landing we stood in pools of water in the hollows of the worn stone
flags. We were in good time, but a hundred or more who had been in
better time were already inside the shed. The hold-overs from three days
were there, military people mostly. We waited--and waited--and waited.
It was the eternal passport matter. One at a time they had to pass the
tribunal inside. A pleasant-mannered young English soldier stood guard
at the shed door. Every half-hour or so, at command of a voice from the
inside, he would let another dozen or twenty slide by. When he did so,
those of us in the rear would hurry to fill the void, picking up our
baggage from our feet as we pushed on. I had hired a porter, an old man,
to look after my 70-pound bag. He stood by patiently for two hours or
so. Then, without warning, he ran off and did not come back. I had not
paid him, so he must have grown very tired. After that, whenever I moved
forward, I had to pick up my two bags myself--the other weighed 40
pounds. Sometimes I put the bags into a pool of water--sometimes I put
my feet.
Not every one had to wait. An officer would be passed through
immediately, which did not please two enlisted men near me, just back
from what they called rough work at the front. The little one, called
Scotty, had a fear that the boat might leave before he could get there.
He wanted to "mak' a train oot o' Lunnon" at two of the next afternoon,
"mak' a nicht train oot o' Glesgie" (Glasgow) and surprise his folk by
walking in on 'em "afore brekkist." They would be glad to see him, be
sure.
"Almost as glad to see you come as they was goin'?" asked the soldier
with him, and then urged Scotty to stop over in London for a bit o' fun.
"I'll not," said Scotty. "I'll mak' the trains as I said an' surprise
'em afore brekkist. Besides, there's a football match on for the
arternoon arter to-morrer, and an old pal o' mine is playin' for'ard for
oor team. But let 'em allow all these officers aboord first--'ere's
anither ane--listen tae 'im!"
But it was not an officer this time. It was a voice asking if any
privileges were accorded a King's messenger. The guard at the door said
certainly, but where was he? Everybody made way for the voice. He turned
out to be a little man with a scraggy beard and large round spectacles.
The guard eyed him doubtfully. The King's messenger stood on his toes
and whispered up into the guard's ear.
The guard looked down on him. "King's messenger! Go on with yer!" He
shoved him back.
"Yes, garn with yer!" said Scotty, "but he's gained a guid half oor wi'
his King's-messenger talk. I think I'll hae tae be something important
masel' sune."
The soldier with Scotty could speak French. He spoke it to a pretty
young French girl and her mother who had been pressed up against them.
The mother had a new hat in a big paper box. Whenever the rush
threatened to crush the hat-box, she would hold it high over her head
till she could hold it no longer, when she let it get crushed.
Whenever the girl spoke to the other soldier Scotty would want to know
what she said. "She's sairtainly pretty. What did she say that time,
Tid?"
Tid kept to himself what she said. "It's a cut above the likes of you
we're discussin'," said Tid.
"She'll be goin' to England to marry an English officer," said Scotty.
The girl whirled on him. "No. No Engleesh officier--a French officier!"
"I had a notion you'd spoil it," said Tid.
"Ma Gud," groaned Scotty. "I wonder, Tid, did she hear a' I said this
nicht o' her, and ma lips no two feet frae her ear!"
The night was growing cooler. The girl's fur neck-piece slipped down
from her shoulders. The mother had passed her the hat-box, and the girl
had no hand free for the neck-piece. Scotty put it back for her. She
thanked him sweetly.
"You're no mad noo?" said Scotty. "I'll tak' a steady billet tae put it
back." He took to slyly stroking the fur piece when he thought she could
not see him.
A woman lost her passport, but did not know it until she was about to be
passed through the door. Then she shrieked. She came back in the crowd
to look for it. She had been standing in one spot for an hour--it must
be there. She rushed to the spot, lit a match, and began to look under
her feet. A man lit a match and began to look under his feet. Another
man lit a match and began to look under his feet. We all lit matches and
began to look under our feet.
She shrieked again. "Ma Gud, she's a dyin' woman!" said Scotty.
She was not. She had found her passport. The business of waiting was
resumed by the rest of us.
The little cafes along the water-front were closing; loads of soldiers
and sailors began to flow out on to the jetty. One began to sing, and
another; others to whirl along in grotesque dance steps. Two began to
talk loudly. They came to blows. A third one stepped in to stop it,
whereupon one of the first two turned on him to inquire what he was
interfering for.
"But he's a friend o' mine," explained the third man.
"Is he a better friend o' yours than o' me? Answer me that. Is he? Do
you know him longer than I know him? No? Then mind your own and do not
be interferin'." The third man felt properly rebuked. He withdrew his
objections and the other two resumed their fight.
We were inside the shed at last; and by and by I came before a man in a
little office inside the shed. He was a Frenchman, but spoke good
English.
"Your passport, please."
I produced it. He took a look and passed it back.
"Any gold on your person?"
"Thirty dollars--American."
"Hand it over, please. Wait. Are you American?"
"I am."
"In that case keep it. That is all. Pass out. Next."
Next came a little house with a row of men sitting at a long, narrow
pine-board table. The first had a quick look at my passport and handed
it on to a man who sat on his left before a card index in boxes. That
one dug into his boxes, found what he was looking for, and slid the
passport along to the next on his left, who slid it along to the man on
his left, and he to the man on his left, and he to the last one.
You chased that passport down the line, answering the questions which
each one put in turn, as to where you last came from, where before that,
and before that, and the date, your business, where you were going in
England, why, for how long, and where you would stay. They were all
pleasantly put, but you had the feeling that let you stumble and it
would be God help you. Each asked a question or two that nobody else had
thought of. The last one had the least of all to say. He probably
thought that if, after all, you were a German spy, you had earned your
exemption. He only made a note of your name, handed out a red card, said
to give it to the soldier at the out-going door, claim your baggage,
have the customs inspector pass it, and go aboard the steamer when you
liked. All I saw liked to go aboard at once.
There was a man of many buttons behind a shining brass grill on the
steamer--French, apparently, but also speaking plain English. I handed
in my ticket and asked for a berth. He was snappy. "Have you one
reserved?"
"Why, no. When I bought my steamer ticket I was told that there would be
no need to reserve a berth--there would be plenty."
"He told you wrong. There are no berths."
"But is he not your agent--the man who sold me the ticket?"
"No."
"But you accept his ticket?"
"There is no berth."
"You mean that I pay for a first-class ticket on your steamer and then
have to walk the deck?"
"There is no berth, I say." He talked like a machine-gun, and the marble
Roman gods were not more impassive as he turned to the next. I saluted
him. You just have to honor a man who knows exactly what he wants to say
and says it, which did not prevent me from saying over the next one's
shoulder what I thought of his manners, the ethics of his company, and
the cheek of the well-known tourist agency which had sold me the ticket
in Paris.
But it did not get me anything. He went right on about his business of
turning more people away.
I had a look around. The smoking-room air was all blue, and all khaki as
to chairs and tables. Also all khaki as to sleeping-quarters. They had
been campaigning for a year or more on the western line, and had not
lost any time here. And every blessed one of them had a whiskey and soda
before him. They were talking, but not of the war. They were going home
for a ten days' leave after a year at the front and were trying to
forget the war. There was also a lounge-room and a dining-saloon, but
bunks there were also already commandeered by the strategic military.
It could be a worse night to walk the deck. To see what was doing a man
would want to walk the deck anyway.
There was a fine bright moon mounting above the housetops of the
water-front when we slid away from our jetty berth. Slid is the word.
She was all power, this Channel steamer of hardly 1,500 tons, yet with
two great smoke-stacks, three propellers, turbine-engines, and burning
oil for fuel. That last is a cheerful item when you have to walk the
deck--it means no cinders in your eyes.
Fuss? A strange word to her. She slipped like running oil from the
jetty, past the breakwater lights, out by the few craft anchored
there--a fast one for sure. To get a line on her speed, you had but to
watch the shore marks fall away or the water slide by her side as out
into the Channel she went.
People without berths, but with a chair and a rug from the head steward,
began now to tuck away. At first they sat mostly by the rail watching
things. Later they sought snugger corners; but two o'clock of a
September morning in 50 deg. north is still two o'clock in the morning.
They began to go inside. The lights were turned off inside the ship, so
when you walked around in there and felt your foot come down on something
soft, you needed to tread lightly--that would be somebody's neck or
stomach. There were life-rafts on the top deck, of a homelike sort of
model, in the form of two benches with the air-tanks under the benches.
If anything happened to the ship, you could go floating off with all the
comforts of a seat on a bench in the park--if too many did not try to
have seats at the same time. It was a fine night for anybody to spot us,
but just as fine a night for us to spot them. And a ship cutting out
devious courses at twenty-one knots, or whatever she was logging--she is
not too easy to hit. To lay out for the ten and eleven knot cargo boats
is more economical. Still, who knows? We paid tribute to the U-boats by
making detours. All the big stars of the night were out, and by them we
could follow her shifting courses. But no harm; she had speed enough to
sail the Channel sidewise and still bring us in by morning. The night
grew older and cooler. The last of the people who had paid toll to the
steward for a chair and rug went inside. Only one couple were left; and
they had not hired any chair. He was a young officer, and they sat under
his olive-drab blanket, on a life-raft bench athwartship. From there
without moving they could get sidewise peeks at the climbing moon. At
five o'clock in the morning they were still sitting there, heads
together and arms across each other's shoulders.
When we grew tired of walking we sought little anchorages. By two
o'clock any man on deck could have had his pick of abandoned chairs, but
they were not good chairs--the extension part too short. One very young
Canadian officer opened up his kit, made a bed and what lee he could of
the forward smoke-stack. A round smoke-stack makes a poor lee, but once
tucked in he stuck, and was there in the morning when clear light came.
The moon went behind clouds, and from the clouds little cold showers of
rain came peppering down. Heavier clouds came, and heavier squalls with
rain; and a mean little cross sea began to make. Straight ahead, above
the little seas a light showed, and soon another--this a powerful one.
We were still going at a great clip. We might know it anew by the way
that big light jumped forward to meet us. Soon we had it off our bow,
abeam, on our quarter; we were inshore.
A destroyer came out to meet us and blinked a message from screened
lights. More ships met us. We passed other ships--all kinds of ships, of
which in detail a man must not write here.
In good time and in smooth waters we made our landing. There was another
long wait, the same passport grilling, but in a different way, and then
a fast train to London. A taxi then, a room, a shave and bath, clean
linen, and--oh boy!--the roast beef of old England and people you knew
to talk to!
THE CENSORS
Before a visiting correspondent can do anything on the other side he has
to report to a censor somewhere. In London the Chief Admiralty Censor
was a retired Royal Navy captain and a Sir Knight, but not wearing his
uniform or parading his knighthood. He was quartered in an old dark
building where Nelson used to hang out in the days before Trafalgar.
There was a sign on the door:
DON'T KNOCK. COME IN
He was a good sort, with not a sign about him of that swank which so
many of the military caste seem to think it necessary to adopt. He was
perfectly willing to pass me on to our naval base and go right ahead
with my work; but he did not have charge of the naval base. There was an
admiral over there--not an American admiral--who had full charge of our
war-ships there. Without his permission not one of them could tie up to
a mooring in the harbor. I would have to get his permission even to
visit the base. My very human censor in London said he would cable to
him and let me know just as soon as word came.
Awaiting the pleasure of the naval base dictator held me two weeks in
London. While waiting I had a look over the city. It was during a period
when the moon was ripe for air-raids. There were seven of them in nine
nights. My business in life being to see things and then to write about
them, I walked the streets during two of them and viewed some of the
others from club and hotel windows.
The underground railway stations did a great business while the raids
were on; also bomb-proof basements. In a newspaper office, where I used
to visit, were precise directions how to get to their bomb-proof cellar.
And be sure to take the right one. They had two cellars, but only one
was bomb-proof. Shops in the expensive shopping districts had signs up,
advertising their bomb-proof cellars and inviting their patrons to make
use of them; but the trouble with the shops was that most air-raids took
place after they had shut up for the day.
There was a local regulation which said that when an air-raid was on any
person at all might knock at the door of any house he pleased and claim
admittance. If he were not admitted at once he could call a policeman,
who would have to see that he was admitted. We used to speculate on what
would happen if some hobo knocked at the front door of the town house of
the Duke of Westminster, say, and demanded of the butler in plush
knee-breeches that he be let in.
The chief defense against the Goths was a barrage of guns mounted mostly
on the roofs of buildings. An expected air-raid would be announced by
policemen running through the streets on bicycles, on their chests and
back were signs: AIR RAID ON. They also blew whistles.
The great search-lights would sweep the skies, and by and by there would
be a great banging of barrage guns. Bang, bang, bang--that would be the
defense guns. Boom! That would be a bomb. Bang, bang, bang, and Boo-oom!
The guns fired 3-inch shrapnel. Three miles into the air the shrapnel
shells would go! And what goes up has to come down. The next thing would
be shrapnel showering into the streets. It seemed to me that I would
rather take my chance with the bombs than with the shrapnel. A bomb came
down, exploded, and had done with it; but the shrapnel fell all over the
place.
You could see the shrapnel shells bursting high in the air--a beautiful
sight--twinkling like big yellow stars, and then fading out. They would
look more beautiful if only the pieces of them would stay up there after
they burst. I was in Oxford Circus one night when a hatful of shrapnel
fell about 20 feet away. One piece was about 5 inches long. Imagine that
falling down from a height of 3 miles and hitting a fellow on the head.
It would go clear on down through to your toes. Before any American city
is raided I hope some chemist will invent a barrage shell which will
dissipate all its energy and substance in the bursting. Surely an
airplane can be wrecked by concussion.
An Australian soldier and a girl were standing in a doorway near me
watching the shells burst. His was that common case--a soldier in London
on leave, speculating on where the shrapnel would fall, and becoming
peeved as he thought of it. "A hell of a place for a man to come on
leave! I came here to get rest and quiet, and I run into this gory
mess!"
While waiting the permission of the British authorities I learned that
all a correspondent's troubles do not come from foreign censorship. An
American newsman had cabled over something which did not please one of
our admirals then in London. Meeting that same admiral, I put in a word
for my trip to the naval base, thinking that he might warm up and hurry
things along for me. He warmed up, but on the side away from me. He
recounted the enormous villainy of that newsman, and in conclusion said:
"Perhaps, after all, the best way to do is not to allow you newspaper
men to send a word at all!"
Such an air of finality! He spoke as though he owned the navy; also the
press.
One now and again grows up like that. By taking care not to die, and in
the absence of plucking boards, they rise to be admirals. Then
side-boys, the bosun's pipes, the 13 guns coming over the side--all this
ritual goes to their heads. They get to thinking after a while that the
whole business is a tribute to their genius, or valor, or something or
other personal. Perhaps all this one needed was a little salve; but I
thought it up to some writer to fire a shot across his bows. So I came
back with: "That's all very well, sir, about your not allowing a word to
be sent, but there may be another point of view. There are 110,000,000
people over in our country, and some of them may not look on our navy as
the sole property of its officers. They may want to know what that navy
of theirs is doing over here. And perhaps no harm in telling them--or
some day they may decide to have no navy at all."
Imagination was not his long suit, so he had no card to follow with. But
he did glare.
After two weeks of waiting I got word from my very human London censor
that I might leave for the naval base. I left from Euston Station during
an air-raid. The station had been darkened hours earlier, and it was a
new kind of sport going around that big black place to locate the
cloak-room, and after you got the cloak-room to identify your baggage
from a big tumbled pile.
I lit a cigar, and as I did a policeman jumped me for showing a light.
Stopping to light it under my hat, a tall, able woman, dragging a trunk
by the strap, bowled into me. While we were in our compartments, the
train all made up, there came a banging of barrage guns--bang, bang,
bang--with now and then the boo-oom! of a bomb.
While we were waiting there we heard the crash of shrapnel coming
through the glass roof. By and by another bunch of shrapnel fell with a
fine ringing of metal on the concrete platform alongside the train. No
harm done. The raiders passed, the banging and the booming stopped; but
there was then no driver and stoker for the train. They had gone with
the second load of shrapnel, and we had to wait two hours while they dug
up a new crew.
After three and a half hours of deck-pacing on the steamer, and
twenty-two hours of sitting up straight in third-class wooden seats, I
made the naval base; and late at night though it was, there was a
British naval officer at the hotel to let me know I was to report next
morning to the British admiral in charge.
This admiral had a reputation in London for having no use for newspaper
men. When this staff-officer asked me if I had heard of his admiral
before, I told him what I heard in London. "He eats 'em alive," I was
told by a big London journalist, and I repeated that now, of course
without naming the journalist.
"And what do you think of that?" asked this staff-officer.
"If he tries to eat me alive I hope he chokes," I answered to that. I
figured he would tell his chief that, but there had been so much
boot-licking done by a couple of writers over there that, for the honor
of the craft, I thought somebody ought to have a wallop at these press
crushers once in a while.
This admiral is worth a paragraph, because he was a type. He was a
capable man up to his limitations; a good executive, a devotee to duty;
but he should have lived before printing-presses were invented. Also he,
too, lacked imagination.
He was a man who acted as if priding himself on his brusqueness of
language. He sat at his flat desk like a pagan image, never looked up,
never said aye, no, or go to the devil when I stepped in and wished him
"Good morning!"
I told him what I wanted. I wished to cruise with the American
destroyers in their U-boat operations.
His answer was a No! Bing! No, sir!
"Whoops!" I said to myself. "I've come more than 4,000 miles, with a
fine expense account to _Collier's_, and I'm turned down before I get
going."
I spread before him my credentials--from the department and elsewhere. I
spread before him a letter from Colonel Roosevelt, the same in his own
handwriting. In France I could have lost my passport and yet got along
on that letter. Batteries of inspectors used to sit up and come to life
at the sight of a letter in the colonel's own handwriting.
This man did not turn his head to look at what I might have. All the
credentials in the world were going to have no influence with him. He
repeated his No, putting about seventeen n's in the No!
Then, mildly, I told him that I thought I ought to have something more
than a No; that I should have a reason to go with the No. He intimated
that he didn't have to give reasons unless he wished to.
I asked him why he should not wish to? Was it not right and fair that he
should give a reason? I had come more than 4,000 miles at great expense
to _Collier's_, for one thing. For another--and this more
important--there was an anxiety among Americans to know something of the
doings of our little destroyer flotilla. They had sailed out into the
East, been swallowed up in the mists of the Atlantic--that was the last
we had seen of them. They were the first of our forces to come in
contact with the enemy. Were they doing good work over here, or were
they tied up to a dock in some port and their officers and crews
roistering ashore?
Still he said No.
Then I went on to tell him what I had told our own archaic type of
admiral in London--with additions: that it was possible that we had in
the United States a different idea of the navy from what the British
public held; that in our own country a lot of people held the notion
that the navy was not the property of the officers, not quite so much as
it was the property of the people; and that holding that view, these
same people thought themselves entitled to know what that navy was doing
to back their faith in it. And perhaps it was not the worst policy in
the world to tell them what that navy was doing.
Still he said No.
But why?
Well, for one thing (he was disintegrating a little), in the British
service they did not allow civilians of any kind to go to sea with their
ships in war time. That further--they allowed no reports of their work
at sea to appear in the press.
I pointed out that reports of fine deeds were, nevertheless, appearing
in the press; that from the London dailies of the week past I had made
clippings of such, and if he cared to see them I would show them to him.
"But we allow no civilians to go cruising with ships at sea in war time.
And I will not establish a precedent now."
It was the old fetich--precedent. I thought of judges who used to hang
men on precedent. He surely had what is called the mediaeval mind, with
apologies to that same mediaeval age.
I pointed out that conditions in our country and his were not the same.
That there were hundreds of thousands of officers and men in the British
navy; that those officers and men were regularly ashore on liberty or
leave; that they gossiped, and that hundreds of thousands of officers
and men gossiping could pass the word pretty far, especially in a
country where there was not a single little hamlet more than 40 miles
from tide-water. With us it was different. Our nearest Atlantic port was
3,000 miles from this very naval base; and 3,000 miles farther to the
Pacific coast, with no hundreds of thousands of men on liberty ashore.
If men like myself were not allowed to tell them something, how were
they ever to learn what was doing?