They have queer ideas at the Maison de la Presse, which is the French equivalent for our publicity bureau. They receive you cordially there and treat you just as if you were not dregs.
I jumped thither after a futile visit to our own headquarters. I said I would like to go to the French front.
“Certainly,” replied the man in charge. “Whenever is convenient for you, we’ll see that you get a trip.”
So I told him when it would be convenient and he’s going to see me through. I hear that the British are similarly peculiar. They are polite even to newspaper men and magazine writers. They might even speak to a cartoonist.
Returning to our side of the Seine, I bumped into some Australians, here on leave. One had been in Germany before the war and could speak and understand the “schoenste language.”
“They use me as an interpreter,” he said. “When they bring in a bloody boche prisoner, I talk to him. First we give him a real meal, maybe bacon and eggs and coffee, something he hasn’t seen for months. Then I ask him where he came from and how he got here. Most of them are glad to tell me the truth. Those that do, I mark them down as ‘Very intelligent.’ Those that volunteer information I record as ‘Extremely intelligent.’ Those that say ‘Nicht verstehe’ go down in the record as ‘Not intelligent.’ But the majority are so bloody well glad to be out of the war that they talk freely.
“I asked one Heinie if he was going to try to escape. ‘Not me,’ he said, ‘I’m tickled to be here.’ They’re all fed up on the war. You’d be too with three years of it.”
This young man admitted that he was one of the best football players in Australia. “Maybe I’ve forgotten how now,” he said. “I’ve been over here three years. Just think of it—I traveled twelve thousand miles, or maybe it’s kilos, to mix up in this.”
Baseball, he told me, had taken a strong hold on Australia.
“I don’t hit well,” he said, “but I can catch what you call flies! I can catch the widest flies that are knocked.”
Which gift would probably be useless in America, where most of the flies knocked are bloody narrow.
Before I left him I learned also that Les Darcy was all right at heart, but that the professional “sports” spoiled him, and that he could have “knocked Jack Johnson, Stanley Ketchel, Billy Papke or Jess Willard clean out of the ring.”
He is going back to the trenches tonight, and I hope there are plenty of extremely intelligent Heinies there to keep him busy interpreting till his next leave. Interpreting, I should think, would be much pleasanter than going over the top.
Tuesday, August 21.
This time it was an American of the French Ambulance Service.
“Say, listen,” he said. “I can give you some mighty good stories. Real stuff, do you get me? Listen: One night there was a boche wounded out there and I brought him in. He had one leg all shot to pieces and we had to operate. I was going to give him the ether when he turned over and looked me in the face. ‘Why, Dan,’ he said, ‘aren’t you going to speak to me?’ It was a chap I’d gone to school with in America. I could give you lots of stuff like that; do you get me? I used to be in New York, and Rube Goldberg used to call me up out of bed at six in the morning. ‘Dan,’ he’d say to me, ‘I’m up against it for an idea. Will you give me an idea?’ Do you get me? And there’s a dramatic critic in New York—I won’t tell you his name—but he used to tag around me after a first night and ask me what I thought of the show. Do you get me? I can give you a lot of good stuff.”
I told him I was afraid that if he gave it to me all at once I wouldn’t remember any of it. So he is coming to my hotel every day during his leave, to give me a little at a time—if he can find me.
Last night a good-hearted American officer took me to dinner at La Tour d’Argent, which is said to be the oldest restaurant in Paris and which, they say, is the place the Kaiser was going to have his banquet on a certain night three years ago if Gott hadn’t gone back on him at the last moment.
We ordered duck, the restaurant’s specialty. They cook it in your presence, slice off whatever is sliceable, and then put the bird in a press and give you the result as gravy. After the meal they hand you a post card on which is inscribed le numéro de votre canard. I looked up “canard” in my dictionary and found that it meant a drake, or false news, or a worthless newspaper. I have heard lots of false news, but I know no one took the trouble to count the items. Also I know that my newspaper is neither worthless nor numbered. So canard in this case must mean drake. The number of mine was 41654. If he had happened to disagree with me, I could have taken his number and traced him to the source. It’s a very good idea and might be used in America on eggs or drinks.
I made another trip to the office which is supposed to be in charge of American correspondents and accommodations for them. I will go there again tomorrow and again the next day.
