the European situation. On a coil of rope on the well-deck, broad-faced
and Turanian, sits another young man. If Antonio’s real name is difficult
to pronounce, this man’s is out of range altogether; for he is a Russian.
He is addressed indifferently as Clambakovitch or Roughneckski.
“I live fifty miles from German border,” he says. “I come over here seven
years ago: I go through Berlin and sail from Hamburg. Now the Germans
have my home. I do not hear from my people for three years. So now I go
home—through Berlin again!”
“And after that?”
After that, Clambakovitch Roughneckski’s plans are perfectly definite. He
is coming back to America—for good. Already he is wedded to the soil of
Pennsylvania. Antonio’s views are the same.
The affection of her children for America is a wonderful thing. Domestic
or imported, it makes no matter. To the native-born American, America is
still the little country—the little strip of coastline—which stood up
successfully to a dunder-headed monarch in days when men did not govern
themselves: to the naturalized American, America is the land which gave
him his first real taste of personal liberty. Each cherishes America
to-day—the one because he helped to make her free, the other because she
has made him free.
We are in the danger zone now. It is difficult to realize that thrilling
circumstance, because no one seems to worry at all.
The same games of shuffle-board, bull-board, chess, checkers, and bridge
are in progress; each day sees the same guard-mountings, parades, and
inspections; off duty, the same quantity of tobacco and chewing-gum is
being consumed. Only if the ship is brought up short by a heavy sea, or
an iron door clangs suddenly in some distant stokehold, are we conscious
of any tension at all. For a moment heads are turned, or conversation
breaks. But that is all. A year ago, old hands tell us, things were
different. There really was cause for nervousness. But now, we are
escorted, we are well-armed, and the worst we need fear is a few hours in
the boats.
There is much speculation as to our destination. Is it the Mersey; the
Clyde; Queenstown? Or France direct? Where are we now, anyway? Each noon,
when the ship’s officers appear upon the bridge in a body, and perform
mysterious sun-worshipping rites with sextants, the amateur experts
look knowing, and refer darkly to probable latitudes and longitudes.
One, diagnosing the present commotion of billows as a “ground-swell,”
announces positively that we are just off the Bay of Biscay. Another,
basing his conclusions upon the lengthening hours of daylight and the
presence in our wake of certain sea-birds (herring-gulls, really) which
he describes as “penguins,” announces confidently that we are now well
within the Arctic Circle and will ultimately fetch a compass to Aberdeen,
_via_ Iceland. The battle rages between these two extremes: probably a
carefully worked-out average of opinion would bring us somewhere near
the truth. Gunners are quite familiar with the process: they call it
“bracketing.” But it does not matter. The real fun will begin when we
sight land, and the authorities upon the subject start in to identify it.
Another night has passed, and the question is settled. We have sighted
land, and are informed that we may expect to make our port to-night. It
is a breathless summer morning, and our great ships, which looked forlorn
and insignificant amid the ocean wastes, appear to have swelled a good
deal during the night. Certainly we form a stately pageant, for our
escorting forces have been augmented. Destroyers are beating the bounds,
nosey little patrol-boats thread their way in and out of the flotilla;
silver-grey monsters float above our heads in the blue, occasionally
descending to dip a suspicious nose towards the glittering wavelets. One
of them dives down gracefully to within hailing distance of our own ship.
It is a sublime moment. A thousand Stetsons are waved in welcome, and an
earnest query—the spontaneous greeting of Young America to Old England—is
roared from one of our portholes:
“Say, you got any _beer_ up there?”
At the forward end of the boat-deck Boone Cruttenden and Miss Lane were
leaning over the rail, in that confidential conjunction invariable in
all young couples, whether in war or peace, on the last day of a voyage.
Boone’s blue eyes surveyed the scene around him, and glowed.
“It makes you think a bit!” he exclaimed. “Here we are, thousands of us
Americans, on board British ships, being convoyed into a British port by
the British Navy. I wish the old Kaiser was here! And I wish some of our
folks at home who are asking what the British Navy is doing in this war
could be here too! They might learn then what is meant by the freedom of
the seas!”
“Still,” complained the youthful seeker after sensation, Miss Lane, “I
did hope that we might have seen just one little submarine.”
It is hard to refuse some people anything—especially American girls of
twenty-three. Miss Lane’s wish was promptly gratified. A few hundred
yards away, right in the middle of the convoy, there was suddenly
protruded from the unruffled surface of the ocean a few feet of something
grey, slender, and perpendicular—something which, after a hurried and
perfunctory survey of the situation, retired unobtrusively whence it
came. But not before it had been seen, and welcomed. For a brief minute
shells burst around it, machine guns pattered imprecations over it, bombs
descended upon it from the heavens above, and depth-charges detonated
in the waters beneath. The convoy altered its formation, as prudence
dictated. But nothing further happened. Calm reigned once more upon the
face of the waters.
“Some little surprise for him, I guess,” said Cruttenden. “Lying on the
bottom, and just came up for a look around! He did not expect to poke his
periscope into this hornet’s nest, I should say. I wonder if anything hit
him. I guess not: he was too slick. But you had your thrill right enough,
Miss Lane!”
Miss Lane sighed rapturously.
“The censor has just _got_ to pass that when I write home,” she announced.
* * * * *
Late that evening we made our port. On our way in we passed a British
cruiser, coaling. The band was playing, as is usual during coaling.
Our tall ship slid past in the dusk, undemonstratively, almost
surreptitiously. One of the tragedies of modern warfare lies in its
anonymity. You may not display your true colours or advertise your
presence anywhere—even to your friends. So we crept past. But a sailor
can read ships as a landsman reads books. The cruiser’s band stopped
suddenly, right in the middle of a tune, and in two minutes the cruiser’s
sides, rigging, and tops were crowded with half-naked, coal-grimed
humanity yelling themselves hoarse to the roaring multitude on the liner.
“Listen!” shouted Boone Cruttenden into his companion’s ear, as a fresh
burst of sound added itself to the tumult; “their band has struck up
again. Can you hear it?”
“No! Yes, I do now. I guess it’s ‘God Save the King,’ or one of those
tunes.”
But Miss Lane was wrong. Suddenly the cheering died away for a moment,
and the band made itself heard, joyfully and triumphantly, for the first
time.
And the tune it played was “Over There.”
“Oh, _gee!_” said Miss Lane, with a sob in her voice. “Oh, gee!”
CHAPTER FIVE
TERRA INCOGNITA
We have not yet reached France, but we have discovered England. It
is a small island, and the visitor must be prepared for a primitive
civilization—for instance, _The Saturday Evening Post_ costs at least
fifteen cents—but it offers a fruitful and interesting field for
exploration.
Our debarkation was not attended by any marked popular demonstration.
Some of us were inclined to resent the omission as savouring of insular
aloofness. But now we know the real reason. _We are not supposed to be
here._ We are a dead secret. The port in which we disembarked has no
name. Its inhabitants are plunged into an official trance. Therefore it
would hardly be reasonable to expect the insensible population of an
anonymous city to proffer a civic welcome to American soldiers who are
officially invisible anyway.
However, by a fortunate accident at the moment of our arrival, a band
of musicians happened to be discoursing melody on the wharf, including
such airs as “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Dixie.” Moreover, a group of
British Staff Officers groped their way on board our imperceptible vessel
and greeted us cordially. They furthermore presented to every man of us
copies of a letter written by King George with his own hand, bidding us
welcome to his realm and expressing a wish that it were possible for him
to shake hands with each one of us in person. Scores of copies of that
letter are now already on their way home to America—the first souvenir of
the War.
Thereafter we were packed into a child’s train, drawn by a toy engine,
and conveyed at a surprising pace through a country of green fields,
cut up into checker-board squares by hedges and narrow lanes, populated
mainly by contemplative cows and dotted with red-roofed farms and
villages.
Occasionally we passed a camp. The tents were toylike and tidy, like the
country. They fitted the landscape, just as a great four-square American
Army tent, with its wooden walls and dust-coloured canvas top, fits in
with a Texan horizon. In these camps were men in khaki—some drilling,
some performing ablutions in buckets, some kicking a football. Mr. Joe
McCarthy’s passion for being waved at was at length gratified.
Occasionally we stopped at the station of some town. These were always
crowded, as were the trains. The strange little compartments in which the
English confine themselves when travelling were packed with humanity—some
of it standing up and clinging to the luggage-rack—all of it encumbered
with much personal property in the shape of bundles and babies. Evidently
the War has cut down transportation. At either end of these trains a
seething mob contended, with surprising good temper, around a mountain of
heavy baggage piled upon the platform beside the express-van.
“Ain’t they got no Red Caps in this country?” enquired Mr. McCarthy in
disparaging tones.
“Their Red Caps are all wearing tin helmets over in France,” replied the
well-informed Al Thompson. “Everybody here up to fifty is drafted. Folks
have to tote their own grips. I notice quite a few women porters around.
I guess their husbands are in France, and these are holding down their
jobs for them.”
In which Al spoke no more than the truth.
Meanwhile, in another part of the train, our friend Jim Nichols, Major
Powers, and one Bond, a stout, comfortable representative of the Medical
Service, together with Boone Cruttenden—the latter somewhat _distrait_,
for Miss Frances Lane had been swept away with the other ninety-and-nine,
by a different train, to be no more seen—were sharing a compartment with
Captain Norton and a British Staff Officer—a youthful Major. The Major’s
name was Floyd; he had materialized during the chaos of debarkation.
Norton had introduced him to the American officers; stately salutes had
been exchanged; gentlemen had stated in a constrained manner that they
were pleased to know one another; the whole party had crowded into one
compartment, and the train had started.
For nearly an hour almost total silence reigned. Americans are sensitive
folk, and Floyd’s melancholy visage and paralyzing monocle fulfilled our
friends’ most pessimistic anticipations of the British Staff Officer.
After a few laboured commonplaces the conversation lapsed altogether, and
the Americans devoted their attention to the flying landscape.
Norton, a little uncomfortable, glanced occasionally in the direction of
his brother officer. Major Floyd sat bolt upright in his seat, his gaze
focussed upon infinity. Norton, who was a man of warm heart and quick
temper, was conscious of a vague feeling of resentment.
“I wonder,” he mused, “why an image like this should have been sent as
conducting officer. No wonder Americans think us unsociable and rude. And
people over there were so good to us—”
At this moment Floyd removed his monocle and addressed his right-hand
neighbour—Boone Cruttenden.
“And now, Lieutenant, what are your impressions of our country?”
Boone Cruttenden smiled. “You have not given me much time to formulate
any, Major,” he said, glancing at his wrist-watch. “Just an hour!”
“That is fifty-nine minutes longer than the _World_ reporter gave me when
I landed at West Twenty-Third Street ten years ago,” replied Floyd.
“You know America?” Four homesick Americans spoke simultaneously.
Floyd’s eyes twinkled.
“Some of it,” he said. “I was with the General Electric Company
at Schenectady for three years. After that I worked on various
electrical-engineering jobs for about four years; I got as far west as
Cincinnati. I’m not a professional warrior, like Norton there.”
“Still, you have seen service in this War?” said Major Powers.
“Oh, yes, I managed to get home from America just in time for the start
of things.”
“Have you served in France, or on one of your other fronts?” asked
Cruttenden. “The British Army has such a large selection.”
“France all the time—_and_ Belgium. Most of us have taken a course of the
Ypres Salient.”
“I guess those ribbons the Major is wearing would give us details, if we
could read them,” observed Jim Nichols. “What do they stand for, Major?”
Floyd laughed.
“As a traditional Englishman,” he said, “I suppose I ought to hang my
head confusedly and decline to answer. But I have spent ten years outside
my own country, so I will tell you. This little fellow with the rainbow
effect you probably know: Norton has it too. It means that we were both
in Flanders in Nineteen Fourteen. The khaki, red, and blue is the Queen’s
Medal for the South African War. By the way, Major Powers, I notice that
you have the Spanish War ribbon. What is your other one—the yellow and
blue?”
“That relates to our Mexican Border troubles,” replied Powers. “More
discomfort than danger getting that. What is that third ribbon of
yours—the red with the blue edges?”
“That? Oh, that is the D.S.O.”
“What does that stand for?” asked Boone.
“Well, before the War it was popularly supposed to stand for ‘Dam Silly
Officer!’ Since then, however, the military profession has risen in the
eyes of the world; so it now means ‘Done Something or Other’!”
“And what did you get it for?” pursued the insatiable Boone.
Floyd laughed.
“Counting jam-tins at the Base!” he said.
“I suppose it was while counting jam-tins you lost your arm,” suggested
the quiet voice of Major Bond.
Floyd laughed again.
“You are too sharp for me, Doctor,” he said. “I plead guilty. My left
arm is an understudy. The original is astray somewhere around Beaumont
Hamel. I have had to stay at home since then. But now I want to get
back to my first question, Lieutenant. What are your impressions of
this country—your first impressions? I really do want to know. I have
been aching to ask you for the last hour, but I felt that I had to play
up a little first. Monocle—vacant stare, and all that! The traditional
Englishman, in fact. I felt you were entitled to meet one,” continued
this eccentric man; “and I took especial pains to give you a good
impersonation, because you may experience some difficulty in finding
another. The fact is, the traditional Englishman is getting rare. We have
all been shaken out of ourselves these days. After the War he may come
back—perhaps. Perhaps not.” He sighed gently. “But at present I am here
to supply you with information about the customs and institutions of
this country. I am detailed for the job. I am paid for it. Please ask me
questions, somebody?”
No one could resist this solemn appeal. First one query was proffered,
then another. Presently the American passion for getting to the root of
the matter was in full play.
“Why did the English travel in closed boxes? Why were the locomotives so
small, and why did they burn soft coal? Why were there so many overhead
bridges when a grade-crossing would suffice? What would be the wages of
that old man working in that field? What was that bright yellow crop
growing in that section? Why did vehicles in a street keep to the left?
Was there any organized system of irrigation, that the country was all so
green? Was there game in those woods, and who had the right to hunt it?”
Norton, a professional soldier from his school days, knew nothing of many
of these things. He was also a typical Englishman, and had been brought
up to accept matters as he found them. But he was the son of an English
country squire, and he was able to name the various crops—meadow-grass,
hay-grass, wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, beans—whose variegated colours
impart to an English landscape its curious crazy-quilt effect. He was
well-versed, too, in agricultural economics and the hoary traditions of
the feudal system, and discussed voluminously, as an Englishman will when
started upon his own subject, upon farm-labourers’ wages, the rotation of
crops, and the Ground Game Act.
Floyd, who agreed with Dr. Samuel Johnson in regarding one green field
as very like another green field, recked nothing of these things. But he
was a mine of information on railroad management. To a deeply interested
audience he traced the origin of the standard railway gauge of the world
back to an obscure English colliery road of George Stephenson’s days:
he ascribed the multitude of overhead bridges and tightly locked level
crossings to the benevolent fussiness of the Board of Trade. He even
knew—to the frank amazement of Captain Norton—the maximum height from
rail-level to which a British locomotive, by reason of the aforesaid
bridges, can aspire—thus accounting for the stunted appearance of the
same by comparison with its American brother, which in an atmosphere
of greater freedom is permitted to soar some nine feet higher. Greatly
daring, he even justified the British custom of keeping to the left, on
the ground that it dated back to the days when men rode on horseback, and
riders and postilions, to mount or dismount, must perforce draw in to the
near side of the road.
An American is forever battling between two instincts—native appreciation
of what is modern and efficient, and inherited veneration for what is
ancient and inconvenient. Common sense usually compels him to favour the
former; but he is never so happy as when he can conserve or justify the
latter.
Major Floyd gratified this instinct. He carried his hearers back to
the days of stage-coaches. He told of the opening of the Stockton and
Darlington Railway; of Brunel and the Broad Gauge; of the railway races
in the nineties, when the Scottish Express ran four hundred miles in
seven hours. Altogether, in his able hands, “Romance brought up the Nine
Fifteen.”
The locomotive gave a shriek, and the train began to slow down. Major
Powers turned from the contemplation of a tiny English town nestling
in a shallow valley a mile away. With its red roofs and square church
tower set against a background of living green, it looked the embodiment
of uneventful drowsiness. Certainly a little imagination was required
to realize that under nearly every one of these same roofs there stood
at least one empty chair—a chair that might or might not be occupied
again—and that beneath that ancient tower for four long years, week
by week, in good times and in bad, women, children, and old men had
congregated to pray that those whose names were inscribed upon the
illuminated scroll in the church porch—squire’s son, parson’s son,
farmer’s son, poacher’s son—might in God’s good time come home again,
having achieved the purpose for which they had set out.
Powers possessed the requisite imagination. He had been reared in
Kentucky—that land of fair women and noble horses. This toy town,
which could have been transported bodily into his native State without
materially affecting either the landscape or the census, appealed to him,
as small children appeal to large people.
He turned to Norton, and said simply:
“Captain, I have never been outside of America before. I have been
looking over this little island of yours, and I want to tell you, right
now, that I think it is worth fighting for!”
“Thanks awfully,” said Norton gravely, and offered an unexpected hand.
CHAPTER SIX
SOCIAL CUSTOMS OF THE ISLANDERS
We are now at a rest-camp, recharging our batteries after the fatigues of
sea travel before proceeding to the conquest of Germany.
The camp is situated deep in rural England. At our feet, in a valley,
lies an ancient city, dominated by a mighty cathedral. It was once a
walled city, but only the gates remain now—King’s Gate and West Gate. At
the top of the High Street stands a great rough-hewn statue of Alfred
the Great—dead for more than a thousand years. He makes a fine figure,
with his coat of mail and uplifted broadsword. Mr. Eddie Gillette,
among whose sterling virtues sentiment finds no place, compares him,
not unfavourably, with a New York traffic cop. Mr. Joe McCarthy, still
dyspeptic from the effects of prolonged ocean travel, describes the
deceased monarch as a tough guy, and adds further that in his opinion
this is a dead town. Al Thompson, of finer clay, inspects the statue
approvingly, then passes on with a handful of interested spectators to
the cathedral, whose grey walls keep eternal vigil over the dust of
Saxon, Norman, and English dead—much of it ancestral American dust.
Elderly gentlemen in maroon dressing-gowns conduct the party round,
and in piping tones introduce the New World to the Old. But not all
Old. In one nook of the great fabric, guarded by Old Glory itself,
gleaming brightly in the twilight, stands an Innovation—a temporary
shrine dedicated to fallen American soldiers, particularly those who
have died in English hospitals from wounds received in France. After
the War the memorial is to take the form of a permanent stained-glass
window. At present in England people are not manufacturing stained-glass
windows—only earning them.
The countryside is full of camps—typically English—not spacious and
bewildering such as those which scared the mountaineer from Tennessee,
but prim and tidy, like an English kitchen-garden. The white conical
tents are set out in close, level rows, like cabbages. The Headquarters
tent and the Officers’ Mess are fenced in by a ring of curious
boundary-stones, set a few feet apart and carefully whitewashed. The
district is full of English soldiers. We have never seen them before, and
we regard them with interest. We note with gratification that they are
in the main smaller than ourselves and not so well set-up, though sturdy
enough. Their teeth appear to require attention: gold teeth have not
yet reached this country. They wear ragged mustaches, and smoke eternal
cigarettes. The language that they speak is entirely incomprehensible.
Their officers, on the other hand, present a decidedly gay and frivolous
appearance. They look very young; they wear their caps at a rakish angle;
they carry canes. They are secretly regarded by many of us as verging
upon the Clarence class. But the old stagers of our camp warn us not to
form our judgments too hastily. When we are able to read the biography
which every British soldier carries upon his sleeve or breast—scraps of
ribbon, service chevrons, wound stripes, and the like—we will realize
that things, especially in England, are not always what they seem.