CLOSE UP BEHIND THE LINES
“It is going to be perhaps a dangerous undertaking,” says the French
army officer the next day in the reception room at Maison de la Presse.
He is speaking solemnly and impressively. “Do you still wish to go?” he
asks, addressing me in particular. I look back steadily into his eyes.
“_Oui, Monsieur._” Then his glance sweeps inquiringly the semicircle
of faces. There are six journalists and a munitions manufacturer
from Bridgeport, Connecticut. And they all nod assent. The room is
singularly silent for an instant, the officer just standing quietly,
his left hand resting on his sword-hilt. Then he turns and passes
to each of us the official Permis de Correspondent de la Presse aux
Armees, for our journey to Rheims the next day. And we all sign on the
dotted line.
Before I retire that night I rip the pink rose from off my hat and
lay out the long dark coat which is to envelop me from my neck to my
heels. It is the camouflage which, in accordance with the army orders,
blends one with the landscape as a means of concealment from the German
gunners’ range. Rheims is under bombardment. It was fired on yesterday.
It may be to-morrow. There must not be, the army officer has assured
us, even the flower on the lady’s hat for a target.
My electric light winks once. Two minutes later it winks twice, and
is gone, according to the martial law which puts out all lights in
Paris from 11:30 at night until 8 o’clock in the morning. I grope my
way to bed in the darkness and at 6 o’clock the next morning, I dress
by candle light. I count carefully the “_pieces de identité_” in the
chamois safety bag that hangs over my left hip and place in my hand bag
my passport and my French _permis_, both of which must be presented at
the railway station before I can purchase a ticket. I look to make sure
that the inside pocket of my purse still contains my business card with
its pencilled request: “In case of death or disaster kindly notify the
_Pictorial Review_, New York City.” And as I pass the porter’s desk at
the hotel entrance I leave with the sleepy concierge one other last
message: “If Mme. Daggett has not returned by midnight, will the hotel
management kindly communicate with her friend Mlle. Marie Perrin, 12
Rue Ordener?” All these are precautions that you take lest you be lost
in the great European war.
The Gare l’Est is crowded always with throngs of soldiers arriving
and departing for the front. It is necessary that our party assemble
as early as seven o’clock to get in line at the ticket window for
the eight o’clock train, for every traveller’s credentials must be
separately and carefully read and inspected. At Epernay, where we
alight at 10:30, the station platform is densely packed with French
soldiers in the sky blue uniforms that have been so carefully matched
with the horizon color of France. A debonnair French captain has
been appointed by the French government to receive us. He is in full
uniform, splendid scarlet trousers and gold braided coat, with his
left breast ornamented with the _Croix de Guerre_ and the _Médaille de
Honneur_. After the formal salutations are over, however, his orderly
envelops all of the captain’s splendour too in the long sky blue coat
for camouflage against the Germans. And we start for Rheims in the
convoy of three luxuriously appointed “_camoens_,” the limousines
placed at our disposal by the government. They, too, are painted blue
grey to blend with the landscape, and each flies a little French flag.
“_Ou allez vous, Monsieur?_” the sentry at the bridge of Epernay
challenges our chauffeur. And the French captain himself leans from
the window to answer, “_À Rheims. Une mission de la gouvernement._”
So we pass sentry after sentry. It is 15 miles to Rheims. This is the
Department of the Marne, with the vineyards that have produced the
most famous wines of the world. The “smiling countryside of France,”
the poets have termed it. In September, 1914, history changed it to
the grim field of carnage running red with the blood of civilisation
that here made its stand against the onrushing Huns. Right across
that valley see the battlefield of the Marne. Along this road the
German army passed. From this little village that we are entering,
all the inhabitants fled before their approach. The enemy now is not
far away. Over there, just against that horizon, lie the trenches they
now occupy. See this roadside along which we are driving, how it is
curiously hung with linen curtains? They are strung on wires fifteen
feet high. For miles we ride behind them. It is the camouflage, the
French captain says, that hides us from German view. We have just
emerged from the forest at the edge of the Mountain of Rheims when,
hark! Hear it—the sharp, distinct sound of an explosion! What is it?
Where is it? The captain lays his hand reassuringly on my arm: “It is,
I think, a tire that has burst on the rear car.”
“Captain,” I say, “no automobile tire I ever heard sounded exactly like
that.”
“You are not nervous?” he asks. I shake my head. “Well,” he admits, “it
is sometimes that the Germans do take a chance shot at this road.”
But at Rheims when we arrive, I notice that all our automobile tires
are quite intact. We enter the city through the great bronze gate, the
finishing ornaments of which have been nicked off by German shells.
We stand in the midst of a scene of desolation that looks like the
ruins of some long ago civilisation. Once, before this world that men
had builded began to go to pieces, even as the blocks that children
pile tumble to a nursery floor, here was a populous busy city of some
120,000 souls. Now our footsteps echo through deserted streets. Not
a man or woman or child is in sight. The grass is growing in the
pavement there between the street-car tracks. The Hotel de Ville is
only a shell of a building with the outer walls standing. This shop
is shuttered tight. The next has the entire front gone, blown away in
a bombardment. There are empty houses from which the occupants have
months ago fled. Here stands the skeleton of a pretentious residence,
the roof gone and the front riddled: we look directly in on the
second-story room with a dresser and a bed in disarray. There a curtain
from a deserted little front parlour flaps dismally through a shattered
window-pane almost in our faces. Here above the cellar-grating of a
house in ruins, there arises a sickening odour. We look at each other
in questioning horror; perhaps the military with the pick and spade
assigned to disinterment duty after some bombardment did not dig deep
enough here. But the captain does not wish to understand and hurries us
along to the next street.
A CRUMBLING CIVILISATION
In the ghastly stillness of this city that was once Rheims, at last
there is a sound of life. Down the Rue de la Paix, the street of
peace, an army supply-wagon clatters past us. And you have no idea how
pleasant can be the sound even of noise.
Then across the way appears a milk-woman, pushing her cart with four
tin cans and jingling a little bell. There are a few people, it seems,
still left, employés in the champagne industry, who cling to their
homes even though they must live in the cellar. Now the devastation
increases and the houses begin to be mere rubbish heaps of brick and
mortar as we approach the Place de la Cathédrale.
At length we stand before the famous Cathedral of Rheims itself. I know
of no more impressive place to be in the closing days of the year 1916
than here at the front of the terrible world war.
In this edifice is symbolised all that civilisation of ours that
culminated in the Twentieth Century, now to be razed to the ground.
For lo, these seven hundred years, even as the two great towers above
us have lifted the infinite beauty of their architectural lace-work
against the blue-domed sky, some thirty generations of the human soul
have sent their aspirations heavenward on the incense of prayer. Over
these very stones beneath our feet, king after king of France has
walked, to receive the crown of Charlemagne and to be anointed before
this altar from “_le sainte ampouli_.” And now here to-day is history
in no dead and musty pages but in the making, white-hot from the anvil
of the hour! Only a little over a mile away are the German guns that
from day to day shower the shell-fire of their destruction on the city.
This spot upon which we stand is their particular objective point of
attack. Hear! There is a rumbling detonation. We wait hushed for an
instant. But the sound is not repeated. You see, already there have
been some 30,000 shells poured on Rheims. Twelve hundred fell in one
day only. At any moment there may be more.
“If the bombardment should begin,” we had been instructed at Maison de
la Presse, “you would rush for the nearest cellar.” I think we all have
listening ears. Every little while there is certainly repeated that
desultory firing on the front.
But nothing is dropping on us. And reassured, we turn to examine
the great shell hole in the pavement not five yards distant. The
Archbishop’s Palace, immediately adjoining the church, is flat on the
ground in ruins. The cathedral itself is slowly being wrecked. But in
the public square directly before it, look here! See Joan of Arc on
her horse triumphantly facing the future! In her hand she is waving
the bright flag of France. Amid the débris of the great war piling up
about her, the famous statue stands absolutely untouched. Here at the
very storm centre of the attack on civilisation, with the hell-fire of
the enemy falling in a rain of thousands of shells about her, she seems
as secure, as safe under God’s heaven as when the people passed daily
before her to prayer. Shall we not call it a miracle?
“See,” says the captain, his head reverently uncovered, his eyes
shining, “our Maid of Orleans. No German shall ever harm her!” And
since the war began, it is true, no German ever has. Not a statue
of the famous girl-warrior anywhere in France has been so much as
scratched by the enemy. Her name was the password on the day of the
Battle of the Marne and there are those who think it was the shadowy
figure of a girl on a horse that led the troops to that victory. Oh,
though cathedrals may crumble and cities be laid waste and fields be
devastated, some time again it shall be well with the world. For the
faith of the people of France in Joan of Arc shall never pass away.
That we realize, as we look on the rapt face of the captain who leads
us now within the great church itself, where for three years all
prayers have ceased. The marvellous stained glass from the thirteenth
century, which made the religious light of the beautiful windows, now
hangs literally in tatters like torn bed-quilts blowing in the wind.
That great jagged hole in the roof was torn by a shell at the last
bombardment. There are fissures in the side walls. The rain comes
in, and the birds. Doves light there on the transept rail. Amid the
rubbish of broken saints with which the floor is littered, there yet
stands here and there a sorrowful statue hung with the garland of faded
flowers reminiscent of some far-off fête day. And _Requiescat in pace_,
you may read the legend cut in the stone of the eastern wall above the
tomb of some Christian Father.
In the nearby Rue du Cardinal de Lorraine, in a garden saying his
rosary, walks an old man in a red cap, one of the few remaining
residents who will not leave the city. He is the venerable Mgr. Lucon,
Cardinal of Rheims. Always he is praying, praying to God to spare the
cathedral. And God does not. “I do not understand. I suppose that He
in His wisdom must have some purpose in permitting the church to be
destroyed,” says the Cardinal of Rheims. “I do not understand,” he
always adds humbly.
“One may not understand,” repeats the captain. And he takes us
to luncheon at the Lion d’Or, the little inn where the wife of
the proprietor still stays to serve any “mission of the French
_gouvernement_.” Then he shows us the famous champagne cellars of the
_Etablissement Pommery_. Here one hundred feet below the ground, in the
chalk caves built a thousand years ago by the Romans, are twelve miles
of subterranean passageways with thirteen million bottles of the most
celebrated champagne in the making.
The superintendent pours out his choicest brand: “_Vive la France_ and
the Allies,” he says, lifting his glass. He talks more English than the
captain can. He is telling us of when the Germans entered Rheims. “Four
officers,” he says, “came riding ahead of the army. And I met them by
chance just as they arrived in the market place of Rheims.”
“What did you do?” asks the New York correspondent of the _London
Daily Mail_. “I wept,” says the Frenchman, simply and impressively.
“Gentlemen,” he adds solemnly and sadly, “I hope you may never meet
some day four conquering Chinamen riding up Broadway.”
I find myself catching my breath suddenly at that. And I am glad when
the captain hums a gay little French tune and holds out his glass a
second time: “Give us again ‘_Vive la France_.’”
The sun is dipping red in the west when we turn to leave Rheims and
Joan of Arc bravely flying the French flag before its crumbling
cathedral. There is the rumble of guns once more at the front. Then
the winter dusk rapidly envelops the road along which we are speeding.
It is the same road to Epernay. But now it is alive with traffic. Under
the protecting cover of the soft darkness, all sorts of vehicles are
passing. The headlights of our car flash on a continuous procession
of motor lorries, munition-wagons, army supply-wagons, tractors, and
peasants’ carts carrying produce to market. So we arrive at Epernay for
a lunch of red wine and war bread at the little station. By ten o’clock
we are safely within the walls of Paris. We have escaped bombardment!
It is two days later before the French official _communiqué_ in the
daily papers begins again recording: “At Rheims toward six o’clock last
night, after a violent attack with trench mortars, the Germans twice
stormed our advance posts. But these two attempts completely failed
under our machine-gun fire and grenade bombing.”
DIFFICULT DAYS IN THE WAR ZONE
It isn’t what happens necessarily. It’s what’s always-going-to-happen
that keeps one guessing between life and death in a war zone. And
there are special torments of the inquisition devised for journalists.
Ordinary civilians are occupied only with saving their lives.
Journalists must save their notes.
At half-past eleven o’clock that night of my return from Rheims, there
is dropped in the mail box on my hotel room door, a cablegram from
America: “Steamship _St. Louis_ here. Your material from London not on
it.” The room in which I stand, the Hotel Regina, and the city of Paris
all reel unsteadily for an instant. Has the British Government eaten
up all my journalistic findings so preciously entrusted to Wellington
House? I grasp the brass foot rail of the bed and bring myself
upstanding. If they have, it is no time for me to lose my head.
Jacques with the empty coat sleeve and the _Croix de Guerre_ on his
breast, who operates the elevator, I am sure thinks it a woman demented
who is going out in the streets of Paris alone at midnight. But “an
_Americaine_,” one can never tell what “an _Americaine_” will do.
“Pardon,” he says hesitatingly as I step out, “madame knows the hour?”
Yes, madame knows the hour. But an alien may not send a telegram
without presenting a passport, the document that never for an instant
goes out of one’s personal possession. No messenger can do this errand
for me.
Five minutes later I am in a taxicab tearing down the Rue Quatre
Septembre to the cable office in the Bourse. My appeal for help to Sir
Gilbert Parker in London is being counted on the blue telegraph blank
by the operator at the little window, when suddenly I remember I have
forgotten. My hand feels helplessly over my left hip where there is
concealed a letter of credit for three thousand dollars. But I falter,
“I haven’t any money, that is, where I can get at it.”
“I have,” speaks a voice over my shoulder. I look around into a man’s
cheerful countenance. “What’s the damage?” he says again in pleasant
Manhattan English. I hesitate only for an instant. “It’s sixteen francs
I need.”
He promptly pulls out his bank-roll. I ask for his card, of course, to
return the loan the next day with many thanks for his courtesy. He,
however, has no security that I will. As he puts me in my taxicab and
lifts his hat beneath the faint war-dimmed light of the street lamps in
the dark Rue Vivienne, he only knows that I am his country-woman. And
he is an American man. The Lord seems to send them when you need them
most.
Three days later the awful silence in which I am suffering all the
fears there are for a journalist in war-time, is broken by a reply from
London: “Material only delayed. Sailed steamship _New York_ instead
of _St. Louis_.” After another two weeks of fitful nights in which I
dream of men in khaki who confiscate journalistic data, there comes
the message from New York that is like hearing from Heaven: “Your
consignment of material safely arrived.” Meanwhile, before I may be
permitted to take a line out of this country, Maison de la Presse must
pass on my French data. I am feverishly editing it for their approval
when there is a knock at my door. The maid is there with more letters
than the little brass mail box will hold. I eagerly open my American
mail to find it filled with holiday greetings. So, it can still be
Christmas somewhere in the world! I am standing at the window with a
Christmas card in my hand, thinking pleasant thoughts of the far-away
city called New York where there is still peace on earth, good-will
to men, when down the Rue de Rivoli passes a motor lorry piled high
with black crosses. There are fields in France that are planted with
black crosses, acres and acres of them. After each new push on the
front, more are required, black crosses by the cartload! I glanced at
my calendar. Why, to-day is Christmas! I had quite forgotten. You see,
over here all joy-making occasions seem to have been such a long while
ago, like the stories of once upon a time.
I turn once more to the task of making ready my data for Maison de la
Presse. Here a too colourful sentence must be rejected. There is a too
flagrantly feministic document that will be safest in the waste basket.
It is the martial mind that I must meet. A press bureau, you see, is
prepared to pass promptly propaganda on the battles of the Somme.
But dare one risk, say, a pamphlet on the breast feeding of infants?
Propaganda about the rising value of a baby! Dear, dear, it might, for
all a man could tell, be treason, seditious material calculated to give
aid and comfort to the enemy! Already to my inquiries about maternity
measures in Paris, have I not been answered suspiciously: “But why do
you ask? This matter it is not of the war.”
My emasculated data at last are ready for review by _le chef du service
de la presse_. He stamps it all over with his signature in red ink. It
is done up in packages and officially sealed in red wax with the seal
of the state of France. At the Post Office in the Rue Etienne Marcel,
I register it and mail it, committing it with a sigh to the mercies of
the great Atlantic.
DEALING WITH GOVERNMENT
Having crossed the Channel once alive, it seems like tempting fate
to try it again. I draw in my breath as one about to plunge into a
cold bath in the morning, and go out to secure from three governments
the necessary permission that will allow me to return to England.
From the police alone it sometimes takes eight days to secure this
concession. But at the Prefecture of Police, they read my letter of
introduction from the French consul in New York. And I have only to
leave my photograph and sign on the dotted line. In five minutes they
have given my passport the necessary visé. The American consul easily
enough adds his. All my journey apparently is going as pleasantly as
a summer holiday planned by a Cook’s Agency, when at length I come up
with a bump against the British Control office in the Rue Cheveaux
Lagarde. And the going away from here requires some negotiations. The
British lieutenant in charge reads my nice French letter and without
comment tosses it aside. “You wish to go to London?” he asks in great
surprise. “Now, why should you wish to go to London?” He gives me
distinctly to understand this is not the open season for tourists in
England. “We don’t care to have people travelling,” he says in a tone
of voice as if that settles it. “Why have you come over here in these
difficult and dangerous times, anyhow?” he asks querulously and a
trifle suspiciously. “The best thing you can do is to go home directly.
And America is right across the water from here.”
“But, Lieutenant,” I gasp, “my trunk is in England and I’ve got to have
a few clothes.”
“No,” he says, “personal reasons like that don’t interest the British
Government. Neither am I able to understand a journalistic mission
which should take a woman travelling in these days of war.” He looks at
me. “The New Position of Women! It is not of sufficient interest to the
British Government that I should let you go,” he says with finality.
“I know, Lieutenant,” I agree. “But surely you are interested in the
Allies’ war propaganda for the United States?” The light from the
window shines full on his face and I can see a faint relaxation about
the lines of his mouth. “Now I wish to go to England so that I may tell
the story of the British women’s war work. The readers of _Pictorial
Review_ are four million women who vote.” The lieutenant stirs visibly.
His sword rattles against the rounds of his chair.
Well, my request hangs in the balance like this for a week. At length
one day he says, “I’m thinking about letting you go. I shall have to
consult with my superior officer. I don’t at all know that he will
consent.”
There is the day that I have almost given up hope. I am waiting again
before the lieutenant’s desk. He has gone for a last consultation
with the superior officer. Will he never come back? I stare at his
empty chair. The clock on the mantel ticks and ticks. The fire in the
grate snaps and snaps. Other people at the next desk who get easier
visés than mine, come and go—a Red Cross nurse, two French sisters of
charity, a little French boy returning to school. I have counted the
pens in the lieutenant’s glass tray. I know every blot on his desk-pad.
The clock has ticked thirty-five minutes of suspense for me before the
little French soldier in red trousers opens the door and the lieutenant
is here.
“Well,” he says, “we have decided. You are to be permitted to go, but
on one condition.” And he visés my passport, “No return to France
during the period of the war.”
It has taken nearly two weeks to win my case. Two days later at 6
A. M., when the gardens of the Tuileries are outlined dimly
against the faint rays of dawn, my taxicab is reeling through the
streets of Paris to the Gare St. Lazare. It is noon before the train
reaches Havre. The Red Cross nurse, the London newspaper correspondent
and the Belgian air-man all file out of our compartment and the Irish
major from Salonica is last. He turns to me with a frank Irish smile:
“Your bag can just as well go along with my military luggage. And
they’ll never even open it.”
At eight o’clock that night in Havre, my passport and the letter from
the French consul in New York are handed down the steel line of ten
men at a table. Each looks up with the same curious smile when his
glance arrives at the last visé: “Who put that on your passport?” asks
the officer at the head of the line. “The British Control Office?” he
says with heat. “It’s none of their business.” In an inner room, four
more men examine my documents. “Did the British officer see this letter
from the French consul?” I am asked. I nod assent. A laugh goes round
the room. “Pardon, madame,” says the man with the most gold braid, “the
British Control Office does not control France. You are welcome to
France, madame, welcome to France any time you choose to come.”
That is the War Office that speaks. So, with the French Government’s
cordial invitation ringing pleasantly in my ears, I go on board the
Channel boat. But I have no intention of returning to France right
away, gentlemen. I lay out my life-preserver with a feeling of great
relief that if I survive this crossing, it will not have to be done
over again. And once more the boat in the darkness steals safely and
silently across the Channel.
In the morning, in Southampton, the major from Salonica hands me his
card: “Letters,” he says, a trifle wistfully, “will always reach me at
that address.” I look at the card here before me on my desk as I write
and I wonder. The major with his Irish smile may now be lying dead on
the field of battle somewhere on the front. In the midst of life we are
in death almost anywhere in the world to-day.
[Illustration:
THE STAFF OF THE GREAT WOMEN’S WAR HOSPITAL IN ENDELL STREET, LONDON
This is the shining citadel that marks the capitulation the world over
of the medical profession to the new woman movement.
]
IN COLDEST ENGLAND
I have again “established my residence” with the police in London. I
feel on terms of the most intimate acquaintance with the London police.
So many of them have my photograph and are conversant with all the
biographical and genealogical details of my life. You have to do it,
register at a police station, every time you change your hotel. I have
moved so often, I am nervous lest I seem like a German spy. But at the
Bow Street Station, the officer in charge just nods genially: “Oh,
that’s quite all right. Looking for more heat, aren’t you? I know. You
Americans are all alike.”
Have you ever shivered in London in January? Then you don’t know what
it is to be cold, not even when the thermometer drops to zero and New
York’s all snowed in but the subway, and the street cleaning department
has to spend a million dollars to dig you out of the drifts. Yes, I
know about the Gulf Stream. It does pleasantly moderate the outdoor
climate so that it is never really winter in England. But the Gulf
Stream does not get into their houses. I was a luncheon guest the
other day at a residence with a crest on its note-paper. The hostess
put on a wrap to pass down the staircase from the drawing-room to the
dining-room, and with my bronchitis—all Americans get it in London—I
was simply unable to remove my coat at all. This mansion, English
ivy-covered, and mildewed with ages of aristocracy, has never had
a real fire within its walls. There are only the tiny grate fires
which are, as it were, mere ornaments beneath the mantelpiece. The
drawing-room fire is lighted only just before the guests arrive: the
men with lifted coat-tails back up to it, their hands crossed behind
them spread to the blaze; the dog and the cat draw near to the fender;
conversation about the fire becomes general in the tone of voice,
well, in which one might admire a rare sunset. The dining-room fire,
likewise, is lighted only just before the butler announces luncheon.
And in all this grand mansion you discover there isn’t any place to be
warm, unless perchance the cook in the kitchen may have it.
Well, English hotels strive to be as coldly correct as this English
high life. And I have suffered cold storage in Piccadilly at the
rate of ten dollars a day as long as my bronchitis will bear it. I
ought to be ill in bed at this moment. But I can’t be. There isn’t
a hospital bed in Europe without a wounded soldier in it. Schools,
orphanages, monasteries, country residences, castles and many hotels
have been turned into hospitals, all of them full of soldiers. A
civilian who may be ill literally has not where to lay his head. So I
set out desperately to find heat in London. I think I have searched
every hotel from Mayfair to Bloomsbury Square. As a special concession
to American patronage a few of them have put steam-heat on their
letter heads, “central heat,” they call it. But all European radiators,
when there are any, are as reluctant as their elevators. “Lifts” move
under groaning protest and if they go up, they let you know they do
not expect to come down. The radiators are equally as sullen about
radiating. They don’t want to at all. English radiators are such toy
affairs as to be incapable of any real action. They are so small they
get lost behind the furniture. At the Hyde Park Hotel, the clerk and I
hunted all over the place: “I’m sure we used to have them,” he said.
At last our search was rewarded. We found the one that was to keep me
warm. It was behind the dresser and such a miniature affair, you’d
surely have guessed Santa Claus must have left it for the children at
Christmas time.
Some one advised me that English hotels really didn’t do steam heat
well and the best way to be warm was to go to Brown’s, which is famous
for its grate fires. The Queen of Holland and the English nobility
always stop at Brown’s. So I tried Brown’s. I bought all the “coals”
the management would sell at one time and tipped the maid liberally to
start the fire in my room. To maintain the temperature anything above
fifty, I had to sit by the grate and keep putting on the coals myself.
In the bathroom there was no heat at all. “Oh, yes, there was,” the
management argued; “didn’t the hot-water pipe for the bath come right
up through the floor?” No, they insisted, there couldn’t be any fire in
the grate in the bathroom—because there never had been since Brown’s
began. Why, probably the hotel would burn up with so much heat as that.
So I moved on and on. At last I came in the Strand to the Savoy,
where all Americans eventually arrive. It is the only hotel in
England with real steam-heat. Just pull out your dresser and your
wash-stand. Concealed behind each you will discover a radiator, warm,
real, life-size! Eureka! It is the only modern-comfort temperature in
London. I am able to remove sundry clothing accessories of Shetland
wool accumulated at Selfridge’s Department Store in Oxford Street.
And for the first time since my arrival on these shores I am sitting
in my hotel room unwrapped in either a rose satin down bed-quilt or a
steamer-rug. My soul once more uncurls itself for work. It is wonderful
to be warm to-day, even if one must be drowned by the Germans to-morrow.
GREATEST DRAMA IN HISTORY
It begins to look gravely as if one may be. Out there in the yellow
fog beyond my window, more and more ominous are the posters that
come hourly drifting down the Strand from Fleet Street. Germany has
announced to the world that she is going to do her worst. And she
begins to tune her submarines for the sink-on-sight frightfulness
more terrible than any that has preceded. The Dutch boats stop. The
Scandinavian boats stop. The American boats stop. The entire ocean is
now blanketed in one danger zone.
All the world’s a stage of swift-moving events, the greatest and
most terrible spectacle that has ever been put on since civilisation
began. And we in London are spectators before a drop-curtain tight
buttoned down at the corners! It is lifted now and then by the hand of
the censor to reveal only what the Government decides is good for the
people to see. The plain citizen in London has no means of knowing how
much it is that he does not know. It was six months after the Battle of
Ypres had occurred before the English newspapers got around to mention
the event. So you see with what a baffling sense of futility it is that
one scans the newspapers here now while history is making so fast that
a new page is turned every day. I am hungry for a real live paper,
bright yellow from along Park Row. And over my breakfast coffee at the
Savoy I have only the London _Times_, gravely discussing by the column,
“What Is Religion?” and “The Value of Tudor Music,” while the rest of
the world is breathless before a Russian revolution, later to be given
out in London exactly a week old.
But there is news that even the censor is playing up with a lavish
hand. The Strand streams with the posters: “The United States on the
Verge of War.” My official permit from Downing Street to go to Holland
has arrived in the morning’s mail. I cannot get there. I cannot get to
Scandinavia. Can I get home? It is the question that is agitating a
number of Americans abroad. We watchfully wait for a warship to convoy
us. But scan the Atlantic as we may from day to day, there is none
arriving. The folks back home have a way of forgetting that we are
here. Those that do remember are saying it serves us right. We had
no business to come in war-time. Sixteen Americans at the Savoy every
day rush to read the news bulletins that hourly are tacked up in the
lounge. But the wheels of government at Washington move so slowly. The
Senate only debates and debates. And there is nothing said about us!
Will it be possible to flag the attention of Congress? The same idea
occurs simultaneously to Senator Hale in Paris and to several of us in
London. This is the answer to my cabled inquiry to Washington: “Your
request the fifth. Impracticable send warship convoy American liner
bringing Americans back from Europe. Signed, Robert Lansing, Secretary
of State.”
So, that’s settled. The only way for any of us to get away from here
will be just—to go. And I begin to. There is myself to get home, and
my data. Three consignments have already gone over under special
government auspices. But there have been anxious periods of waiting
before a cable, “Stuff safe,” has reached me. I am going to sink or
swim with the remainder of it. Wellington House arranges with the
censor at Strand House. There the material is read and done up in
packages, in each of which is enclosed a letter with the War Office
Stamp: “Senior Aliens Officer. Port of Embarkation. Please allow the
package in which this is enclosed to accompany bearer Mrs. M. P.
Daggett as personal luggage. This package has been examined by the
censorship.” All these data are now packed in a suitcase that stands
in my hotel room awaiting my departure.
When I was caught in the homeward rush of Americans from London in
1914, the steamship offices in Cockspur Street were jammed to the
doors. To-day they are silent, empty, echoing places. In 1917 it is
such a life and death matter to travel, that most people don’t. So
grave is the danger that the Government refuses to permit passports at
all for English women. But for me, this that I am facing is the risk of
my trade in war-time.
To-day I had a letter from my New York office:
“The best thing for you to do is to get home as quick as you can.
Wouldn’t it be safest by way of Spain? Any way of course is taking a
chance and a big one. I wish to the Lord you were here, safe and sound.
But there isn’t a darn thing any of us can do about getting you back.
You have either got to take your life in your hands and take a chance
coming back, or stay in London. And God knows when this war is going to
end now!”
It is “safest by way of Spain.” Ambassador Gerard getting home
from Germany selected that route. But my passport, I remember, is
black-marked, “No return to France.” And I shall have the British
Foreign Office to explain to before I can reach my French friends who
so cordially invited my return. There will be altogether some four
steel lines to pass that way. I’d rather face the submarines. The
Spanish boats are small, only about 4,000 tons, which would be like
crossing the Atlantic in a bathtub. I’d rather be drowned than seasick.
I think I shall make sure of comfort by a British boat.
And then—the posters in the Strand begin to announce, “Seven ships sunk
to-day.” Four Dutch boats trying for their home port, are submarined in
English waters. The _Laconia_ goes down. The Anchor liner _California_
meets her fate. It’s real, I tell you, on this side where they’re daily
bringing in the survivors. About nine hours in the open boats is the
usual experience for the rescued. Do you see the deterring, dampening
effect that this might have on one’s enthusiasm for departure?
FACING LIFE OR DEATH?
This is the month of March. Oh, wouldn’t it be well to wait until
the water is warmer? It’s a disquieting sensation to wake up in the
night and meditate on whether, say, a week or ten days from now, you
may find yourself at the bottom of the Atlantic. In this state of
low depression, you decide to live a little longer. And so to-morrow
you select a little later date for your sailing. Then the arrival of
American mail proves that at least one more boat has run the blockade
and escaped the submarines. Yours might.
So I take my courage in both hands, and my passport, too, and buy my
ticket. When I have done this, a nice, quiet calm possesses me. It
is as if I had been a long time dying. Now it is over and finished.
I have nothing more to do about it. I pack my trunk just curiously
wondering, shall I ever wear this gown again? Or shall I not? Oh, well,
it is such a relief to be going away from all this Old World grief. Are
the war clouds gathering over New York, too? But I still can see the
city all golden in the sunlight beneath the clear blue sky.
Last night I was awakened at twelve o’clock by the sounds of a gay
supper party’s revelry in some room down my corridor. Which of the
staid American gentlemen at this hotel is celebrating? Listen. They are
singing, evidently with lifted glasses: “Hail, hail, the gang’s all
here.” Not to the national anthem could my heart thrill more than to
Tammany’s own classic refrain. New York! New York! Not all the Kaiser’s
submarines can stop me from starting.
I may not send word of the steamship or the date of my departure. But I
cable my home office: “If I do not succeed in reporting to you myself,
apply for the latest information of my movements, to the International
Franchise Club, 9 Grafton Street, London.” You see, if I should get the
last Long Assignment....
There are only sixteen first class passengers for this trip on the
_Carmania_ in her grim grey warpaint. Two of us are women, at whom
the rest stare with curious interest. Each of us as we step aboard is
handed a lifeboat ticket. Mine reads: “R. M. S. _Carmania_. Name, Mrs.
M. P. Daggett, Boat No. 5.”
I think I know now how a person feels who is going to his execution.
We who walk up this steamship gangway are under sentence of death by
the German Government. The old Latin proverb flashes into my mind:
“_Morituri te salutamus._” It is we who may be about to die who salute
each other here on the _Carmania_ and then we are facing the steel
line. Four British officers with swords at their sides and pistols in
their belts wait for us in the drawing-room. All the other passengers
go easily by but the New York Jewish gentleman with the German name. At
last he, too, clears. But the British Government is not yet finished
with a journalist. The Tower of London and its damp dark dungeons is
again materialising clearly for me.
The lieutenant has been questioning me for half-an-hour. “I’m sorry,”
he says, “but I think I shall have to have you searched. This suitcase
of journalistic data, you say that there is inside each package a note
stating that the material has been passed by the Government? Why isn’t
that note on the outside of the package?”
“I don’t know,” I answer earnestly. “It’s the question I asked in vain
at Strand House. The censor said that it had to be this way. I assure
you the note is there. But if you break the outside seal to find out,
my government guarantee is gone. And if this boat by any chance goes to
Halifax, how are they to know there that I’m not a German spy?”
The lieutenant’s eyes are on my face. I think he believes I am telling
the truth. “Well,” he orders his corporal, “go to her stateroom with
her and have a look at her luggage.” The corporal is very nice. He
finds a blank note book in my trunk. “You aren’t supposed to have
this,” he says. And there is a package of business correspondence.
“Did you tell him out there about these letters? Well, you needn’t.
And I won’t.” At the suitcase with the magic seals he gives only one
glance. To his superior officer, when we return, the corporal reports:
“Everything’s quite all right. Stuff’s stamped all over with the seal
of the War Office.”
The lieutenant looks at his watch. “I had breakfast at seven. It’s now
one o’clock. That’s lunch time.”
“Don’t let me detain you,” I suggest pleasantly. He shakes his head.
“I’ve got to put this job through.”
I am this job. But the lieutenant has smiled. The conversation eases
up. “Pretty good suffrage data down at the Houses of Parliament,” he
himself suggests. “Do you know, I’m almost willing now that women
should vote. I didn’t used to be. But the war has changed my mind.”
“By the way,” he asked suddenly, “you’re not mixed up with any of those
militants, are you?” I explain that I am not a suffragette, just a
plain suffragist. “Because I think those militants ought to be shot,”
he adds. I can only bite my tongue. Has the lieutenant no sense of
humour? No militant in Holloway Jail was ever more militant than he is
with his sword and pistol at this moment.
“There’s a question I’d like to ask,” he goes on. “In your country
where women have the franchise, do you find that they all vote alike?”
“No more than all the men,” I answer. “Then that’s all right,” he says
in a relieved tone. “I’ve been afraid that if we let women vote, they
might all vote against war.”
SHALL WE GO DOWN OR ACROSS?
“You really aren’t a militant, are you?” he says again, thoughtfully.
“Well, I’ll let you go.” So that’s my last steel line.
The boat begins to move in the Mersey. And the ship’s siren sounds
shrilly. It is the summons to shipwreck drill. We assemble quickly in
the lounge on the top deck, every one wearing a life-preserver. At a
second call of the siren, we file out following the captain’s lead, to
stand by our boats in which the crew are already clambering to their
oars.
So now we know how for the moment of disaster. The whole steamship
waits for it. This is a weird voyage that we begin. Mine-sweepers
out there ahead of us are cleaning up the seas. A Scandinavian boat
has just been sowing mines all over the water. The _Baltic_, here
beside us, poked her nose out yesterday, scented danger and returned
to the river. We wait now in the Mersey twenty-four hours before the
mysterious signal is given that it is the propitious moment for our
boat to get away. We steal softly to sea under cover of a dense fog
and a white snow-storm. The sea-gulls are screaming shrilly above us
like birds of prey. And we who look into each other’s eyes are facing
we know not whither, it may be America or the Farthest Country of all.
Three men pace the wind-swept captain’s bridge, scanning the horizon,
and there are always two clinging in the crow’s nest in the icy gale.
This boat is manned by a pedigreed crew. From the captain to the last
cabin-boy, everybody has been torpedoed at least once. The Marconi
operator never smiles. He sits at his instrument with a grey, drawn
look about his young boyish mouth. He was on the _Lusitania_ when she
went down. He was the last man off the _Laconia_ the other day. The
wrinkled suit he’s wearing is the one they picked him up in out of the
sea.
For two days out, we have the little destroyers with us, and then we
are left to our luck and the gun in front and the watching men aloft.
The lifeboats are always swung out on their davits for the siren’s
sudden call. The doors of the upper deck stand open, waiting beside
each a preparedness exhibit, boxes of biscuit, flasks of brandy, and a
pile of blankets we are to seize as we run. We two women have filled
the pockets of our steamer-coats with safety-pins, hairpins and a comb,
first aid that no one remembers to bring when they pick you up from the
open boat. My fellow traveller is huddling very close to her six-foot
husband, to be tucked safely under his arm at the emergency moment. It
is good that we are having rough weather. When the waves are tossing
high, the periscopes may not find us.
We are sixteen people who wander like disembodied spirits from the gay
days of old through these great empty rooms that once rang with the
joy of hundreds of tourists on their pleasure-jaunts over the world.
There are no games. There is no dancing. There is no band. There are no
steamerchairs on deck. At sundown we are closed in tight behind iron
shutters. No one may so much as light a cigaret outside.
In the ghastly silence of the days that pass, there is only the strain
and quiver of the ship, and the solemn boom, boom of the sea. Death
is so near that it seems fitting the glad activities of life should
cease, as when a corpse is laid out in the front room of a house. For
a while there is a tendency to whisper, as if we were at a funeral, or
as if, perchance, the Germans in the sea could hear. But soon we find
ourselves functioning quite normally. Not until the sixth day out,
it is true, does any one venture to take a bath. You don’t want to
be rushed like that, you know, to your drowning. But we are sleeping
regularly at night. We eat bacon and eggs for breakfast as usual. We
are pleased when there is turkey and cranberry sauce for dinner. One
does not maintain an agony of suspense forever. For most of us, I think
it began to end when we had committed ourselves to the decision of
this voyage. After that, the issue rests with God or with destiny,
according to one’s religion.
There is no attempt at dressing for dinner on the _Carmania_. Evening
dress and all the time dress is life-preservers. We do not take them
off even at night for a while. We sleep in them. With the new styles,
of which there are many, you can. Mine is a garment that buttons up
exactly like a man’s vest. Next to the lining is a padded filling, an
Indian vegetable matter that will keep one afloat like cork. To-day one
desires the latest modern devices against death. A life-preserver costs
anywhere from five to fifteen dollars. You carry yours with you as you
do your toothbrush and your steamer-rug.
Time ticks off the minutes to life or to death to-morrow. We walk
the decks and scan a nearly deserted ocean. Only twice do we sight a
steamship on the horizon. At table we discuss as one does usually, oh,
immortality and Christian Science and woman suffrage. The Englishman
says, “Votes for women are really impossible, don’t you know. Why, if
the British women had voted twelve years ago, there might not have been
any battleships in 1914. And then where would England have been to-day?”
“But if the German women too had voted twelve years ago, have you
thought how much happier the world might be to-day?” I ask. The
Englishman does not see the point but the American at my left says,
“Guess you handed him one that time.”
On April sixth the _Cunard Bulletin_, the wireless newspaper, is
laid beside our plates at breakfast with the announcement that’s
thrilled around a world, “The United States has declared for war.” The
Englishman next me says, “That must be a great relief for you.” And I
cannot answer for the choking in my throat. My country, oh, my country,
too, at the gates of hell to go in regiment by regiment!
On Sunday the English clergyman reads the service including the phrases
in brackets: “God save the King (and the President of the United
States). Vanquish their enemies and preserve them in felicity.” Down
beneath the sea the Germans in their submarines too are praying like
that to the same God. But one hopes, oh, one earnestly hopes, that God
will not hear them.
After the sixth day out, we have probably escaped the submarines. The
American men are no longer kindly asking me in anxious tone, “You’re
not nervous, are you?” On the eighth day they get out the shuffleboard.
Two mornings later when we awake, the sea is a beautiful blue, all
dimpling with sparkling points of golden light. It is real New York
sunlight again! The captain comes down from the pilot house smiling:
“Well, we got away this time,” he says.
The Statue of Liberty is rising on the horizon. The Manhattan sky-line
etches itself against the heavens. Do you know, I’d rather be a
door-keeper here at Ellis Island, than a lady-in-waiting anywhere in
Europe. The _Carmania_ warps into dock in sight of the Metropolitan
Tower. Was Fourteenth Street ever cheap, common, sordid? As my
taxicab rolls across town, see how beautiful, oh, see how beautiful
is Fourteenth street, a little landscape cross-section right out of
Paradise! Nobody here is blinded, nobody maimed, nobody in crêpe,
nobody broken-hearted—yet. I have escaped from a nightmare of the
Middle Ages. I lift my face to the sunlight again.
I know I am tired, terribly tired of doing difficult things and saving
my life from day to day. But I have not realised how near collapse I
am until I drop in a chair before the Editor’s deck in the office of
the _Pictorial Review_. I, who have been so crazy to get to the country
where there is still free speech, that I had insanely hoped to stand in
Broadway and shout, have suddenly lost my voice. I can only report in a
whisper!
My chief looks at me in concern. “For God’s sake, girl,” he says, “go
somewhere and go to bed!”