A block or so from the store we ran across two Chinks who had been naughty. Each was in a stock, a pasteboard affair on which was inscribed, in Chinese, the nature of his offense. One of them had been guilty of drinking water out of a fire bucket. The other had drunk something else out of a bottle—drunk too much of it, in fact. They looked utterly wretched, and our guide told us the punishment was the most severe that could be given: that a Chinaman’s pride was his most vulnerable spot.
The gent who had quenched his thirst from the fire bucket was sentenced to wear his stock a whole day. He of the stew was on the last lap of a week’s term.
We talked with one of the Lee family through an interpreter. We asked him if he knew that the United States was in the war against Germany. He replied, No, but he had heard that France was.
Just before we left the settlement a British plane flew over it. A Chink who was walking with us evidently mistook it for a Hun machine, for he looked up and said: “Bloody boche!”
From Chinatown we were driven to the American Visitors’ Château, where gentlemen and correspondents from the United States are entertained. It’s a real château, with a moat and everything. The major is our host. The major has seen most of his service in India and China.
He said he was glad to meet us, which I doubt. The new arrivals, Mr. Gibbons, the Harvard professor and myself, were shown our rooms and informed that dinner would occur at eight o’clock. Before dinner we were plied with cocktails made by our friend, the captain. The ingredients, I believe, were ether, arsenic and carbolic acid in quantities not quite sufficient to cause death.
Eleven of us gathered around the festal board. There were the major and his aids, three British captains, one with a monocle. There was the Harvard professor, and the head of a certain American philanthropical organization, and his secretary. And then there were us, me and Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O’Flaherty and Mr. Somner, upstarts in the so-called journalistic world.
The dinner was over the eighteen-course course, the majority of the courses being liquid. I wanted to smoke between the fish and the sherry, but Mr. O’Flaherty whispered to me that it wasn’t done till the port had been served.
Mention was made of the Chinese camp, and there ensued a linguistic battle between the major and the Harvard professor. The latter explained the theory of the Chinese language. He made it as clear as mud. In the Chinese language, he said, every letter was a word, and the basis of every word was a picture. For example, if you wanted to say “my brother,” you drew a picture of your brother in your mind and then expressed it in a word, such as woof or whang. If you wanted a cigar, you thought of smoke and said “puff” or “blow,” but you said it in Chinese.
Mr. Gibbons broke up the battle of China by asking the major whether I might not be allowed to accompany him and Mr. O’Flaherty and one of the captains on their perilous venture tomorrow night. They are going to spend the night in a Canadian first-line trench.
“I’m sorry,” said the major, “but the arrangement has been made for only three.”
I choked back tears of disappointment.
The major has wished on me for tomorrow a trip through the reconquered territory. My companions are to be the captain with the monocle, the Harvard professor, the philanthropist, and the philanthropist’s secretary. We are to start off at eight o’clock. Perhaps I can manage to oversleep.
Thursday, September 6. With the British.
I did manage it, and the car had left when I got downstairs. Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O’Flaherty were still here, and the three of us made another effort to get me invited to the party tonight. The major wouldn’t fall for it.
Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O’Flaherty motored to an artillery school, the understanding being that they were to be met at six this evening by one of our captains and taken to the trench. I was left here alone with the major.
We lunched together, and he called my attention to the mural decorations in the dining-room. It’s a rural mural, and in the foreground a young lady is milking a cow. She is twice as big as the cow and is seated in the longitude of the cow’s head. She reaches her objective with arms that would make Jess Willard jealous. In another area a lamb is conversing with its father and a couple of squirrels which are larger than either lamb or parent. In the lower right-hand corner is an ox with its tongue in a tin can, and the can is labeled Ox Tongue for fear someone wouldn’t see the point. Other figures in the pictures are dogs, foxes and chickens of remarkable size and hue.
“We had a French painter here a few days ago,” said the major. “I purposely seated him where he could look at this picture. He took one look, then asked me to change his seat.”
The major inquired whether I had noticed the picture of the château which decorates the doors of our automobiles.
“When you go out tomorrow,” he said, “you’ll observe that none of the army cars is without its symbol. An artillery car has its picture of a gun. Then there are different symbols for the different divisions. I saw one the other day with three interrogation marks
