I can’t remember all we said, and anyway I’m afraid I have bored you with this long letter, but I thought you might be amused with his chatter. These newspaper men do get around and see life, I suppose, and their conversation is so breezy one can’t help enjoying them for a while, though I suppose too much of it would prove tedious.
Well, Grandfather, goodbye for this time, and I hope the warm weather agrees with you. Mother would send love if she were here.
Washington, DC, June 2.
Dear Grandfather:
Well, Grandfather, salute your grandson, Captain Barnes. For that is what I am, Grandfather, and have been since this morning. Congressman Shultz made good his promise, and early this week got me placed in the Sleuth Department with the title of captain. It’s a pretty ticklish assignment, for I have to do all sorts of detective work, such as shadowing, eavesdropping, etc., and report to headquarters anything I learn which might lead to the apprehension of German propagandists and spies. But the more danger there is, why, the more excitement, and the better I will like it. Moreover a man must expect to put himself in constant peril at a time like this, and if I can discover one plot in time to frustrate it, I will not care what is done to me in the way of vengeance. I will feel that my life has not been wasted in that case.
My one regret is that Father could not have lived to see me “make good.”
But just think, Grandfather, here I am, only twenty-one and a captain, while you were only a sergeant at the end of the Civil War after being in it almost from the time it began. Of course I don’t mean that seriously, and I wouldn’t say anything to hurt you for the world, and I realize that conditions were different then. I also realize that you did not have the same advantage of an education which I have had, which is a big advantage after all. But doesn’t it seem queer when you think of it?
Mother wired that she was glad I had made good, but warned me not to take any foolish risks. Isn’t that just like a woman, to imagine a man would stop to consider risks if there was important work at hand, no matter how ticklish it might be?
My duties, of course, will keep me fairly busy, but at that my time will be practically my own. I am to report at headquarters every morning at ten, and if there is any particular assignment for the day, they will give it to me. If not, I am just to drop in at the cafés and pick up, without seeming to, any information that I think valuable. I go to work tomorrow and will soon let you know how I am getting along.
Well, Grandfather, I won’t ask you to congratulate me in writing or by telegraph, for I know how you dislike to bother with things like that. But I know you are proud of me and I will try to make you even prouder by doing “something big” and perhaps rising to a higher rank.
Washington, DC, June 11.
Dear Grandfather:
Well, Grandfather, I have been in the service nearly a week now and have not turned up anything big yet, though I have enjoyed a few thrills, and I think the Department is working on a couple of the tips I turned in.
Well, then, Sunday night I was at dinner in the Willard and at the next table I noticed two men who looked very German. They had blond mustaches and everything. To throw them off the track, I pretended I was reading a newspaper, but you can bet I was listening to every word they had to say. Well, pretty soon I heard one of them make the remark that General Foch certainly had a job on his hands, and it wouldn’t have sounded so bad if he had not pronounced the name with the guttural German “ch,” but that was a giveaway. I couldn’t catch just what the other replied, and I was afraid to take any chances of their getting through and leaving before I knew who they were; so I got up and went to the head waiter and asked him quietly if he knew them. He said he didn’t; and while I was talking to him, one of them looked up and saw me staring at him, and he turned away as if he were afraid of being recognized. So I saw there was nothing more to do about it that night, and I merely wrote out a careful description of both men and put down what I had heard.
The other wasn’t quite as positive or exciting. It happened yesterday forenoon. I was walking past the White House grounds on the State Department side, and two strangers were walking ahead of me, and of course their backs were turned and I couldn’t see what they looked like, so I hurried up to get ahead of them so I could turn around and look at their faces. Well, just as I was passing them, one of them said: “Well, I suppose that’s a swell place to live, but I wouldn’t trade jobs with old W. W. for all the White Houses in the world.”
He couldn’t have meant anyone else but Woodrow Wilson when he said “W. W.” under those circumstances, and especially when he mentioned the White House in the same breath; so I went on and then turned around and took a long look at both of them so I could describe them at the Department. Of course the remark might have been innocent, and he might have meant the
