The Last Million: How They Invaded France—and England

CHAPTER THREE
THE LOWER DECK

If you clamber down the accommodation ladder on to the well-deck amidships, you will find yourself in a world which will enable you to contemplate War from yet another angle.

For a guide and director I can confidently recommend Mr. Al Thompson, late of Springfield, Illinois—“No, sir, not Massachusetts!” he will be careful to inform you—now a seasoned ornament of a Trench Mortar Battery.

“We sure are one dandy outfit,” he observes modestly. “Two hundred roughnecks! I’ll make you known to a few. There’s Eddie Gillette: you seen him box last night, out on the forward deck there? Yep? Well, you certainly seen something!”

We certainly had. Boxing is an ideal pastime for a large, virile, and closely packed community, for several reasons. In the first place, it requires very little space. A twelve-foot ring will do: indeed, towards the end of an exciting bout the combatants can—or must—make shift with mere elbow-room. In the second, the novice extracts quite as much exercise and excitement from the sport as the expert—possibly more. Thirdly and most important, boxing fulfils the cardinal principle of providing for the greatest good of the greatest number, because it affords far more undiluted happiness to the spectators than to the performers. Last night, for instance, when Mr. Hank Magraw (weight two hundred pounds), a gladiator mainly conspicuous for unruffled urbanity and entire ignorance of the rules of boxing, growing a trifle restive under the cumulative effect of three consecutive taps upon the point of the chin from an opponent half his size, suddenly gathered that gentleman into his arms and endeavoured to stuff him down one of those trumpet-mouthed ventilators which lead to the stokehold, the spectators voiced their appreciation by a vociferous encore.

A wonderful sight these spectators are. They are banked up all around the well-deck, forming a deep pit, in the bottom of which two boxers gyrate, clash, and recoil like nutshells in a whirlpool. Tier upon tier they rise—with their long, lean, American bodies, and tense, brown, American faces—seated in concentric circles on the deck itself, perched on hatches and deck-houses and sky-lights, clinging to davits and ventilators, or hanging in clusters from the rigging—all yelling themselves hoarse.

The “announcer”—one Buck Stamper—stands for the moment at the bottom of the vortex. With each of his muscular arms he encircles the shrinking figure of a competitor, and introduces the pair to the audience.

“Boys,” he bellows, in a voice which must be easily audible in the surrounding transports, “one of the English officers up there has come across with—with—a ten-shilling certificate”—he releases one of his protégés in order to display a pink-and-white British treasury note—“to be awarded to the winner of this bout.”

There is a little polite applause. Then a stentorian voice enquires:

“How much is that—in money?”

There is a great roar of laughter. The announcer retires, to seek an expert financier. A British marine enlightens him, and he announces:

“’Bout two dollars-and-a-half. On my right I have Ikey Zingbaum, of the Field Ambulance—”

The immediate conjunction of Ikey Zingbaum and two-and-a-half dollars appeals to the crowd’s sense of humour. When they have recovered, Buck Stamper proceeds:

“On my left”—he thrusts forward a smooth-chinned, pink-cheeked, lusty, country lad—“Miss Sissy Smithers, what has got in among the boys by mistake!”

Amid yells of delight the blushing Sissy shakes hands with his tallow-faced opponent, and falls promptly upon his neck. The pair, locked in a complicated embrace, circle slowly round the ring, feebly patting one another on the back. At the urgent suggestion of the spectators the referee separates them, caustically observing that this is a fight and not a fox-trot. For a short time they stand uneasily apart; then Ikey Zingbaum, stimulated possibly by his supporters’ constant references to the ten-shilling certificate, leans suddenly forward and boxes his opponent’s ears. Miss Sissy, stung into indignant activity, lunges out with all his strength and counters fairly and squarely in the pit of Ikey’s stomach. Mr. Zingbaum shuts up like a footrule, and shoots stern-foremost into the thick of the audience. He is extracted amid shouts of laughter, groaning horribly, and receives first aid from a dozen willing but inexperienced hands. Presently he recovers sufficiently far to be informed that he has been awarded the match—on a foul. Miss Sissy, not ill-pleased with himself, modestly disappears.

“Yes,” continued Al Thompson, “you seen something. Was you there when Eddie Gillette fit that duck what we call Coca-Kola? No? I’m sorry. Coca-Kola’s a Turk. Comes from Turkey, I mean. Las’ winter, when he was fighting around the Bowery, he would eat raw meat whenever he could get it. Said it kept him kinder fit. Anyway, he was put up las’ night against Eddie Gillette. We picked on Ed because he was the best man in the Trench Mortar Section, and Coca-Kola had been winning out all the time for the Machine Gunners, where he belonged, and they was blowing some. Ed was giving away more than seventeen pounds of weight, besides which the Turk was the sort of guy that if he was short of money he would go up to a person an’ say: ‘You give me two bits and I’ll let you hit me on the jaw any place you like!’ That was the kind of lobster Coca-Kola was, and gives you some sort of an idea what Ed was up against!

“The match was to be ten rounds of two minutes each. There was five dollars donated by an officer for the winner, and some powerful side-bets. But it was all over in one round. Eddie started by rushing in and giving the Turk a silly little tap on the nose. That seemed to get the Turk’s goat, for he went for Eddie like a cyclone, and rushed him all around the ring for maybe a minute. At the end of that he gave him a blow on the body that laid him flat on the deck. We all thought Eddie was gone for sure. The time-keeper had counted up to five before he come to life at all. Then he began to recover, very slow. At ‘seven’ he rolled over on his face. The Turk, reckoning that Eddie was too dopy to go on any more, just straddled around in the middle of the ring, looking up to the deck above for the officer that was donating the five bucks. But at ‘nine’ Eddie was on his feet again, like a streak. No one hardly saw him get up. All they did see was Eddie soak the Turk under the point of the jaw—which was well up in the air at the time. Coca-Kola fairly knocked a groan out of the deck when he struck it. It took them two hours to bring him round. Gee, but it was some soak! Some of the Machine Gun boys cut open Eddie’s glove after, because they suspicioned he might have a chunk of lead there. But there weren’t nothing there. No, sir! Nothing but Eddie’s little old punch!”

We are presented both to the victorious Eddie and the dethroned masticator of raw meat. The latter is inclined to be taciturn; but the former, true to national use and custom, is quite ready to be interviewed.

Yes, this is his first trip across, but he is not seasick, and does not expect to be. Reason; he has spent twelve years on the Great Lakes, and a man that can stand the up-and-down convulsions of, say, Lake Michigan during a winter storm, need not fear the spacious roll of the Atlantic.

“There’s a ten-thousand-ton ship has went down there before now,” says Eddie, referring apparently to Lake Michigan, “just because them twisty seas has sheered the heads clean off her bolts and opened her up. Kinder ripped her, I guess. Every October owners raises the pay of all hands on them ships fifteen per cent—raises it voluntary.”

“Why?”

“Because the whole bunch would quit if they didn’t!”

This does not sound like a very convincing example of the voluntary system; but the great are permitted to be inconsistent. Mr. Gillette, proceeding, considers that life on board this ship is tolerable, but the food monotonous. Another gentleman, chewing tobacco, now joins the symposium. He is introduced as Joe McCarthy, of Oklahoma.

“You said it!” he announces, referring apparently to the food question. “Especially the coffee. The stuff they serve on board this packet ain’t got no kick to it.”

He is reminded that he has passed out of the coffee belt, and that he is approaching a land of tea-drinkers.

“Tea or coffee,” he rejoins, with the dogged persistence of the professional grumbler, “it don’t make no difference to me. And another thing. This yer travelling by sea is a lonesome business. Give me a railroad! There you can look out of the window of the car and see folks waving their hands to you; and presents of candy at the deepo, and everything. While this”—he flings a disparaging glance over the heaving Atlantic—“this is all the same, all the time!”

“Well, Joe,” explains the fair-minded Al Thompson, “I guess we got to travel to Europe this way, seeing there ain’t no railroad across—leastways not at present.”

But Mr. McCarthy refuses to be comforted.

“Europe!” he exclaims. “There y’ are! Europe—four thousand miles from America! Some folks must be darned anxious for war, if they got to send us four thousand miles to find it!”

This last sentiment produces a distinct sensation. It is adjudged by those who hear it to border on pro-Germanism. Heads turn sharply in Joe’s direction. A certain licence is permitted to professional grouchers; but “knocking” the Cause is the one thing that the New Crusaders will not permit.

That simple-hearted American, Al Thompson, conveys the necessary reproof, in a manner which more highly-placed diplomatists might envy.

“Listen, Joe,” he remarks: “that stuff don’t go here. I know you been mighty seasick, and you’re sore on the food, and the monotony, and the other little glooms that come around on a slow trip like this. But whenever I git sore on things just now, like we all do, I just remember them dirty bums over there marching through Belgium with little babies on their bayonets; and then—well, all I care about is getting over there and killing any guy that calls himself a Dutchman. Let me kill a few of them first—and, even if they kill me after, I should worry!”

CHAPTER FOUR
THE DANGER ZONE

There are many other types on board. Here is one at your elbow. He is a sentry, on Number Nine post. His duties appear to be confined to scrutinizing the ocean for periscopes. This is not a very arduous task, for we are not in the danger zone at present. Indeed, a good deal of this sentry’s time appears to be spent in gazing over the taffrail towards the setting sun—towards America. Possibly he ought to be straining his eyes towards France. But we are all human, especially the American soldier boy, and this boy is unaffectedly and avowedly homesick. Jim Cleaver’s thoughts at the present moment are nowhere near Number Nine post; they are centred upon a little township called Potsdam, far away. This sounds good and blood-thirsty: unfortunately this particular Potsdam is not in Prussia, but “way up” somewhere in the State of New York; and Jim’s imagination is concerned less with the House of Hohenzollern than with the House of Cleaver—particularly the feminine portion thereof. Moreover, it happens to be Sunday evening; and we all know what that means.

At the other corner of the deck stands Antonio. That is not his real name, but no matter. He will inform you that he has already crossed the ocean—once. A brief exercise in mental arithmetic will presently cause you to realize that Antonio cannot have been born in America. This is so. He crossed over ten years ago, in the steerage of an Austrian Lloyd liner, outward bound from Trieste, on his way from the sunny but unremunerative plains of Lombardy, in search of a mysterious Eldorado called Harlem, New York. And now here he is, aged twenty-six, picked out by the groping hand of the Selective Draft, on his way back again, to help rend those same plains (among others) from the Hun and restore them to their rightful owners. He is quite cheerful at the prospect, though he would sooner be with the Italian Army than with the American. Not that he is lacking in patriotism towards the land of his adoption, but—

“I gotta two brother over there,” he explains. “Besides, here I gotta talka da Ingleese. Alla same, I feela fine!”

Antonio is not the only man who is going back with a personal interest in 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.

In fact, we have begun to realize this already. They are not communicative, the people we meet here. They talk little of the War, except possibly to belittle their own conduct thereof or disparage their own leaders; but we are dimly conscious that England is not making a display of company manners at present. Her luxurious private parks are scarred by horse-lines; her golf-courses are growing potatoes. Her great country-houses, badly in need of paint and plaster, are flying Red Cross flags, and convalescent soldiers in hospital blue lounge upon balustraded terraces where peacocks were wont to strut. Her automobiles appear to have enlisted in the Army: they wear a businesslike uniform of grey paint, and are driven by attractive young women in khaki. Every one appears to wear a uniform of some kind—certainly no one wears mourning—and all seem too busy to worry about ceremony.

When we arrived in this town, after our long cross-country journey from our landing port, we were conscious of a pleasant feeling of anticipation. We thought of the folk who had seen us off at home—cramming the railway stations, cheering, waving, weeping—and though we naturally did not expect such a demonstration, we did expect something. Well, it did not turn out that way. We arrived almost furtively, in the dead of night, in a station where one gas-lamp in six was burning. We were warned to fall in quietly, and to refrain from noise as we marched through the town.

“Not a very overwhelming display of cordiality, I’m afraid,” said Major Floyd; “but we are up against official secrets again. A lady called Dora:[1] you will become well acquainted with her. It is not officially known to any one—except the Boche, of course—that this is an American Rest Depot, so we are concealing the fact from the inhabitants. The streets are a bit dark, I’m afraid; but we are precious short of coal—supplying France and Italy as well as ourselves—and that hits our lighting arrangements rather hard. Besides, we have the Gothas to think of. Are your men ready to move off, Colonel? Very good: I’ll lead the way. You will notice our solitary attempt at the glad-hand business just outside the station.”

The “solitary attempt” proved to be a discreetly illuminated notice spanning the street on the façade of an arch. It said: WELCOME, AMERICA!

As an emotional outburst the greeting was perhaps open to criticism on the score of reticence; but to some of us, who knew our stiff, angular, inarticulate England better than others, there was something rather moving about the whole idea.

We tramped under the sign. Those who had the fancy to turn and look up at the other face of the arch found another notice: GOD-SPEED!

“‘God-speed’! That’s a bit sudden,” observed a young machine-gunner to a grizzled English sergeant who was acting as assistant shepherd. “We’ve hardly arrived yet.”

“That ain’t meant for you, my lad,” replied the veteran. “You ain’t supposed to read that—yet. That’s for another lot of your boys what are starting off to-night for France. You’ll likely meet ’em coming down the ’ill as you goes up.”

We did. And when the event took place—when the two bands of tramping American exiles brushed hands for a moment in the soft summer darkness of a strange land—I fear there was some transgression of official regulations on the subject of silent and secret night marching. But, after all, there are limits to human virtue.

Yes, everybody here appears decidedly busy—especially the women. That shrewd observer of humanity, Al Thompson, does not fail to remark upon the fact in a letter to his wife:

But the Islanders are not too busy to make an attempt to entertain us. Some of these attempts are rather formidable. To boys like Second Lieutenant Sam Richards and his crony Jim Hollis, in whose pleasant little home town far west of the Alleghenies every one knows every one else, and young men and maidens usually exchange invitations over the telephone (which instrument is practically unknown in English rural districts), and that awful shibboleth of English society, the language of the third person, is happily extinct, it is a little alarming to find upon the bulletin-board in the Mess a stiff square of white pasteboard bearing the legend: