1919 (19 page)

“Les avions . . . les boches . . .” she heard people saying in unstartled tones. She found herself standing at the curb staring up into the milky sky that was fast becoming rayed with searchlights. Next to her was a fatherlylooking French officer with all kinds of lace on his kepi and drooping moustaches. The sky overhead began to sparkle like with mica; it was beautiful and far away like fireworks seen across the lake on the Fourth. Involuntarily she said aloud, “What's that?” “C'est le shrapnel, mademoiselle. It is ourr ahnt-aircrahft cannons,” he said carefully in English, and then gave her his arm and offered to take her home. She noticed that he smelt rather strongly of cognac but he was very nice and paternal in his manner and made funny gestures of things coming down on their heads and said they must get under cover. She said please to go to the hôtel du Quai Voltaire as she'd lost her way.

“Ah charmant, charmant,” said the elderly French officer. While they had stood there talking everybody else on the street had melted out of sight. Guns were barking in every direction now. They were going down through the narrow streets again, keeping close to the wall. Once her pulled her suddenly into a doorway and something landed whang on the pavement opposite. “It is the fragments of shrapnel, not good,” he said, tapping himself on the top of the kepi. He laughed and Eveline laughed and they got along famously. They had come out on the riverbank. It seemed safe for some reason under the thickfoliaged trees. From the door of the hotel he suddenly pointed to the sky, “Look, c'est les fokkers, ils's'en fichent de nous.” As he spoke the Boche planes wheeled overhead so that their wings caught the moonlight. For a second they were like seven tiny silver dragonflies, then they'd vanished. At the same moment came the rending snort of a bomb from somewhere across the river. “Permettez, mademoiselle.” They went into the pitchblack hall of the hotel and felt their way down into the cellar. As he handed Eveline down the last step of the dusty wooden stairs the officer gravely saluted the mixed group of people in bathrobes or overcoats over their nightclothes who were grouped around a couple of candles. There was a waiter there and the officer tried to order a drink, but the waiter said, “Ah, mon colonel, s'est defendu,” and the colonel made a wry face. Eveline sat up on a sort of table. She was so excited looking at the people and listening to the distant snort of the bombs that she hardly noticed that colonel was squeezing her knee a little more than was necessary. The colonel's hands became a problem. When the airraid was over something went by on the street making a funny seesaw noise between the quacking of a duck and a burro's bray. It struck Eveline so funny she laughed and laughed so that the colonel didn't seem to know what to make of her. When she tried to say goodnight to him to go up to her room and get some sleep, he wanted to go up too. She didn't know what to do. He'd been so nice and polite she didn't want to be rude to him, but she couldn't seem to make him understand that she wanted to go to bed and to sleep; he'd answer that so did he. When she tried to explain that she had a friend with her, he asked if the friend was as charming as mademoiselle, in that case he'd be delighted. Eveline's French broke down entirely. She wished to heavens Miss Felton would turn up, she couldn't make the concièrge understand that she wanted the key to her room and that mon colonel wasn't coming up and was ready to break down and cry when a young American in civilian clothes with a red face and a turnedup nose appeared from somewhere out of the shadows and said with a flourish in very bad French, “Monsieur, moi frère de madmosel, can't you see that the little girl is fatiguee and wants to say bon-soir?” He linked his arm in the colonel's and said, “Vive la France. . . . Come up to my room and have a drink.” The colonel drew himself up and looked very angry. Without waiting to see what happened Eveline ran up the stairs to her room, rushed in and doublelocked the door.

it is difficult to realize the colossal scale upon which Europe will have to borrow in order to make good the destruction of war

 

BAGS 28 HUNS SINGLEHANDED

 

Peace Talk Beginning To Have Its Effect On Southern Iron Market

 

LOCAL BOY CAPTURES OFFICER

 

ONE THIRD WAR ALLOTMENTS FRAUDULENT

 

There are smiles that make us happy

There are smiles that make us blue

 

again let us examine into the matter of rates; let it be assumed that the United States is operating fleets aggregating 3000 freight and passenger vessels between U.S. and foreign ports

 

GANG LEADER SLAIN IN STREET

 

There are smiles that wipe away the teardrops

Like the sunbeams dry away the dew

There are smiles that have a tender meaning

That the eyes of love alone can see

 

SOLDIER VOTE CARRIED ELECTION

 

suppose now that into this delicate medium of economic law there is thrust the controlling factor of an owner of a third of the world's tonnage, who regards with equanimity both profit and loss, who does not count as a factor in the cost of operation the interest on capital investment, who builds vessels whether they may be profitably operated or not and who charges rates commensurate in no certain measure with the laws of supply and demand; how long would it be before the ocean transport of the whole world had broken down completely?

 

CROWN PRINCE ON THE RUN

 

But the smiles that fill my heart with sunshine

                   
Are

                             
the

                                  
smiles

                                            
you

                                                      
give

                                                                
to

                                                                          
me

 

persistent talk of peace is an unsettling factor and the epidemic of influenza has deterred country buyers from visiting the larger centers

à quatorze heures precisement the Boche diurnally shelled that bridge with their wellknown precision as to time and place      à quatorze heures precisement Dick Norton with his monocle in his eye lined up his section at a little distance from the bridge to turn it over to the American Red Cross

the Red Cross majors looked pudgy and white under their new uniforms in their shined Sam Browne belts in their shined tight leather puttees      so this was overseas

so this was the front      well      well

Dick Norton adjusted his monocle and began to talk about how as gentlemen volunteers he had signed us up and as gentlemen volunteers he bade us farewell      Wham the first arrivé the smell of almonds the sunday feeling of no traffic on the road not a poilu in sight      Dick Norton adjusted his monocle      the Red Cross majors felt the showering mud      sniffed the lyddite      swift whiff of latrines and of huddled troops

Wham Wham Wham like the Fourth of July      the shellfragments sing our ears ring

the bridge is standing and Dick Norton adjusting his monocle is standing talking at length about gentlemen volunteers and ambulance service and la belle France

 

The empty staffcar is standing

but where are the majors taking over command

who were to make a speech in the name of the Red Cross? The slowest and pudgiest and whitest of the majors is still to be seen on his hands and knees with mud all over his puttees crawling into the abris and that's the last we saw of the Red Cross Majors

and the last we heard of gentlemen

or volunteers

The Roosevelts had lived for seven righteous generations on Manhattan Island; they owned a big brick house on 20th Street, an estate up at Dobbs Ferry, lots in the city, a pew in the Dutch Reformed Church, interests, stocks and bonds, they felt Manhattan was theirs, they felt America was theirs. Their son,

Theodore,

was a sickly youngster, suffered from asthma, was very nearsighted; his hands and feet were so small it was hard for him to learn to box; his arms were very short;

his father was something of a humanitarian, gave Christmas dinners to newsboys, deplored conditions, slums the East Side, Hell's Kitchen.

Young Theodore had ponies, was encouraged to walk in the woods, to go camping, was instructed in boxing and fencing (an American gentleman should know how to defend himself) taught Bible Class, did mission work (an American gentleman should do his best to uplift those not so fortunately situated);

righteousness was his by birth;

he had a passion for nature study, for reading about birds and wild animals, for going hunting; he got to be a good shot in spite of his glasses, a good walker in spite of his tiny feet and short legs, a fair horseman, an aggressive scrapper in spite of his short reach, a crack politician in spite of being the son of one of the owning Dutch families of New York.

In 1876 he went up to Cambridge to study at Harvard, a wealthy talkative erratic young man with sidewhiskers and definite ideas about everything under the sun.

at Harvard he drove around in a dogcart, collected stuffed birds, mounted specimens he'd shot on his trips in the Adirondacks; in spite of not drinking and being somewhat of a christer, having odd ideas about reform and remedying abuses, he made Porcellian and the Dickey and the clubs that were his right as the son of one of the owning Dutch families of New York.

He told his friends he was going to devote his life to social service:
I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife.

 

From the time he was eleven years old he wrote copiously, filled diaries, notebooks, loose leaves with a big impulsive scrawl about everything he did and thought and said;

naturally he studied law.

He married young and went to Switzerland to climb the Matterhorn; his first wife's early death broke him all up. He went out to the badlands of western Dakota to become a rancher on the Little Missouri River;

when he came back to Manhattan he was Teddy, the straight shooter from the west, the elkhunter, the man in the Stetson hat, who'd roped steers, fought a grizzly hand to hand, acted as Deputy Sheriff,

(a Roosevelt has a duty to his country; the duty of a Roosevelt is to uplift those not so fortunately situated, those who have come more recently to our shores)

in the west, Deputy Sheriff Roosevelt felt the white man's burden, helped to arrest malefactors, bad men; service was bully.

All this time he'd been writing, filling the magazines with stories of his hunts and adventures, filling political meetings with his opinions, his denunciations, his pat phrases: Strenuous Life, Realizable Ideals, Just Government,
when men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom, and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and highminded.

T.R. married a wealthy woman and righteously raised a family at Sagamore Hill.

He served a term in the New York Legislature, was appointed by Grover Cleveland to the unremunerative job of Commissioner for Civil Service Reform,

was Reform Police Commissioner of New York, pursued malefactors, stoutly maintained that white was white and black was black,

wrote the Naval History of the War of 1812,

was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy,

and when the
Maine
blew up resigned to lead the Rough Riders,

Lieutenant-Colonel.

This was the Rubicon, the Fight, the Old Glory, the Just Cause. The American public was not kept in ignorance of the Colonel's bravery when the bullets sang, how he charged without his men up San Juan Hill and had to go back to fetch them, how he shot a running Spaniard in the tail.

It was too bad that the regulars had gotten up San Juan Hill first from the other side, that there was no need to get up San Juan Hill at all. Santiago was surrendered. It was a successful campaign. T.R. charged up San Juan Hill into the governorship of the Empire State;

but after the fighting, volunteers warcorrespondents magazine-writers began to want to go home;

it wasn't bully huddling under puptents in the tropical rain or scorching in the morning sun of the seared Cuban hills with malaria mowing them down and dysentery and always yellowjack to be afraid of.

T.R. got up a round robin to the President and asked for the amateur warriors to be sent home and leave the dirtywork to the regulars

who were digging trenches and shovelling crap and fighting malaria and dysentery and yellowjack

to make Cuba cosy for the Sugar Trust

and the National City Bank.

 

When he landed at home, one of his first interviews was with Lemuel Quigg, emissary of Boss Platt who had the votes of upstate New York sewed into the lining of his vest;

he saw Boss Platt too, but he forgot about that afterwards. Things were bully. He wrote a life of Oliver Cromwell whom people said he resembled. As Governor he doublecrossed the Platt machine (a righteous man may have a short memory); Boss Platt thought he'd shelved him by nominating him for the Vice-Presidency in 1900;