on gasoline, and rolled into Rue Croix Nivert about thirteen o’clock.
My chauffeur sat nonchalantly in his accustomed seat while I made a
house-to-house canvass of Haynau’s Passage. The last house was the
right one. I knew it in an instant, for when I entered the corridor a
French sentry popped up and placed the end of his bayonet within an
inch of Nose-prominent.
“Captain Vandervelde,” said I, making a short strategical retreat.
“Come on,” said Frenchy without lowering his sticker.
A password was what he wanted, and Mr. Poincaré had forgotten to call
me up and give me the correct one for the day. I produced a two-franc
piece and held it out. The sentry withdrew his weapon, accepted the
coin, and allowed me to pass.
“The word,” I thought to myself, “must be Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”
Captain Vandervelde was in and made me wait only half an heure, the
while I thought more than once of yon taxi. Finally I was summoned to
the inner office.
“What can je faire pour vous?” he inquired.
I told him I wanted an order on the ---- branch factory for some tools
and four new tires.
“Rien fairing on the tires,” he said.
“Pourquoi?” I asked him.
“Orders pour tires must come from the Maison de la Guerre.”
“Can you fix me for the tools?”
“Ah, oui. What tools voulez-vous?”
“Une roue-tirer et un offset clef à vis.”
“Votre papers, s’il vous plaît.”
I handed him passport, American pass, and salmon-pink card. He
glanced them over, then began rummaging in a drawer. I knew what was
coming--another dossier.
“Avez-vous une photophie?” he asked.
“Ah, oui,” says I, and slipped him one of the remaining five.
He kept the dossier and photophie for the amusement of himself and
progeny. He gave me only a mauve card which said I was entitled to one
wheel puller and one left-handed offset monkey wrench.
I told my driver we had to hurry right back to Le Vallois-Perret. He
looked crestfallen.
“Je have had no déjeûner,” he said.
“Neither have je,” I said, and climbed in.
_Thursday, September 13. Paris._
Up early and to the garage. Delivered the tools. “Vous had better buy a
tire pump,” said my adviser.
“Je suppose,” said I, “that I’ll have to get an order for one from Papa
Joffre.”
“No,” he said. “That’s une chose vous can buy sans an order.”
“Voulez-vous get to work on the car right away?”
“Ah, oui,” says he.
I asked my chauffeur to take me to a maison du tire pumps. We found one
on the Champs Elysées. Other things for sale in the store were watches
and perfumery. I proceeded thence to French General Headquarters.
The gentleman authorized to sign orders for tires received me cordially
and spoke English.
“Certainly,” he said in answer to my request, “if the car is for an
American officer. And what is the license number?”
I had to confess I didn’t know.
“Well,” said he, “you go to the garage and find out. Then come back and
I’ll give you the order.”
I went to the garage to find out. There was no license.
“Où can je get one?” I asked my friend.
He gave me the address of the license bureau, on Rue Oskaloosa or
something. The driver knew where it was.
Monsieur du License surprised me by asking for a picture and taking my
description, which I could almost have rhymed by this time--
_Hair jet black, but a paucity of it;
Forehead high as the Eiffel tower;
Prominent nose, but it’s mine; I love it;
Eyes the brown of the pansy flower;
Medium mouth, not the best for kisses;
Chin as round as a billiard ball;
Dark complected--Oh, Mister, this is
Me, and I’m better than six feet tall._
“What est the numéro of the engine?”
“Four hundred and fifty-six thousand three hundred and four,” I replied
sans batting an eyelash.
He took it down and disappeared into an adjoining room. In a little
while he returned with a license plate--second-hand to match the car.
I carried it along to display to the man at G. H. Q., as it is
technically known.
“Où can I get the tires?” I asked.
“Anywhere, with that order,” he said.
So I told the driver to go anywhere, and he misunderstood and took me
everywhere. The tire maison he chose was as far away as he could drive
without crossing the Swiss border.
“Now back to the United States garage,” said I, and we arrived just as
they were closing.
My friend told me the car had been “taken down.” When I saw it I was
convinced that the “taking down” had been accomplished with shrapnel.
“How many months will it take to put it together again?” I asked.
“Très few minutes,” said the mechanic. “It will be all finished
to-morrow midi.”
“It looks all finished now.”
“Avez-vous votre license?” he inquired.
I displayed it triumphantly.
“Ah, oui,” he said. “But that’s just the license for the car. Vous must
aussi have a driver’s license.”
“Bonne nuit!” I yelped. “And what for?”
“C’est la loi,” said he. “Everybody who drives in France must have one.”
“How do you get it?”
“You’ll have to go to the Chef de Traffic Police and pass the
examination.”
“How long does it take?”
“Très brief. Not more than une heure.”
“Well, will you guarantee to have the car all ready when I come for it
at noon to-morrow?”
“Je promise,” he said, and I drove back to the hotel.
Oh, Major, wait till you see that taxi bill!
_Friday, September 14. Paris._
The traffic chief said that before he could examine me for a license I
must show him my registration card from a regular police commissioner.
I had been told I ought to have one of those darn things, but had
passed it up. Now I was face to face with the necessity of acquiring
the card and doing it quick. The nearest station was only a few blocks
away. I found it jam-packed with people who looked as if they all
worked in East St. Louis. I flagged an attendant.
“I want to register,” I told him.
“You’ll be called when it’s your turn,” he said, and gave me a number.
It was 89,041.
“How long will I have to wait?”
He pondered.
“I think they’re now in the twenty-thousands,” he said.
Suddenly I bethought me of a document in my pocket, a letter from the
boss of the Maison de la Presse. I flashed it on him.
“Ah-h-h!” he sighed, and led me through the mob to the inner shrine.
In ten minutes I had my card. The commissioner didn’t even want a
picture, or nothin’. I plunged through the gang again and was stared at
enviously. Some of the poor blokes have undoubtedly been waiting there
since the Kaiser was forced into the war.
Again I appeared before the traffic chief. “Of course,” he said, “I
will have to examine your papers. And avez-vous une photophie?”
I came through.
“Now,” I said, “we’re fifty-fifty. You have one and I have one.”
But he wasn’t listening. He was rummaging for the deadly dossier.
“This,” he said, when he had found one, “will have to be filled out.”
“Yes,” I replied, “I think I recall filling one out last time I was in
France.”
“This car belongs to an American army officer?”
“Ah, oui.”
“What does he intend to do with the car?”
The temptation was strong to say he intended using it to tour the
trenches. But it was no time to trifle.
“He expects to ride round the camp in it, sir. He is in one of the high
commands and has to do a lot of inspecting.”
“Do you know the traffic laws of Paris?”
“Ah, oui.”
He didn’t ask me what they were. But I could have told him. Any part of
the street you like, with a minimum speed limit of forty miles on the
straightaway and sixty-five miles round the corners.
“You are going to take the car right out of Paris?”
“Ah, oui.”
“That’s all,” he said, and handed me a driver’s license, horizon blue
with saffron stripes.
I thanked him and bowed myself out of the place.
“From now on,” I thought, “it’s clear sailing.”
The car was ready. I had in my mind’s eye a near-by unfrequented
street, where I was going to master the driving of it in ten minutes.
Then I was going to shoot her up to the hotel, get my baggage and leave
town.
“How about gas and oil?” I inquired.
“Oil, oui, but essence, no,” said the mechanic.
“Well, throw in ten gallons,” said I.
“Ah, but has monsieur an essence ticket?”
Monsieur never heard of it.
“Ah, then, monsieur can get no essence.”
“Well for--” and monsieur used harsh words.
“Monsieur can easily obtain a ticket,” said the guy when things had
quieted down. “Monsieur’s military passes will be suffisant.”
“Where at?”
“At the Maison du Contrôle de l’Essence.”
“And that is--?”
“Vingt sept, Rue Yaki Hula Hickey Dula.”
“Is that as far away as it sounds?”
“Monsieur can go there and be back in une heure.”
Monsieur crawled wearily into a taxi and started for Honolulu. The
military passes did prove suffisant, and there was no trouble getting a
fifty-gallon book at two francs per gal.
“I’ll save time now,” I thought. “I’ll pick up my baggage on the way
back to the garage.”
So I told my driver to stop at the hotel. A telegram was waiting there
for me.
“Hold car in Paris,” it said. “Camp may be moved any day.”
This blow fell at fourteen o’clock this afternoon. By half-past fifteen
I had called up every steamship office and learned that the next boat
for America would leave from England next Wednesday night. I am going
to be aboard.
And now I have for sale, at auction:
One pass through the French war zone.
One pass good in the American camp.
One driver’s license.
One book of essence tickets.
One road map.
One registration card.
I think I will leave the four tires and the offset clef à vis and
the wheel puller with the car. Also the car’s license. The major is
perfectly trustworthy. I only hope he doesn’t get killed before my
expense account reaches him.
VII
I START HOME, WITH A STOP-OVER AT LONDON
_Saturday, September 15. Paris._
The gentleman at the American Embassy, which I visited late yesterday
afternoon, spake truth when he said it was some job to get away from
this place.
“If you want to leave on Sunday,” quoth he, “you’ll have to rise early
Saturday and keep going all day. See our consul first thing in the
morning, and he’ll tell you all you have to do.”
So I saw our consul first thing this morning. In fact, I beat him to
his office. When he came in he was cordial and unsuspicious, rare
qualities in a consul. He stamped my passport “Bon pour se rendre en
Amérique par Grande Bretagne” and a great deal more.
“Now,” he said, “you’ll have to be viséed by the préfet de police and
approved by the British Military Control. I don’t know in what order.
They change it every two or three days to keep you guessing.”
I chose the British Control first and, of course, was wrong. But it
took an hour to find this out.
There was a big crowd of us, and we were all given numbers, as in a
barber shop of a Saturday night. But the resemblance to the barber shop
ceased with the giving, for they called us regardless of number. A
guinea sitting next to me was 42 and I was 18. He preceded me into the
sanctum. And I got there ahead of No. 12, a British matron.
My session was brief.
“The police visé must come first,” said the officer in charge.
Monsieur le Préfet has his office conveniently located about eight
miles away from the Control, over the river. And he’s on the fourth
floor of a building constructed before the invention of the elevator.
From behind an untrimmed hedge of black whiskers he questioned me as to
my forebears, musical tastes and baseball preferences. Then he retired
into chambers and presently issued forth with my passport, on which his
stamp had been added to the beautiful collection already there. It says
I’m Bon for a trip to Amérique par Angleterre, so I don’t know whether
I’m to go that way or through Grande Bretagne.
Thence back to Rue Napoléon Lajoie, and another long wait.
“Yes,” said the officer when my turn came again, “the visé is all
right, but where is your steamship ticket? You’ll have to show that
before we can pass you.”
In order to show it I had to go and buy it, and in order to buy it
I had to scare up some money, which is no mere child’s play in Gay
Paree these days. I called on four people before I found one who was
touchable. With what he grudgingly forked over I hastened to the
booking office and felt at home there, it being on Rue Scribe. There
was a customer ahead of me--our president’s youngest son-in-law.
“Do you know who that was?” said the agent excitedly when the young man
had departed.
“Yes,” I replied, “but we don’t speak to each other.”
“Now,” said the agent, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you a few
questions. It’s annoying, I know, but it’s the war-time rule.”
“Shoot,” I told him. “I’m thoroughly used to being annoyed.”
He ran through the familiar list and saved a new one for the wind-up.
“Why are you going to America?”
I could have spent an entire week replying to that, but even minutes
were precious.
“Because it’s where I live,” proved satisfactory.
He apologized again for having to propound the queries, which shows he
must be new on the job. The rest of them don’t care whether you like
it or not. I signed six or seven pledges, gave over the bulk of my
borrowed fortune, and set out again with my ticket for the Rue Jacques
Johnson. I got there just in time, for they close early on Saturday.
Other days the poor devils have to work right through from ten to four.
The officer also wanted to know why I was going to America. And he
asked me at what hotel I would stop in London. I told him I’d never
been there and knew nothing about the hotels.
“You must make a choice,” he said. “We have to know your address.”
“Is there one called the Savoy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s say the Savoy.”
“All right. You’re to stay there, then, while you’re in London, and
you’re to leave England on this ship Wednesday night. Otherwise you may
have trouble.”
I’ll be surprised if I don’t anyhow.
He decorated my passport with a heliotrope inscription, naming the port
from which I’m to depart from France, the hotel in London, and my good
ship, and sent me into the next room, where a vice-consul confirmed the
military visé and relieved me of two francs.
The train leaves at seven to-morrow morning, and between now and then I
have only to pack and to settle with the hotel. The former chore will
be easy, for I possess just half as much personal property as when I
came. Parisian laundries have commandeered the rest.
_Monday, September 17. London._
With tear-dimmed eyes, I said farewell to Paris yesterday morning at
the unearthly hour of seven. There was not even a gendarme on hand to
see me off.
The trip from Paris to England is arranged with the customary French
passion for convenience. They get you out of bed at five to catch the
train, which arrives in the port at noon. The Channel boat leaves port
at ten o’clock at night, giving you ten solid hours in which to think.
Not ten either, for the last two are consumed in waiting for your turn
to be examined by the customs and viséed by the Authorities du Exit.
Customs examination in this case is a pure waste of time. The gentleman
only wants to know whether you are trying to smuggle any gold money
out of France. I’d like to see the departing guest who has any kind of
money left to smuggle.
The Authorities du Exit are seven in number. They sit round a table,
and you pass from one to the other until something has been done to you
by each. One feels your pulse, another looks at your tongue, a third
reads your passport right side up, a fourth reads it upside down, a
fifth compares you with your photograph, a sixth inspects your visés
for physical defects, and the seventh tries to throw a scare into you.
I got by the first six easily. No. 7 read both sides of the passport
and then asked by whom I was employed. I told him.
“Where are your credentials?” he demanded.
“What do you mean, credentials?”
“You must have a letter from the magazine, showing that it employs you.”
“You’re mistaken. I have no such letter.”
He looked very cross. But there were others left to scare, so he
couldn’t waste much time on me.
“I’ll pass you,” he said, “but if you come back to France again, you
can’t leave.”
He and I should both worry.
But it does seem pathetic that the written and stamped approval, in
all colors of the rainbow, of the Paris chief of police, the American
consul, the British Military Control, the British consul, the French
consul in New York, and nearly everybody else in the world, including
our own Secretary of State, sufficeth not to convince a minor-league
official that an innocent native of Niles, Michigan, isn’t related by
marriage to the Hohenzollerns.
On the dark deck of our Channel boat I had a ’strawnary experience.
A British colonel to whom I had not been introduced spoke to me. He
wanted a light from my cigarette. And when I had given it to him he
didn’t move away, but stayed right there and kept on talking.
“This is my first leave,” he said (but in his own tongue), “since last
March. Last year we were let off ten days every three months. Now we
get twenty days a year.”
“In 1918,” said I, for something to say, “you’ll probably have no
vacation at all.”
“In 1918,” he replied confidently, “I believe we’ll get three hundred
and sixty-five days.”
We settled the war in about half an hour. Then he asked me to join
him in a Scotch and soda. I was too gentlemanly to refuse. The
bar, we ascertained, was closed. But we might find something in the
dining-room. We did, but to make it legal we had to order biscuits,
alias crackers, with the beverage. We didn’t have to eat them, though.
They looked to be in their dotage, like the permanent sandwiches which
serve a similar purpose in certain blue-law cities of Les Etats Unis.
We settled the war all over again, and retired, the colonel politely
expressing the hope that we would meet for breakfast.
The hope was not realized. I was through and out on deck by the time we
docked at the British port, which was about six o’clock this morning.
No one was permitted to leave the ship till the customs officials
and alien officers reported for duty, two hours later. Then we were
unloaded and herded into a waiting-room, where an usher seated us.
Another usher picked us out, four at a time, for examination, using a
system of arbitrary selective draft. Mine was a mixed quartet, three
gents and a female.
An officer looked at our passports and recorded details of them in
a large book. Another officer ran the gamut of queries. And here I
got into a little mess by telling the truth. When he asked me what
countries I had visited, I told him France and added “Oh, yes, and for
one day Belgium.” He marked this fact on a slip of paper and sent me to
the next room. The slip of paper was there ahead of me and I was once
more a suspect.
The young lady of our quartet, a French girl, was getting hers, and
there was nothing for me to do but listen. She had a letter from her
mother to a friend in England. The mother, it seems, had expected to
come along, but had decided to wait three weeks, “till the submarine
warfare is over.” The officers were very curious to know where the
mother had picked up that interesting dope. The young lady couldn’t
tell them. Well, she would not be permitted to leave town till an
investigation had been made. She was led back into the waiting-room and
may be there yet for all I can say.
It was my turn.
“Are you an American?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long ago were you in Belgium?”
“About ten days ago.”
“You told our officer outside that you had been in Paris five weeks.”
“I told him Paris had been my headquarters and I’d made frequent trips
in and out.”
“How did you get to Belgium?”
“In an automobile.”
“An automobile!”
“Yes, sir.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was being the guest of your army.”
A great light dawned upon them.
“Oh!” said one, smiling. “He means he was behind our lines, not theirs.”
“I should hope so,” said I.
“We’re sorry to have misunderstood, sir,” said the other, and I was
escorted into the baggage-room. There my sordid belongings were
perfunctorily examined, the official not even troubling to open my
typewriter case nor a large ungainly package containing a toy for
certain parties back home.
It was eleven o’clock when the examinations were all over and we
entrained for this town. I got off at Waterloo and asked a taxi to
take me to the Savoy. It did and it drove on the left side of all the
streets en route. I’m still quaking.
_Tuesday, September 18. London._
This morning I had my first experience with an English telephone. I
asked the hotel’s operator to get me the office of Mr. O’Flaherty, the
American correspondent I had met at the British front. In a few moments
she rang back.
“Are you there?” she said, that being London for “Hello.”
“Here’s your number, then. Carry on,” she said.
But carrying on was not so easy. There is a steel spring on the
combination transmitter-receiver which you must hold down while you
talk. I kept forgetting it. Also I kept being electrically shocked.
But in the course of half an hour, with the operator’s assistance, I
managed to convey to the gentleman an invitation to call.
He came, and we started for the Bow Street police station, where every
visitor has to register within twenty-four hours of his arrival. On
the way we met Lew Payne, the actor, and Gene Corri, racing man and
box-fight referee. Gene has friends among the bobbies, and I was put
through in record time. They told me I’d have to go to the American
consul for a visé and then come back for a second registration with the
police. Mr. O’Flaherty opined that these jobs should be attended to at
once, as my boat train was supposed to leave at nine to-morrow morning.
Mr. Payne had a better idea.
“Let’s telephone the steamship office,” he said, “and find out whether
your ship is really going to sail on schedule. They usually don’t these
days.”
Mr. O’Flaherty did the telephoning, and, sure enough, the blamed
thing’s been postponed till Saturday night.
They asked me what I wanted to do next, and I said I’d like to pay my
respects to George and Mary. But I hadn’t let them know I was coming
and they’re both out of town.
We went to Murray’s (pronounced Mowrey’s) Club for lunch, though no one
in the party was a member and you have to sign checks to get anything.
Unlike most clubs, however, you pay cash simultaneously with signing
the check, so we weren’t cheating. I signed “Charles Chaplin” to one
check and it went unchallenged.
Gene’s two sons are in the British army, and the conversation was
confined to them. I was told they were the best two sons a man ever
had, but I knew better.
Murray’s Club’s orchestra is jazz and it gave Mr. O’Flaherty and me an
acute attack of home-sickness.
From there we rode to the National Sporting Club, of which Mr. Corri is
king. He asked me to put on the gloves with him, but I’m not one of the
kind that picks on people five or six times my age.
On Mr. Payne’s advice, Mr. O’Flaherty and I purchased seats for a show
called _Seven Day’s Leave_, and that’s where we’ve been to-night, we
and another scribe, Mr. Miller of Dowagiac, Michigan, which, as every
one knows, is a suburb of Niles.
The show is a melodrama with so many plots that the author forgot to
unravel two or three hundred of them. Of the fifteen characters, one
is the hero and the rest are German spies, male and female. The hero
is a British officer. Everybody wanted to kill him, and so far as I
could see there was nothing to prevent. But he was still alive when the
final curtain fell. The actors made all their speeches directly to the
audience, and many of them (the speeches) were in the soliloquy form
ruled off the American stage several years ago.
In the last act the hero pretends to be blotto (British for
spiflicated), so that, while he is apparently dead to the world, he can
eavesdrop on a dialogue between two of the boche plotters and obtain
information invaluable to England. The boches were completely deceived,
which is more than can be said of the audience.
_Wednesday, September 19. London._
Took a walk past Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace and found they
looked just like their post-card pictures.
It’s almost as bad crossing streets here as in Paris. The taxis don’t
go as fast, but their habit of sticking to the left side keeps an
American on what are known as tenterhooks.
Mr. O’Flaherty loomed up at noon and guided me to the office of a
friend with money. This rara avis honored a check on an American bank,
and now I think there’s enough cash on hand to see me through. The only
trouble is that my education in English money has been neglected and I
don’t know when I’m being short-changed. Constantly, I presume.
Living conditions here have it on those in Paris. There are no meatless
days, and a hot bath is always available. The town is dark at night,
but it’s said to be not for the purpose of saving fuel, but as a
measure of protection against air raids.