lamp. On the lower end an American
lieutenant, who arrived late and very hungry, is
eating an omelet, which he managed to wheedle out
of madame after the dining room closed. There is
a large porcelain stove in the middle of the room ;
this evening, when the air is full of chill humidity,
it has become a mighty popular piece of furniture.
Grouped about it now are two army chauffeurs, a
lieutenant of engineers and a Y. M. C. A. worker,
toasting their hands and feet. For the rest, this
tiny room, its windows hermetically darkened to
balk the enterprise of hostile aircraft, is littered
with kit bags, little wooden kit trunks, military fur
coats, helmets, gas masks and miscellaneous
paraphernalia.

I shall fare a little better than the rest. The
correspondents have established a mess upstairs,
in what used to be the ladies' parlor of the hotel;
so I need not struggle for a place in the dining
room. However, I must lodge three in a room,
fortunately with a separate single bed. I used to
laugh at the Northern French custom, initiated I
believe from the Germans, of sleeping under a
young feather bed. As I deposited my bag and
looked over my quarters this evening, that style
of cover looked very good to me.

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OUR OWN TEOOPS

December 2d.

Between mid-afternoon and "lights out" I was
rushed around in an automobile for four speeches,
and I pity the sorrows of the poor candidate.
In fact, they have rushed me so fast that the recol-
lections of the four stops are already jumbled in
my mind — I remember the Y. M. C. A. huts as a
composite of low board buildings, with a popular
stove in the middle and a counter, doing a land-
office business in cigarettes, chocolate and chewing
gum, at one end. The Y. M. C. A. has not quite
finished its struggle for comforts such as stoves,
and luxuries such as reading matter; but it has
done measurably well, I take it from a two-days
inspection.

Work is the order of all the daylight hours in
these short winter days ; but when night falls the
weary soldier hurries over to this common as-
sembly room for a look at such magazines and il-
lustrated newspapers as may have reached camp,
for a smoke, and for a chance to talk it over.

I have not seen American soldiers, as a body, I
for many years ; meantime my vision on military
affairs has adjusted itself to the British Tommy,
the French and Belgian poilu and the Italian
peasant soldier. And I was struck to-day, every
time I entered one of the huts, with the size and
physical quality of the American men. They are
the finest, most upstanding specimens that any na- j[
tion among the Allies has sent to France.

They make eager and responsive audiences ; they
335

A EEPOETEE AT ARMAGEDDON

are keen to hear about the war from any one who
has seen it. They have fallen already into the
routine mind of the soldier, whose horizon on this
infinitely great struggle is bound to be limited.
The average man in the ranks knows less about
this war than the average man at the rear. The
local newspapers do not help our soldiers much,
since few of them read French. And indeed, that
very good provincial newspaper published in a city
not far away could not possibly meet the sudden
demand — even though it were published in
English — on account of the limited paper supply.
The English-language newspapers of Paris reach
this rather remote section of our camps in limited
quantities. After every talk my cicerone had to
tear me away from an eager group, each waiting
to put his own pet question about the war — its
causes, its technic and its general condition.

Last night, beside a roaring porcelain stove, I
talked late with the other correspondents. When
I entered my room and lighted the kerosene lamp
I found not one man, but two, asleep in my bed.
I was developing the indignation proper to the cir-
cumstances when I noticed their clothes neatly
folded on chairs at one side. They were American
lieutenants. I remembered, then, that a lot of
newly arrived officers had been dumped down on
us during the afternoon.

It did not seem fitting, somehow, that defend-
ers of the country should be turned out into the
cold for a mere civilian's comfort. I was pre-
336

CUE OWN TEOOPS

paring to sleep under my ulster on a sofa in our
private dining room when I learned that one of the
correspondents had gone to Paris. I stole his
bed, in turn, and all was well.

December 4th.

Two dinners at the messes of battalion officers
stand out in my memory of the past two days.
The first lot of them were housed in a most pic-
turesque old farm building on the edge of a village.
Madame herself, wife of the peasant proprietor
— now mobilized — cooked dinner at an open fire-
place in kettles hung from a crane. The food was
good — "but French," remarked the officers in
apology. However, we had American-baked white
bread and apple pie — all this from a mess near by
that had an American army cook.

None of these officers, I found, had ever been in
France before the war ; and the little ways of the
French people were still new and amusing. They
couldn't understand, for example, why madame,
accommodating as she was about other things,
should not serve the vegetables with the meat
course. This canon of that ritual which the
French make of dining always amuses or puzzles
the outlander. I tried once to get the waiter at a
certain famous little French restaurant to break
the rule. He refused, with a superior haughti-
ness which branded me at once as a barbarian;
and ever since he has taken my tips like tainted
money.

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A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

It proceeds — and this I told the officers — from
the economy of the French in regard to fuel. The
humble French housewife, beyond the memory of
man, has kept only one stove-cover working at a
time; and that domestic habit has become fixed,
even in the luxurious establishments of the rich.
This mention of French economy in fuel started
us on the burning question — rather the freezing
question — of the hour. The French, amused by
our little ways, say we are the greatest wood burn-
ers they ever heard of; the American Army
wonders how the French ever live through a
winter!

It is a question of climate and acclimatization.
France is never smitten with that blizzard arctic
cold which sweeps our North. The winter weather
is mostly just chilly, with a touch of misty
humidity that drives the chill into one's bones.
Now to such a climate one grows inured. It is so
in San Francisco — which is much warmer in
winter than Northern France, but does have a
touch of that same chill humidity. The ac-
climated native goes about quite indifferent to
weather. Most of the houses have neither heating
stoves nor furnaces; on exceptionally cold days
the native simply lights up the fireplace and is
comfortable. The Easterner shivers the first six
months, calling the interiors positively arctic;
grown acclimated, he never notices the chill again.
On the other hand, the Calif ornian going East for
the first time stifles in the tropic interiors by which

338

OUE OWN TROOPS

the people of the snow country store bodily
warmth to meet the cold out of doors.

The French are acclimated to cooler interiors
than ours. Being economical and close-living,
they save on fuel by all kinds of devices. For one
thing, there are the feather beds, which I have
mentioned before. These keep one toasting warm
all night. For another thing, they are far less
careful about ventilation than we — and ventilation
means cold air. Again, they go in for very heavy
underclothing.

The army, being young, vigorous and in train-
ing, will get acclimated in a month or so ; this is
the first bout with winter under strange condi-
tions. Just now many of them feel like that
soldier on leave who made an excursion to the
birthplace of Joan of Arc and remarked that he
didn't wonder she let herself be burned to death!

No sooner were they established than the howl
arose for stoves — an unprecedented quantity of
stoves. The fuel fortunately is at hand — France
has plenty of forest. Squads of axmen got to
work and ripped out such quantities of stovewood
as to amaze the French. "One would say," re-
marked the natives, "that they intended to burn
their way across the lines I"

Madame herself, being interviewed, allowed
charily that Americans need much heat — she
always thought, before, that America was a cold
country. Fine, stalwart, strong-faced madame,
wife of a soldier, and a good soldier herself in her

339

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

own way, has been a mother to this mess. When
first they came they found in each room a bunch
of flowers, bought or begged from the flower pots
of her city neighbors. She mends their stockings,
sews on their buttons and corrects their French
while she laughs at it. "For," as she said to me
when we parted, "the French and the Americans
are as brothers — is it not so?"

To the other mess we came through biting air,
for the weather had changed, bringing a touch of
our native winter. Through a door in a long
board shack with dimmed windows we came into
the presence of a battalion dining at rows of tables
and talking clamorously — in high spirits after a
day's work in the frosty air. The officers were
seated in a little room partitioned off from the
rest ; but they ate the same fare — meat pie, good
white bread, mashed potatoes, apple pie and real
American coffee. This sounds commonplace
probably ; only one who has lived for months on
foreign food, with war bread, can know how good
it tasted.

However, there was one bit of variety : Just as
we were sitting down an orderly arrived from an
adjoining mess and, duly presenting the compli-
ments of the captain, gave us a mess of wild boar 's
flesh killed that day.

In this country the wild boar has become a war-
time nuisance. He hangs out in the thickets, from
which he makes his forays against growing crops.
Once the sporting tendencies of the native gentry

340

OUE OWN TEOOPS

kept them down; but since the war began they
have enjoyed great immunity in their night raids.
And some of our men, waiting for orders or for
billets, have taken to the sport.

You use a blunderbuss of a shotgun, loaded with
buckshot of exaggerated size. So armed, you wait
in a path of the thicket while dogs range it, driv-
ing the boars ahead of them. You have only a
momentary chance to shoot when the boar jumps
across your path. The captain who headed the
party that day got no boars, but the corporal who
went with him got two.

December 5th.

There's a great shortage of civilian doctors in
France. The medicos are mobilized, up to the
age of forty-five, as army surgeons. Of course
many of them have been killed, and under war-
time conditions the schools are not turning out
men to take their places. Even the older men have
volunteered in large numbers for base hospital
service. Just now only five thousand physicians
are available for the needs of all civilian France.
It is bad enough in the cities, but much worse in
the country.

A country physician needs good physical
strength and means of transportation. Both of
these essentials are lacking to the old fellows, who
are doing the best they can in the small towns.
The district in which the American Army finds it-
self camped has suffered exceedingly from lack of

341

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

medical attention. Work as they may, the four or
five old-line practitioners cannot possibly cover the
region. Peasants have died up here because the
doctor could not be brought in time, and old
chronic diseases have fared badly.

So the American Red Cross, while waiting for
patients of our own blood and breed, has arranged
a system of caring for the civilians of the region.
It was done, I may say, with the hearty approval
of the resident physicians, who have been worrying
their hearts out over the situation. At various
villages we have established dispensaries, where
the peasants or townspeople may come once or
twice a week with their ailments and troubles.
Squads consisting of a Red Cross doctor, a nurse
and a driver make constant rounds, attending to
the walking cases in the dispensary and visiting
the bedridden.

The job is not all altruistic; by this means
we keep watch over contagious disease, so guard-
ing the health of our army. Again, we have
looked out for the ultimate interests of the French
physicians. Attendance is not given free. The
nurse carries with her a cash can, into which the
patients are supposed to drop something when the
consultation is finished. This money will be used
for the relief of French physicians' families
orphaned or impoverished by the war.

Yesterday, since my speaking engagements came
late, I made the rounds with a regular crew. The
doctor, up to three or four months ago, was a state

342

OUR OWN TROOPS

physician in New York. The nurse, Madame V.,
was transferred from the regular French hospital
service at the Front to the Red Cross because she
speaks perfect English ; she finished her education
at Oxford. Like thousands of well-educated
Frenchwomen, she entered a nurses' training col-
lege at the beginning of the war, was graduated
and went to work at the Front. Since then she
has had her roof carried from over her head by a
shell; she has worked twenty-four hours a day in
the periods of the great attacks ; she has gone back
with retreats and forward with advances. She
was perhaps the first woman from the outside
world the people of Noyon saw after their deliv-
erance, for she entered the town with the advanced
hospital units. " It was really embarrassing, "
she said — "men, women, children, kissing one!"

I learned only incidentally that her husband, an
eminent scholar in time of peace and an officer in
the war, has been reported missing for a year.
All this came out as we whirled in an American
jitney machine through winter fields, through
picturesque French villages, which looked odd,
somehow, with their filling of tall, uniformed, easy-
moving Americans.

The doctor, bundled in his fur coat against the
icy blasts, took up the conversation in his turn.
The French peasant is a new and entertaining type
to him. He was just beginning to learn that the
individual of this species is as cagy as a Scotch-
man or a Cape Codder.

343

A REPORTER AT ARMAGEDDON

"When we first started," be said, "I thought
the dispensaries were a failure. The first time
round we had no patients at all. That seemed
odd to me, because we'd been officially informed
concerning several old chronic cases. The second
time we had patients — but people with slight or
imaginary ailments; still nothing serious. It
wasn't until the third go that the real invalids
began to send for us. You see, they were trying
us out to find whether there was anything phony
in our proposition! There's the town now," he
added as we came over a hill. "In the first house,
there, I performed an emergency operation on a
kitchen table two weeks ago — patient doing
nicely."

We established ourselves in a little room with a
bijou stove — a concession to Americanism — round
which we fairly wrapped ourselves. We had not
long to wait for our first and only walking patient
at that stop. He was an extremely aged peasant,
gnarled and knotted with work and rheumatism.
However, it wasn't the rheumatism which both-
ered him just then, as he explained in the dialect
of the country, which even Madame V., from a dif-
ferent part of France, had some difficulty in under-
standing. It was something that itched all the
time!

"Make him show his shoulder," said the doctor.
"Aha! Ask him whether he has slept in a bed
the soldiers from the Front have occupied."

He had. He had ' ' soldier itch ! ' ' said the doctor.
344

OUB OWN TROOPS

Whereupon madame, who has had much to do with
that complaint in the military hospitals, gave him
straight directions in French about bathing, boil-
ing his clothes and his blankets and disinfecting
the house, while the doctor measured out pills.
She talked to him as one does to an erring child.

"We cure that in three days in the hospitals/'
said madame when he had dropped his contribu-
tion into the can and gone his way, "but he'll
never follow directions, I suppose."

A long wait, during which we hugged the stove ;
then arrived a little French boy in a black blouse,
begging monsieur the doctor to see his mother,
who was in bed. We trailed along a silent, almost
deserted village street to a neat interior. A great
fireplace, with a mantelpiece of black old wood
at least six feet high, occupied one side of a dark
room; on the shelf of the mantel were ranged
sacred images, a crucifix, some very ugly modern
vases containing dried grasses and two or three
pieces of old copper glazeware, which roused all
the collector in me. At one side of the room was
a recessed bed, like a cupboard, on which lay a
woman with a severe face and two black braids.
I played with a puppy, which had burrowed into
the warm ashes of the fireplace, while the doctor
and the nurse made their low-voiced inquiries and
their diagnosis.

"Simply a case of acute jaundice, " said the
doctor as we left.

That was all for the day in this hamlet ; I can-
345

A BEPOETER AT ARMAGEDDON

not call it exactly a town. Farm life in France
is organized on its own peculiar system; a dozen
American soldiers, giving me their first impres-
sions of France, have mentioned the wide unin-
habited spaces and the multiplicity of very small
towns. The French, peasant, unlike our own
farmer, seldom lives on his land. He dwells, for
sociability, in a little town with two or three hun-
dred other farming people. Thence he goes forth
to cultivate his fields, which may lie two or three
kilometers out of the village.

We visited a succession of these hamlets, where
we attended a little boy with a rash, a woman with
a crisis of digestion and an old lady with acute
rheumatism. We hurried back to our first stop-
ping place for luncheon — we had brought along
our provisions, and madame cooked them for us
over our busy little stove. After luncheon we
motored into a fair-sized town, with a mairie and a
communal school. And the first person we spied
was a portly man, in a long frock coat and a tall
hat, running, and with his hands in his pockets.
A top hat is a rare sight in France nowadays ; so
I turned to look at him.

"That can't be any one but the undertaker,"
said Madame V. "I am afraid the poor old lady
is dead!"

"Very likely," said the doctor. "A violent
stroke of apoplexy," he explained to me. "It oc-
curred the night before our last visit. There
really wasn't anything to be done except show

346

OUR OWN TEOOPS

them how to make her as comfortable as possible.
She 's the first patient we Ve lost. ' '

Their forebodings were accurate, as we found
when we reached the dispensary, where a small
queue awaited us. For house-visits we had an
old woman, bedridden for thirty years, a little
touched in the head by her infirmity — wherefore
she wanted to know emphatically why American
medicine did her no more good than French — and
the janitor of the communal school. He, a gray-
mustached old veteran of 1870, had one of those
colds on the lungs that threaten pneumonia and,
at his age, a quick end.

His little bright-eyed anxious wife did the hon-
ors, complimenting Madame V. — who wore our
American Eed Cross uniform — on her excellent
French ! She followed us down to the door when
the consultation was over, inquiring anxious-
ly whether we had dared tell the whole truth
before her husband. Or was it worse than we
said?

"It will be worse, " cautioned Madame V.
severely, "if he doesn't do exactly as we have
ordered and stay indoors."

"Ah," sighed the wife, "but he is such a child —
and such a gadabout!"

We stopped at one of the few isolated farm-
houses in the region, where an infected finger gets
attention at every round of the Eed Cross car.
The patient here was a farmer's wife, working
the farm while her man fights for France. She

347

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

pierced her finger with a thorn last October and
blood poisoning had set in. It was a question, at
first, whether it hadn't better be amputated; but
the doctor, at her earnest desire, decided to have
a try at saving it. And he has saved it, though
it was a narrow squeak.

A grateful, decent woman of character she was,
and she showed it in her severe, intelligent face.
As she sat before the hollow of her great kitchen
fireplace, backed by a beautiful old fire iron of
the kind for which antique dealers struggle, she
made a wonderful picture — all France in her stern
beauty, her quiet air of resignation and her
courage.

We had just established ourselves at the next
stop when Suzette burst into the room, lighting
np everything. Suzette is sixteen ; she has a mar-
velous pair of big, long-lashed brown eyes,
features as clean as though carved, and an air
like that of a wild creature caught and half tamed.
The dispensary crew knew Suzette. She drives
the collecting wagon for her father, who owns the
village creamery.

" She's here to put something over on us," said
the doctor in English. "Ah! Didn't I tell you?"

For Suzette, her great eyes wandering in her
characteristic expression of a wild thing, was talk-
ing French rapidly to Madame V.

"He is very ill, madame — ah, it is frightful!
So ill he cannot mount himself to this place. So
he stops at our house; and if madame and mon-

348

OUR OWN TROOPS

sieur the doctor will come down there — and you
could send your car to wait for you there — "

"Aha!" said Madame V., addressing us in
English and controlling her expression. "That's
what ails the little lady — the car!"

"She has a crush on our military chauffeur,"
said the doctor. "Every time we come it's a new
trick! Very well; we must humor the natives.
Tell her it's all right ; tell him to run the car down
to Suzette's and wait. It will be good for his
French, anyhow!"

Suzette gave us a backward glance of her big,
untamed eyes as she left the room, which shows
that she suspected our insight into her purposes ;
then we heard her racing down the stairs — heard
the whir of a jitney engine starting.

After cleaning up the dispensary we visited a
peasant house — and such a house! Really it
wasn't a house at all, but a barn, packed with hay
and feed. Within, right and left of the entrance,
and under a separate double roof, stood two cabin-
like structures, so old that the oak beams were
black. The doors had primitive handwrought
latches and hinges ; and they were carved crudely
with deeds of the saints. How many centuries old
they were only an antiquary has the right to guess.

We entered one of these doorways. The apart-
ment within was beamed with the same old black
oak, which seemed to have gathered the smoke of
centuries. Opposite the great fireplace was a bed
let into the wall — a cubbyhole bed, with two doors

349

A EEPOKTER AT ARMAGEDDON

to guard one against dangerous night air. From
the feather-bed covering appeared a man's face
which seemed as old as the oak beams. Two old
women, in shawls and caps, rose from beside the
fireplace at our entrance and stood bobbing.

"There's nothing the matter with him except
the weakness of extreme old age," said the doctor.
"And he's a little wrong in the head too."

As soon as he saw us he began to pour out his
symptoms. I was getting up a conversation with
the old women by the fireplace when I heard
Madame V. say:

"But that couldn't possibly be!"

"It couldn't!" came the cracked voice from the
bed. "Sacre!"

He rose from beneath the feather bed, the tassel
of his nightcap shaking, and closed the doors on
himself. That wall had become simply an oak
panel, with two heart-shaped openings to prevent
its occupant from suffocating.

"He behaves like a child!" said one of the old
women. "If monsieur the American doctor will
tell us what to do, and will leave us the medicine,
we will attend to Jules."

So we left the medicine and directions, and went
back to the house of Suzette. Our patient was
there, an old man, very miserable with sciatica.
Glancing through the doorway of the dairy office,
where we held this consultation, I beheld Suzette
and our chauffeur, sitting on stools beside the
great fireplace, in intimate conversation.

350

OUR OWN TROOPS

" Where do you live? Where did you just come
from!" asked Madame V.

"Up there— by the barn," said the patient, in-
dicating that barn we had just visited — where
Jules had shut himself in.

"If you could walk down here you could have
walked to the dispensary, couldn't you?" de-
manded Madame V.

"But certainly; only Mademoiselle Suzette told
me to wait here for you," said the patient.

"Aha!" said Madame V.

Through the doorway floated the voice of
Suzette :

"Mais vous parlez bien — c'est ga — c'est une
corde. Dites-le, c'est une cor del"

"C'est une corde/' came the voice of our mili-
tary chauffeur.

I peeped through the doorway. Suzette and our
chauffeur were playing Cat's Cradle.

December 7th.

Yesterday afternoon I walked, on my own re-
sponsibility, to a little village near our town where
a platoon of infantry and another of machine
gunners have their quarters; a pasture not far
away they use for their training. The village
looks as old as the Roman Empire ; the stone saints
carved in the walls of one little hut, where six of
our soldiers have established bunks, cannot date
later than the thirteenth century. There is also a
little Gothic church — "A thousand years old!"

351

A EEPOETEE AT AEMAGEDDON

said one of our men. It looks all of that, though
Gothic was not invented a thousand years ago.

When I came among them, at the edge of the
village, the machine gunners were resting in the
lee of the haystacks and the infantrymen were
getting their critique. They were gathered in a
circle about their platoon commander, while a
French lieutenant told them what was wrong with
their work and an interpreter translated.
^ *• r These three formed a pretty contrast. The
tft American was a big, sandy, serious-faced chap,
New England American all through. The French
instructor was of the Pyrenees, where France
(\\ blends with Spain; he had a dark face, all fire but
/V all determination too. The interpreter was a
V- Flemish-French blond, broad-headed and thick-
set. The interpreter translated the captain's flow
of French to our platoon commander, and he
translated from classical English to United States

like this :

The interpreter : ' ' He says that your men did
not go fast enough through that barrage. There
is the point where they must advance with all
speed. "

The platoon commander: "You hear, fellows?
The barrage belt, you remember, was in that hol-
low. You didn't hit it up fast enough there. Of
course, when it is a real barrage, you'll be doing
nine seconds — and then some ; but you might just
as well sprint in practice and get used to the
pace!"

352

OUR OWN TKOOPS

After exhausting my untrained legs in following
the machine gunners through a hypothetical ad-
vance, I strolled back. into the village; and there
I was hailed by my own name. I could not place
the stalwart bronzed boy, in signal-corps uniform,
who came from the doorway with his hand out-
stretched, till he mentioned an American moving-
picture company. Then memory came with a rush.

In the spring before the great war began I had
something to do with producing a moving-picture
show. To a lost old New Jersey town we imported
forty stage cowboys, with broncos, chaps, som-
breros and similar trappings, and gave a faithful
imitation of the Wild West. Buckley, here, had
the accomplishment of " dying off his horse" —
shoot him with a blank cartridge and he would do
a realistic fall backward while the horse galloped
on riderless. Because of which, he got ten dollars
a day, while the rest drew five.

I have unexpected meetings like this every day.
Already, at division headquarters, I had found a
college mate serving as a captain in the quarter-
master's department, and a budding American
playwright, with whom I used to range Greenwich
Village, in charge of billets for the staff. Day be-
fore yesterday who should come down the stairs
of our hotel but a red-headed youth whom I last
saw across a tennis net, engaged in putting me
out of the great annual tournament of Scituate,
Mass. He is a sergeant of engineers now. He
had a few hours to wait in town, so we went to

353

A EEPOKTEB AT AEMAGEDDON

luncheon together; and some of his remarks de-
serve repetition.

"I'm mighty glad I came," he said; "it's a
great adventure. I didn't know anything could be
so interesting. Except for the weather just at
present, I'm crazy about France and the French.
I'm glad, too, that I've come in the ranks. You
know I applied for a commission on the ground of
militia experience, and they turned me down. I
felt rather sore, but I'm more than reconciled.
I'm not thinking of the army as a career ; and this
way I get so much closer to the people — and
really, to the war. Yes ; I prefer the ranks !"

Scratch anywhere among the French of the
north and you turn up a human story. Now
there's Henriette, for example.

She has been assigned by the hotel to look after
the correspondents. She brings our morning
coffee, cares for our rooms, keeps our fires sup-
plied and waits on our table. Her hours are very
long; war is a time of hard work. But she is
always mightily efficient and absolutely cheerful.
Henriette has just turned nineteen ; she is black-
eyed, black-haired and warm of expression. Her
younger sister, just as pretty for a blonde as Hen-
riette for a brunette, is chambermaid on the floor
above. Henriette served me a late dinner last
night; and, standing by the sideboard, tray in
hand, she told me about her family and the war.

They lived in a town between Verdun and the
border. Her mother was dead; the family con-

354

OUR OWN TEOOPS

sisted of her grandmother, her father, a sister and
two brothers, younger than she. The Germans in-
vaded that part of France, occupied their village
and seized the town dignitaries as hostages on the
day before war was declared.

Her father, a territorial, got away to his regi-
ment. He was one of four brothers, all mobilized.
This left the family in the hands of the Germans.
All that autumn, Henriette says, the two young
girls worked by compulsion, grinding wheat for
the conquerors. And after a year the family was
repatriated 'through Switzerland; but meantime
the youngest boy had died. At Lyons, where they
rested for a time, the other boy died.

Then the two girls and the grandmother went
to live with relatives in a town near the Front.
Last year the Germans began constant air raids
on that town ; the time came when the grandmother
could stand it no longer. So they drifted back
here, where the girls got places in the hotel. It
is a new kind of experience for them; in peace
their father is superintendent of a factory.

Of him they had no news 'until they were re-
patriated. Two of his brothers had been killed.
One of them was his favorite; to avenge him he
had volunteered for the first line. Twice wounded
and sent back, he considered his duty done ; and he
is now road-mending again with his old territorial
battalion.

"The war has done more than enough to our

family !" said Henriette.

(i)

True Stories of the War

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MEN, WOMEN AND WAR

BY WILL IRWIN, author of "The Latin at War."

With the inquisitiveness of the reporter and the pen of an
artist in words the author has in this book given us the
human side of an inhuman war. He saw and understood
the implacable German war machine; the Belgian fighting
for his homeland; the regenerated French defending their
country against the invader, and the imperturbable English,
determined to maintain their honor even if the empire was
threatened.

"The splendid story of Ypres is the fullest outline of that
battle that the present reviewer has seen. Mr. Irwin's book
is all the better for not having been long. It has no dull
pages."— The New York Times.

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THE LATIN AT WAR

By WILL IRWIN, author of "Men, Women and War."

No correspondent "at the front" has found more stories of
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during the year 1917, and discusses the social and economic-
conditions as seen through the eyes of civilians and soldiers
he interviewed.

"He makes you visualize while you read, because he visual-
ized while he wrote."— The Outlook, New York.

"It is a fascinating volume throughout; the more so because
of the writer's unfailing sense of humor, of pathos, and of
sympathy with human nature in all its phases and experi-
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AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE WORLD WAR

By IDA CLYDE CLARKE

Fhis is a splendid story, brimming with interest, telling how
the women of America mobilized and organized almost over
night, what they have accomplished and the work of the
various women's organizations. Every woman can derive
from it inspiration and information of particular value to

these times. a^ AA

$2.00 net

GREAT BRITAIN'S PART

By PAUL D. CRAVATH

In brief compass the author tells what Great Britain has
done and is doing to help win the great war. The book is
unique among war books because it is a story of organiza-
tion rather than of battle front scenes and is a side of the
war few other writers have more than touched upon.
"It would be difficult to make language clearer or more
effective. . . . It is a veritable pistol shot of alluring
information."— The Christian Intelligencer, New York.
$1.00 net

OUT OF THEIR OWN MOUTHS

With an introduction by WILLIAM ROSCOE THATEE

To prove conclusively the identity of the aggressors in the
great war, and their ultimate aims this book has been pre-
pared from the official documents, speeches, letters and
hundreds of unofficial statements of German leaders. With
few exceptions, the extracts included in this collection are
taken directly from the German.

"It is the most comprehensive collection of this character
that has yet appeared." — The Springfield Union.

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520

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UNDER FOUR FLAGS FOR FRANCE

By CAPTAIN GEORGE CLARKE MUSGRAVE

What Captain Musgrave saw as an observer on the "Western
front since 1914 is precisely what every American wants to
know. He tells the story of the war to date, in simple, nar-
rative form, intensely interesting and remarkably informa-
tive. If you want a true picture of all that has happened,
and of the situation as it exists today, you will find it in
this book.

Illustrated, $2.00 net

TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH
By ARTHUR T. CLARK

Here is the first accurate account of the thrilling campaign
in Mesopotamia. The author was a member of the British
Expeditionary Forces and saw the wild rout of the Turks
from Kut-el-Amara to Bagdad. His book brings home the
absorbing story of this important part of the war, and
shows the real soldier Tommy Atkins is.

Illustrated, $1.50 net

OUT THERE

By CHARLES W. WHITEHAIR

This is a story by a Y. M. C. A. worker, who has seen ser-
vice at the front with the English and French soldiers, in
Egypt, Flanders, England and Scotland and who has wit-
nessed some of the greatest battles of the present war.

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Romance and War

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THE SECRET WITNESS

By GEORGE GIBBS, author of "The Yellow Dove," etc.

A whirlwind romance of love and war, with a man and a
girl entangled in the meshes of two of the world's most in-
genious secret service systems.

"A swift-moving, entertaining story with an ingenious plot
and plenty of exciting moments."— The New York Times.

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THE YELLOW DOVE

By GEORGE GIBBS.

The secret service in wartime, the theft of cryptic dis-
patches, the great mystery of the Yellow Dove, a spirited
American girl with suitors on both sides, a kidnapping —
these are only a few of the alluring ingredients Mr. Gibbs
has used in this thrilling novel.

"One of the best plot-stories brought out by the present
war."— The Outlook, New York.

Illustrated, $1.35 net

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE (New Edition)
By STEPHEN CRANE.

This is a new edition of Stephen Crane's masterpiece, with
an introduction by Arthur Guy Empey, the author of
"Over the Top."

This story of a man's behavior in battle has probably never
been equaled in a war novel. The author of "Over the
Top" says: "It is not a story of war. It is war. I have
met every one of the characters on the fire-step of the
trenches in France."

Semi- flexible red fabrikoid, $1.00 net

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I

D Irwin, William Henry

640 A reporter at Armageddon

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