THE story is told of a British “Tommy” who could not make up his mind
whether to acquire a farm or a village store, by marriage, “somewhere
in France.” He could have either, but not both. Dispatches say that the
banns have already been read for some of our “Sammies,” and when the
war is over France will have some sturdy Yankee citizens. Difference of
language seems to form no bar; in fact, the kindly efforts of each to
learn the language of the other acts as an aid. It must be said that
the British, so far, have rather the best of it. They have beaten the
Yankees to the altar of Hymen, but they had the field to themselves for
some time. By the end of the war the Americans may have caught up, for
love and war have always walked hand in hand with Uncle Sam’s boys.
Nevertheless the British have a big start, for Judson C. Welliver,
writing to the New York _Sun_ from Paris, says that in Calais hundreds
of young English mechanics have married French girls. The writer tells
of being accosted by a young man from “the States” at the corner of the
Avenue de l’Opéra and “one of those funny little crooked streets that
run into it.” Breezily the American introduced himself and said:
“Say, do you happen to know a little caffy right around here called
the—the—blame it, I can’t even remember what that sign looked like it
was trying to spell.”
I admitted that the description was a trifle too vague to fit into my
geographic scheme of Paris.
“Because,” he went on, “there’s a girl there that talks United States,
and she’s been waiting on me lately. I get all the best of everything
there and don’t eat anywhere else. But this morning I took a walk and
coming from a new direction I can’t locate the place. I promised her
I’d be in for breakfast this morning.”
“Something nifty?” I ventured, being willing to encourage that line of
conversation. Whereat he plainly bridled:
“She’s a nice girl,” he said; “family were real people before the war.
Learned to talk United States in England; went to school there awhile.
Why, she wouldn’t let me walk home with her last night, but said maybe
she would tonight.”
There isn’t anybody quite so adaptable as the young Frenchwoman.
Only in the last few months has Paris seen any considerable number
of English-speaking soldiers, because earlier in the war the British
military authorities kept their men pretty religiously away from the
alleged “temptations” of the gay capital. Later they discovered that
Paris was rather a better place than London for the men to go.
So the French girls, in shops and cafés, have been learning English
recently at an astounding rate. They began the study because of the
English invasion; they have continued it with increased zeal because
since the Americans have been coming it has been profitable.
To be able to say “Atta boy!” in prompt and sympathetic response to
“Ham and eggs” is worth 50 centimes at the lowest. The capacity to
manage a little casual conversation and give a direction on the street
is certain to draw a franc.
Besides, there aren’t going to be so many men left, after the war, in
France!
Mademoiselle, figuring that there are a couple of million Britishers in
the country and a million or maybe two of Americans coming, has her own
views about the prospect that the next generation Frenchwomen may be
old maids.
In Calais there is a big industrial establishment to which the British
military authorities have brought great numbers of skilled mechanics
to make repairs to machinery, reconstruct the outworn war-gear, tinker
obstreperous motor-vehicles, and, in short, keep the whole machinery
and construction side of the war going. Most of the mechanics who were
sent there were young men.
Calais testifies to the ability of the Frenchwomen to make the most
of their attractions. English officers tell me that hundreds of young
Englishmen settled in Calais “for the duration” have married French
girls and settled into homes. They intend, in a large proportion of
cases, to remain there, too.
The same thing is going on in Boulogne, which is to all intents and
purposes nowadays as much an English as a French port. Everywhere
English is spoken and by nobody is it learned so quickly as by the
young women.
Frenchwomen have always had the reputation of making themselves
agreeable to visiting men, but one is quite astonished to learn the
number of Englishmen who married Frenchwomen even before the war. The
balance is a little imperfect, for the records show that there are not
nearly as many Frenchmen marrying English girls. But, says the writer
in the _Sun_, a new generation of girls of marriageable age has arrived
with the war, and:
Not only in the military, industrial, and naval base towns are the
British marrying these Frenchwomen, but even in the country nearer the
front. There are incipient romances afoot behind every mile of the
trench-line.
Two related changes in French life are coming with the war which make
these international marriages easier. Both relate to the _dot_ [dowry]
system. On the one side there are many French girls who have lost their
_dots_ and have small prospect of reacquiring the marriage portion. To
live in these strenuous times is about all they can hope for. For these
the free-handed Americans, Canadians, and Australians look like good
prospects for a well-to-do marriage.
Even the British Tommy, though he enjoys no such income as the
Americans and colonials, is nevertheless quite likely to have a bit
of private income from the folks “back in Blighty” to supplement
the meager pay he draws. The portionless French maid sees in these
prosperous young men who have come to fight for her country not only
the saviors of the nation, but a possibility of emancipation from the
_dot_ system that has broken down in these times.
On the other side, there are more than a few young women in France who
must be rated “good catches” to-day, though their _dots_ would have
been unimportant before the war. A girl who has inherited the little
property of her family, because father and brothers all lie beneath the
white crosses along the Marne, not infrequently finds herself possessed
of a little fortune she could never have expected under other
conditions. Many of these, likewise, bereft of sweethearts as well
as relatives, have been married to English and colonial soldiers or
workmen; and pretty soon we will be learning that their partiality for
America—for there is such a partiality, and it is a decided one—will be
responsible for many alliances in that direction.
How it will all work out in the end is only to be guessed at as yet.
The British officers who have been observing these Anglo-French
romances for a long time assert that the British Tommy who weds a
Frenchwoman is quite likely to settle in France; particularly if his
bride brings him a village house or a few hectares of land in the
country.
On the other hand, the colonials insist on taking their French brides
back to New Zealand or Canada, or wherever it may be—India, Shanghai,
somewhere in Africa—no matter, the colonial is a colonial forever; he
has no idea of going back to the cramped conditions of England. He
likes the motherland, all right, is willing to fight for it, but wants
room to swing a bull by the tail, and that isn’t to be had in England,
he assures you.
Probably the Americans will be like the colonials; those who find
French wives will take them home after the war. That a good many of
them will marry French wives can hardly be doubted.
Yes, the French girls like the American boys. But there is another
scene. It is that of the country billet, which varies from a château
to a cellar, the ideal one—from the point of view of a billeting
officer—being a bed for every officer, and nice clean straw for the
men. Get this picture of “Our Village, Somewhere in France,” back of
the line, as drawn by Sterling Hielig in the Los Angeles _Times:_
A French valley full of empty villages, close to the fighting line. No
city of tents. No mass of shack constructions. The village streets are
empty. Geese and ducks waddle to the pond in Main Street.
It is 4 o’clock a. m.
Bugle!
Up and down the valley, in the empty villages, there is a
moving-picture transformation. The streets are alive with American
soldiers—tumbling out of village dwelling-houses!
Every house is full of boarders. Every village family has given,
joyfully, one, two, three of its best rooms for the cot beds of the
Americans! Barns and wagon-houses are transformed to dormitories. They
are learning French. They are adopted by the family. Sammy’s in the
kitchen with the mother and the daughter.
Bugle!
They are piling down the main street to their own American
breakfast—cooked in the open, eaten in the open, this fine weather.
In front of houses are canvas reservoirs of filtered drinking-water.
The duck pond in Main street is being lined with cement. The streets
are swept every morning. There are flowers. The village was always
picturesque. Now it is beautiful.
Chaplains’ clubs are set up in empty houses. The only large tent
is that of the Y. M. C. A.; and it is _camouflaged_ against enemy
observers by being painted in streaked gray-green-brown, to melt into
the colors of the hill against which it is backed up, practically
invisible. Its “canteen on wheels” is loaded with towels, soap,
razors, chocolate, crackers, games, newspapers, novels, and tobacco.
At cross-roads, little flat Y. M. C. A. tents (painted grass and
earth color) serve as stations for swift autos carrying packages and
comforts. In them are found coffee, tea, and chocolate, ink, pens,
letter-paper, and envelopes; and a big sign reminds Sammy that “You
Promised Your Mother a Letter, Write It Today!”
All decent and in order. Otherwise the men could never have gone
through the strenuous coaching for the front so quickly and well.
In “Our Village,” not a duck or goose or chicken has failed to respond
to the roll call in the past forty days—which is more than can be said
of a French company billet, or many a British.
Fruit hung red and yellow in the orchards till the gathering. I don’t
say the families had as many bushels as a “good year”; but there is no
criticism.
In a word, Sammy has good manners. He looks on these French people with
a sort of awed compassion. “They had a lot to stand!” he whispers. And
the villagers, who are no fools (“as wily as a villager,” runs the
French proverb), quite appreciate these fine shades. And the house dog
wags his tail at the sight of khaki, as the boys come loafing in the
cool of the back yard after midday dinner.
In the evening the family play cards in the kitchen, and here no
effort is necessary to induce the girls to learn English, for, though
they pretend that they are teaching French, they are really—very
slyly—“picking up” English while they are being introduced to the
mysteries of draw-poker. Says the writer in _The Times:_
So, it goes like this when they play poker in the kitchen—the old
French father, the pretty daughter, the flapper girl cousin, and
three roughnecks. (One boy has the sheets of “Conversational French
in Twenty Days,” and really thinks that he is conversing—“_Madame_,
_mademoiselle_, _maman_, _monsieur_, _papa_, or _mon oncle_, pass the
buck and get busy!”)
“You will haf’ carts, how man-ny? (business.) Tree carts, fife carts,
ou-one cart, no cart, an’ zee dee-laire seex carts!”—“Here, Bill, wake
up!”—“Beel sleep! _Avez-vous sommeil_, Beel?”—“_Oui_, mademoiselle, I
slept rotten last night, I mean I was _tray jenny pars’ke_ that darned
engine was pumping up the duck pond—”
“Speak French!”—“Play cards!”—“_Vingt-cinq!_”—“_Et dix!_” “_Et encore
five cen-times._ I’m broke. Just slip me a quarter, Wilfred, to buy
_jet-toms_!” And a sweet and plaintive voice: “I haf’ tree paire, _mon
oncle_, an’ he say skee-doo, I am stung-ed. I haf’ seex carts!”—“Yes,
you’re out of it, I’m sorry, mademoiselle. Come up!” “Kom opp? Comment,
kom opp?”
“Stung-ed” has become French. Thus does Sammy enrich the language of
Voltaire. His influence works equally on pronunciation. There is a
tiny French village named Hinges—on which hinges the following. From
the days of Jeanne d’Arc, the natives have pronounced it “Anjs,” in
one syllable, with the sound of “a” as in “ham”; but Sammy, naturally,
pronounces it “hinges,” as it is spelled, one hinge, two hinges on the
door or window. So, the natives, deeming that such godlings can’t be
wrong on any detail, go about, now, showing off their knowledge to
the ignorant, and saying, with a point of affection: “I have been to
‘Injes!’”
I should not wonder if some of these boys would marry. They might do
worse. The old man owns 218 acres and nobody knows what Converted
French Fives. Sammy, too, has money. A single regiment of American
marines has subscribed for $60,000 worth of French war-bonds since
their arrival in the zone—this, in spite of their depositing most of
their money with the United States Government.
Sammy sits in the group around the front door in the twilight. Up and
down the main street are a hundred such mixed groups. Already he has
found a place, a family. He is somebody.
And what American lad ever sat in such a group at such a time without a
desire to sing? And little difference does it make whether the song be
sentimental or rag; sing he must, and sing he does. The old-timers like
“I Was Seeing Nellie Home” and “Down by the Old Mill Stream” proved to
be the favorites of the listening French girls. For they will listen by
the hour to the soldiers’ choruses. They do not sing much themselves,
for too many of their young men are dead. But, finally, when the real
war-songs arrived, they would join timidly in the chorus, “Hep, hep,
hep!” and “Slopping Through Belgium” electrified the natives, and _The
Times_ says:
To hear a pretty French girl singing “Epp, epp, epp!” is about the
limit.
Singing is fostered by the high command. Who can estimate the influence
of “Tipperary?” To me, American civilian in Paris, its mere melody
will always stir those noble sentiments we felt as the first wounded
English came to the American Ambulance Hospital of Neuilly. For many
a year to come “Tipperary” will make British eyes wet, when, in the
witching hour of twilight, it evokes the khaki figures in the glare of
the sky-line and the dead who are unforgotten!
Who can estimate, for France, the influence of that terrible song of
Verdun—“_Passeront pas!_” Or who can forget the goose-step march to
death of the Prussian Guard at Ypres, intoning “_Deutschland Uber
Alles!_”
“It is desired that the American Army be a singing army!” So ran the
first words of a communication to the American public of Paris, asking
for three thousand copies of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”—noble
marching strophes of Julia Ward Howe, which 18641865 fired the hearts
of the Northern armies in 1864-1865.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!...
They are heard now on the American front in France. One regiment has
adopted it “as our marching song, in memory of the American martyrs of
Liberty.” And in Our Village, you may hear a noble French translation
of it, torn off by inspired French grandmothers!
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
Bear with me to hear three lines of this notable translation. Again
they are by a woman, Charlotte Holmes Crawford, of whom I had never
previously heard mention. They are word for word, vibrating!
_Je L’ai entrevu Qui planait sur le cercle large des camps,
On a érigé Son autel par les tristes et mornes champs,
J’ai relu Son juste jugement à la flamme des feux flambants,
Son jour, Son jour s’approche!_
It’s rather serious, you say? Rather solemn?
Sammy doesn’t think so.
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