care of the population of the Hun-devastated districts, in clothing and
feeding the ever-increasing hordes of refugees that pour in over the
Swiss frontier, in supplying French and American military hospitals and
in furnishing the American forces with auxiliary clothing are well
known. It is not known, however, that, somewhere in that nebulous region
known as somewhere in France, the Red Cross has gone in a bit for what
has generally been considered the Y. M. C. A.'s own particular
game--that of running the festive army canteen.
So far as can be found out at present writing, this canteen is the only
one operated by the Red Cross in France. It is run primarily for the
benefit of the young American aviators whose training station is hard
by. And, because aviators, breathing rarer and higher ozone than most of
the rest of us, are in consequence always as hungry as kites and
cormorants, this particular Red Cross canteen does a rushing business.
It is situated in a long barrack-like building of the familiar type,
which is partitioned off into a social room and a combination officers'
dining room and a storeroom kitchen. The kitchen--as always in anything
pertaining to the army--is the all-important part. This kitchen is
noteworthy for two things: It has a real stand-up-and-sit-up lunch
counter, and its products are cooked and served by the deft hands of
American women.
Girls Worked All Night.
No dinners are served at this canteen for the airmen. Those favors are
reserved for the convalescents in the hospital nearby. But the airmen
are dropping in all the time for sandwiches and hot coffee, particularly
after coming down, chilled and chattering, from a flight into the upper
regions of the sky. If they don't drop in to get warmed up in that
fashion, they know they are in for a scolding by the head of the
canteen, an Englishwoman possessed of all an American mother's motherly
instincts and all of the English army's ideals of discipline.
There was one night that the little Red Cross canteen was put to a
severe test. Eighteen hundred Americans arrived at the aviation camp
after a thirty-hour trip punctuated by no saving hot meal. The
manager-matron and her girl helpers, however, stayed up nearly all
night, minting hot coffee and sandwiches so that the hardships of
sleeping on the cold bare ground of the hangars was somewhat mitigated
for the 1,800 unfortunates.
A Repair Shop For Clothes.
In all the canteen disburses about 2,000 sandwiches a day, with mugs of
coffee to match. In addition to that, its workers, equipped with
Norwegian fireless cookers, sally forth to the aviation fields in the
mornings long before dawn so that the men who are going up may have
something warm to eat and drink to fortify them against the cold. Not
content with doing that for their charges the Red Cross people soon hope
to have enough workers to take care of mending the aviators' clothes,
for aviators have to wear lots of clothes, and, when they land in trees,
in barbed wire, on stone walls and so forth, their clothes suffer in
consequence. A doughboy, who wears one suit at a time, doesn't have a
hard job keeping it in order; but an aviator with heaven knows how many
layers of clothes--oh, my!
The young women who constitute the Red Cross working staff at this
particular base, are, for the most part, prominent in society in the
larger American cities. Voluntarily they have given up lives of luxury
to tackle the job, and a hard job it is. They live in small barracks of
their own, as do the "Tommywaacs" (Women's Army Auxiliary Corps) of the
British army; but they are "roughing it" gladly to help Uncle Sam win
his war.
----
OUR SANCTUM
----
It's an office, all right, for it has a typewriter in it. No, not the
feminine person who usually decorates offices; simply the typewriting
machine. It has a calendar too, as all well-regulated offices should
have. The only things every well-regulated office has which it lacks are
the red-and-white signs "Do It Now" and the far more cheerful wall
motto, "Out to Lunch."
It has lamps, to be sure, not electric lights, as is the custom among
offices in the States. It has maps on the walls, but they differ a great
deal from the ones which used to hang above the Boss's desk back home,
and at which we used to stare blankly while waiting for him to look up
from his papers and say, "Well, whazzamatternow?" These maps have no red
circles marking zones of distribution, no blue lines marking salesmen's
routes and delimiting their territories, no stars marking agencies'
locations. True, they have lines on them, and a few stars on them, but
they stand for far different things....
Furnishings are Simple.
The office has a few rickety chairs, and one less rickety than the
others which is reserved for the Big Works, as he is affectionately
called, on the occasion of his few but none the less disquieting visits.
It has a rickety table or two, usually only one, for firewood is scarce
in France. It has a stove, which, from its battered appearance, must
have been used as a street barricade during the Reign of Terror in the
days of the First Revolution. Said stove requires the concentrated
efforts of one husky Yank, speaking three languages--French, United
States, and profane--all the live-long day to keep it going. Even then
the man sitting nearest the window is always out of luck.
The walls are unkempt in appearance, as if the plaster had shivered
involuntarily for many a weary day before the coming of "les Americains"
and their insistence upon the installation of the stove. The paper is
seamed and smeared until it resembles a bird's-eye view of the
battlefield of the Marne. The ceiling is as smudged as the face of a
naughty little boy caught in the midst of a raid on the jam in the
pantry, due, no doubt, to the aforesaid stove and to the over-exuberant
rising-and-shining of the kerosene lamps. Some people ascribe the state
of the celling to the grade of tobacco which the Boss smokes; but the
Boss always thunders back, "Well, what the devil can a man do in a
country where even cornsilk would be a blessing?" And, as what the Boss
says goes, that ends it.
There is one rug on the floor, a dilapidated affair that might well be
the flayed hide of a flea-bitten mule. There is a mantlepiece,
stretching across what used to be a fireplace in the days of the First
Napoleon, but which is a fireplace no more. On top of the mantlepiece is
a lot of dry reading--wicked-looking little books full of fascinating
facts about how to kill people with a minimum of effort and ammunition.
On the floor, no matter how carefully the office occupants scrape their
hobnails before entering, there is always a thin coating of mud.
The office telephone is on the wall, instead of on the Boss's desk, as
it ought to be. One has to take down receiver and transmitter all in the
same piece in order to use it. And it has the same old Ford-crank
attachment on the side that is common to phones in the rural free
delivery districts of the United States of America.
Why Hats Are Worn.
Instead of being lined with bright young men in knobby business suits
and white stiff collars, the office is lined with far brighter young men
in much more businesslike khaki. They keep their hats on while they work
for they know not when they may have to dash out again into the cold and
the wind and the rain. They keep their coats on for the same reason;
there are no shirt-sleeves and cuff protectors in this office, for the
simple reason that there are no cuffs to be protected and that
shirt-sleeves are "not military."
There is no office clock for the laggard to watch. Instead, there are
bugle calls, sounded from without. Or, again the hungry man puts the
forearm bearing his wrist watch in front of his face, as if to ward off
a blow, when he wants to know the time. Save for the clanking of spurs
and the thumping of rubber boots, it is a pretty quiet office,
singularly so, in fact, considering the work that is done in it.
Take it all in all, it's a strange kind of an office, isn't is? Well, it
ought to be, considering it's in a strange land. It's an army newspaper
office, that's what it is--an American sanctum in the heart of France.
----
TACTICS GET GOAT ACROSS.
----
Requirements Include Perfume, a
Sack, a Kit Bag and Cheers.
----
From the C.O. down to "Fuzzy," who would have rather taken court martial,
no one wanted to leave "Jazz" behind. So there was no end of indignation
when the order came at a certain American port that no animals (unless
useful) could go to France with the squadron.
"Jazz," being only a tender-hearted billy goat, could not claim
exemption from remaining in the U.S.A., for, as everybody agreed, he was
no earthly use, just "a poor, no-good goat." But "Jazz" did go aboard
the transport, later an English railway train, next another ship and
finally a French train until he arrived with the squadron at America's
biggest air post in France. There I saw him the other day appreciatively
licking devoted "Fuzzy's" hand.
It is not difficult to guess that "Jazz" is the mascot of "X" squadron,
accepted by pilots and mechanics alike as talisman for good at some
training camp back home. This office he has performed with exceptional
skill from the day "Fuzzy" permitted him to "butt in" at the mechanics'
mess.
"Fuzzy" and some of his pals slipped the goat into a sack and laid him
down among the cold storage meat when the time came to help load the
ship, taking care that the sack of live goat did not get into the
refrigerator. When the ship was well out to sea, the sack was opened and
"Jazz" crawled out blinking.
Even then "Fuzzy" was cautious. For the first days, he did not permit
the animal to promenade indiscriminately, but subjected him to repeated
scrubbings, following by perfume, toilet water and talcum powder. So
when "Jazz" was really discovered, he smelt, but more like a barber shop
than a goat. The ship's officers appreciated the joke and so did
everyone else and soon "Jazz" became a favorite on deck. Repeatedly
shampooed and perfumed, wearing a life-preserver, he moved about like a
good sailor. But there was less joyful days ahead of him.
He did not exactly set foot on English soil as did his friends. He went
ashore at an unmentionable port in a kit bag. In this he lay with the
other bags, surrounded by a screen of men. "Jazz" was uncomfortable and
said so in his goat way, but before he had uttered a full syllable his
friends set up a cheer which drowned his voice.
This happened again and again. The first time, British transport
officers at the port politely disregarded the Americans' demonstrations,
but after the third time one of them exclaimed:
"Extraordinary, these Americans. Wonderful spirit."
And a little later when the men burst into an excessively loud hurrah to
annihilate the voice of "Jazz" an elderly British colonel came over to
them and inquired of a young American officer nearby:
"Splendid lungs your chaps have! But, really, what are they cheering for
now?"
"Oh," returned the American, who very well knew why, "they're like that.
Always cheering about something. Shall I stop it?"
"No, indeed! I think it's splendid."
So that adventure passed over nicely and "Jazz" went on in a "goods van"
with the kit bags to another British sea port. After that there wasn't
any further trouble.
----
WHERE LANGUAGE FAILS.
----
Remember along about examination time how you used to think Hades would
be a good place for the professor?
Two Williams College graduates have had the pleasure of meeting their
old French teacher in the nearest earthly approach to the Inferno--the
trenches.
Officers now, the ex-students finally readied the battalion commander's
post in a certain sector after a two-mile trudge from the rear through
mud and ice water up to their hips.
A French interpreter met them at the door of the post.
"Yes, the major is in," he said, "but he won't see you till you shake
hands with _me_."
Both officers thought they were face to face with a nut. Then, as they
recognized their old teacher, two hands shot and grasped both of his.
"Well, I'll be darned--you haven't changed a bit!" was all the French
they could remember.
----
HIS IS NOT A HAPPY LOT
SAYS ARMY POSTAL CLERK
----
Works Eighteen Hours a Day and Has To Be Both
a Directory of the A. E. F. and a
Sherlock Holmes.
----
"Private Wolfe Tone Moriarity, Fighting
Umpth, France."
The Army Postal Service clerk surveyed the battered envelope on the desk
before him, pushed his worn Stetson back from a forehead the wrinkles in
which resembled a much fought-over trench system, adjusted his glasses
to his weary eyes, spat, and remarked:
"Easy! The 'Fighting Umpth' was changed over into the Steenhundred and
Umpty-umpth, wasn't it? The last that was heard from them they were at
Blankville-sur-Bum. Now they've moved to Bingville-le-somethingorother.
Clerk! Shove this in Box 4-11-44!"
"Lieutenant Brown, care American
Army, somewhere in France."
Again the Postal Service man, once-overed the envelope, purplish in hue,
went through the motions of pushing back his hat, expectorated, and
began:
Purple Paper a Clue.
"That's Lieutenant James Brown, I reckon. There's a lot of that name in
the Medical Department, but hell! He's married. Nobody writes to him on
purple paper. Then there's another one in the One Thousand, Nine-Hundred
and Seventeenth Motor-Ammunition-Ration-Revictualling-Woodchopping
Battalion. His'n allus writes to him on that kind of paper. I guess
that's him, all right. Hey, feller, shove this in 88966543, will-ya?
Thanks!"
From the rear of a line of scrapping, frantic mail orderlies, each one
trying to corner all the packages marked "Tobacco" and "Chocolate" for
his particular outfit, the reporter, by standing on a box marked
"Fragile--This Side Up," was able to see the scene depicted above, and
to hear, above the din, the Postal Clerk's momentous decisions.
Nothing like that had ever come into his ken before. He had seen Col.
Roosevelt at work in his office, talking into two telephones, dictating
to four stenographers, and writing a letter with each hand
simultaneously. He had watched the President of the United States
dispose of four Senators, eight Representatives, three Governors of
States, seven Indian tribal chiefs and the German ambassador in exactly
seven and a half minutes by the clock. But never, in all his experience,
had he witnessed such concentration, such rapidity of execution, as that
which the lean, worn man at the big desk possessed. It was better than
watching a machine gun in action, with all stops out.
Worming his way up to the desk, the reporter started on his set speech.
"Mr. Army Post Office Superintendent, will you consent to be interviewed
for----" when he was summarily stopped by the wave of an ample hand and
the booming of the P.S.'s voice.
"Want me to talk, do you, eh? Want to know what I do with my spare time?
All right, son; just jump over that gang of pouch-robbers and come on
inside. Here you----" this to the still combatant orderlies, at the same
time throwing an armfull of mail and papers at them--"here's all the
stuff for your outfits to-day. Divvy up among yourselves, and then
breeze!--beat it!--allez!
"Now, then, you want to know what I do with my spare time? Well, I work
eighteen hours a day in the office, and the other six I spend worrying
whether or not I gipped some poor Buddy when I cashed his American money
order in French paper currency. Like the saloons in Hoboken, we never
close.
Really Busy at Christmas.
"That's just about the way it was, no kidding, during the Christmas
rush. In about a month enough tobacco, chocolate, chewing gum, knit
socks, mufflers, fruit cake, safety razors, lump sugar--to judge from
the contents lists on the outside of the bundles--came through this
office to stock the whole of France for the next year and a half. Now,
though"--tossing a long, yellow envelope across the room into a numbered
pigeonhole--"things have slackened up a bit. A week ago I had half an
hour off to shave."
"Do the people back home cause you much bother by not addressing their
letters correctly?" asked the reporter.
"N--no," replied the P.S. meditatively, "although I did get one the
other day addressed to Private Ethan Allan of the 'American
Revolutionary Force.' At first I was going to send it back to Vermont,
after changing the private to Colonel, and have the D.A.R. see that it
got somewhere near old Ethe's final resting place; but on second thought
I guessed she--it's generally a she--meant the American Expeditionary
Forces. So I went down about three or four regimental rosters, and
finally I found the guy. Now he's probably wondering why he didn't get
that letter in a month, instead of a month and a half, and cussing me
out for the delay.
"The most trouble comes, though, from these birds what don't stay put.
They come over here all right with one unit, and then they get
transferred to some other. Then the unit is moved around, and the folks
back in the States, not knowing about it, continue to send stuff to the
old address. But generally we get 'em located in time."
A Rush After Pay Day.
"How about the mail from this side?" the reporter queried. "Do you think
that the franking privilege causes the men to write more letters than
they ordinarily would? Does sending their letters free pile things up
for you?"
"I don't think so," the mail magnate responded, "because the lads are
being kept so all-fired busy these days they don't honestly have time to
write much. On the bundle proposition, though, we have an awful rush of
stuff just after pay day, when it seems as if every man was bent on
buying up all the lace handkerchiefs in the country to send to his girl.
"Oh, take it all in all, it's a great life if you don't weaken," the
P.S. concluded. "I've been in the Government post office service for
sixteen years, now, and I never had so much fun before. I do wish,
though, that the boys would get stouter envelopes for their letters,
because the ones they get from the Y.M.--and ninety-eight per cent. of
the letters that go out from here are written on Y.M. stationery--are
too flimsy to stand much manhandling, and when they get wet they're
pretty much out of luck. Good-bye; drop in again some day when we're
really busy!"
_For the most Cable and Mail_
_News from the United States_
READ THE
AMERICAN
Daily Mail
Published every day of the week.
PRICE: ON SALE IN ALL AMERICAN
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Address: "American Daily Mail,"
36, Rue du Sentier, PARIS.
ARMY EDITION
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[Cartoon: THEN AND NOW--WAR MAKES AN AWFUL DIFFERENCE--BY WALLGREN]
NO MORE CUSSING
(--IT!) AT MULES
----
Order (--it!) Says That
Animals are Sensitive
as ----.
----
Cussing, as a fine art, is doomed in the Army.
Its foremost practitioners, the mule-skinners, are shorn of their
deadliest weapon of offense and defense by a recent order which directs
them to use honeyed words when addressing their feathery-eared charges,
instead of employing the plain, direct United States to which the mules'
painfully obvious hearing organs have hitherto been attuned.
Kindness, the order says in effect, will work wonders with the genus
Missouri nightingale or Indiana canary; if spoken to with proper regard
for his or her feelings, a mule will oftentimes go so far as to place
his or her hoof in a driver's lap.
When one is able, with impunity, to tickle a mule behind the ear (either
ear will do) one is adjudged proficient in interpreting the aesthetic
aspirations of the beast; and all mule-skinners are exhorted to apply
the ear-tickling proposition as a sort of acid test both as to the
tractability of their charges and their own ability as mule-tamers. The
application of this test, it is held, will keep the mule-skinners too
fully occupied to be able to cuss or to care a cuss about cussing.
This Stuff is Out o' Date.
But, men of the Old Army, particularly those who have trained with
mountain batteries, think of what is passing! Think of what the younger
and more effete generation of mules is missing! No more beneath the
starry flag will be heard such he-language as this:--
"Come on, Maud, you ---- Hoosier ----! Get a wiggle on your ----
good-for-nothing carcass! GIDDAP, Bill! You long-eared, flea-bitten,
hay-demolishing, muddy-flanked, rock-ribbed ----, ---- I said it!
GIDDAP!"
Or with the native product: "Depechez-vous, vous ----. Oh, h--l, I'm out
of French! Say, Jimmy! What's the word for ----? Never mind; all mules
understand ----! Hey there, you ----! Make tracks!"
Now, all is changed and such dulcet appeals to His Muleship as this are
the order of the day:
"Get a gait on, Sapphira, you ----! Oh, hell, I forgot! Aw, c'me on now,
old girl! We ain't got the whole morning t' waste! Be a sport, old lady!
Forward ---- hoh!
"Say, for ----. Oh, hell--I mean Heaven! Dammit, I forgot again! You,
Ananias, will you do me the esteemed favor to start the process? Will
you condescend to lift at least one leg?"
But This Stuff Does the Job.
Ananias puts one hoof forward in experimental manner, then stops. About
this time a brother mule-skinner enters, mouthing a corncob pipe. Says
he to the first mule-skinner:
"Whattamatter, Jerry? Don't they budge? Livin' up to orders, be yeh? Aw,
wee; way to talk to'm is third person--get me?--third person. None o'
this crude 'you' and 'yeze' stuff--same as talking to the Skipper,
y'know."
Jerry gets his mouth all fixed to say, "Aw, hell," recovers himself, and
then begins: "Will the off animile kindly step at least two paces to the
front?" (The mule starts to comply.) "I thank the off mule! Now, will
the near mule kindly follow suit?" (It also starts to comply.) "Now,
will both the near mule and the off mule be so good as to repeat the
process, both pulling together, until requested to desist? Fine; off we
go. Good Gawd--good Gawd!"
----
HOW GEORGE ADE SEES WAR.
----
Many Old Adages Must Be Revised
If Germany Wins.
----
As his contribution to the National Security League's campaign of
patriotism, George Ade has written a message to our young fighting men.
"We must win this war," he contends, "or else revise all moral codes,
rewrite all proverbs and adopt a brand new set of rules to govern
conduct. If Germany is not licked to a standstill, we might as well
begin to memorize and humbly accept the following:
"Dishonesty is the best policy.
"Be as mean as a skunk and you will be happy.
"Blessed are the child murderers, for they shall inherit the earth.
"Be sure you are right handy with fire-arms, then go ahead.
"An evil reputation is better than riches.
"Truth crushed to earth will not rise again if the crushing is done in
a superior and efficient manner.
"Be virtuous and you will be miserable.
"Thrice armed is he who goes around picking quarrels.
"Might makes right.
"Hell on earth and hatred for all men.
"Do unto others as you suspect that they might do unto you if they ever
got to be as disreputable as you are.
"God helps the man who helps himself to his neighbor's house and his
field and his unprotected women.
"These don't sound right, do they?
"The old ones that we learned first of all are not yet out of date.
"Suppose we don't revise them."
----
GLORIFIED.
----
(With apologies to the late Sir W.
S. Gilbert.)
----