The Defenders of Democracy

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Conscious that she had taken the basest advantage of my sympathy,
and glad that she had done so I went to dejeuner with a feeling
that I had deserved it which I might not otherwise have enjoyed.
We were lunching at the restaurant on the Seine which felt for
a short time the upheaval of war. Among the first called to the
front had been the proprietor, and the august deputies whose custom
it was to take their midday meal at this famous eating place had
suffered from an unevenness of the cuisine. He is back at his
establishment now, an ammunition maker on the night shift and the
excellent and watchful patron at noon.

Our guests came promptly, for France still eats, although, if I can
say anything so anomalous, does not stop to do so. The war talk
continues albeit one carries it more lightly through a meal. A
French officer arrived in the only automobile of his garage which
the government had not commandeered. We looked down upon it stealthily
that we might not give offense to his chauffeur, for the car is a
Panhard in the last of its teens--which holds no terrors to a woman
but is a gloomy age for a motor. An American architect from our
Clearing House bowed over my hand a little more Gallic in these
days than the Gaul himself. He has a right to the manners of the
country. He had come over at the beginning of the war for a month
and is determined to stick it out if he never builds another railway
station. "To see the troops march through the Arc de Triomphe!" is
the cry of the Americans, but the French do not express themselves
so dramatically.

There is drama enough, though, even in the filing of papers at
every American relief society. That and the new sensation of work
serves to hold the dilettante of our country to his long task.
"This is the president's office," you will be told in a hushed voice
outside some stately door. Then one discovers in Mr. President
a playmate of Mayfair or Monte Carlo or Taormina who may never
previously have used a desk except as a support for the signing of
checks.

Our friend had been engaged that morning upon the re-ticketing of
the Lafayette Kits which had come back from the front because there
was no longer a Gaspard to receive them. I put this down that
any young girl of our country who does not hear from "her soldier"
may understand the silence. And sometimes the poilu is a little
confused, writing a charming letter of thanks to "Monsieur Lafayette"
himself.

A man takes coffee at dejeuner but finishes his cigar en route
to work. We were at the edge of Paris before the Illustrator had
thrown his away. We were not in the car of ancient lineage but in
that relic of other days a real automobile without the great white
letters of the army upon its sides and bonnet. Yet we were going
into the heart of the Army. We would not be among the derelicts
of battle that afternoon but with men sound of mind and body, and
the thought was grateful that there would be nothing to anguish
over. We were to visit two cantonments, rough barracks, in one of
which the men gathered after their "permission" for a re-equipment;
while at the second one were those soldiers who had become
separated from their regiments, and who were sent there until the
companies--if they existed--could be found, and the "isolated"
again dispatched to the front.

I had anticipated a very relieving afternoon. The sun shone, the
long road led to open country, and many circling aeroplanes over
an aviation field nearby gave the air of a fete. Only the uniforms
of the English and American women who are attached to each of these
many cantonments suggested any necessitous combating of the grim
reaper.

Yet they are not nurses of the body but of the spirit. From modest
little vine covered sheds erected in each ugly open space they
disperse good cheer augmented by coffee and cigarettes (and such
small comforts as we Americans send them) after the regulation army
rations are served by the commissary. They hear the men's stores,
comfort the unhappy ones, chaff the gloomy ones, and when they have
a moment's breathing space write letters to such of those as have
asked for a correspondent.

One of these women--an American--was intent upon this occupation
at the first canteen we visited. She admitted that she was tired
but she must answer her letters. She was rather grave about it,
"I write to sixty-eight," she said, "and I'll tell you why. At
least I will tell you a little of it and you can read the rest. I
was on night duty. There is always one of us here. The men have
just come from visiting their homes and some of them are blue and
cannot sleep. Rude to us? Oh, never! I had written letters almost
all night and it was time to make the morning coffee, yet there was
still one to do. I was tempted to put it aside. I didn't remember
the man, but he had sent me a word of thanks. Well, somehow I did
answer it between the moment of filling the cauldron and getting
ready for the day. Here is his reply--it came this morning--"

Translating crudely from the letter I read aloud to our little
circle: "Dear Madame, you have saved my life. I have no friends
and no people left for I am from the invaded districts, so on one
writes me. To-day I was on duty as the officer came into our trench
with the mail. He called my name. He gave me permission to leave
the listening post to receive your valued letter. While at his
side a shell tore up entirely my post. I think you, Madame, that
I am spared to fight for France--"

I regarded her with longing. She had been the controller of a
destiny. I suppose we are all that when we bend our best efforts,
but seldom are we so definitely apprised of the reward of untiring
duty.

A petty officer passed by the shack with a paper in his hands.
There were no sounding trumpets, but the men recognized the paper
and rose from the ground where they had been lounging to hear him
read the list of those who were to return immediately to the front.
As the names were called each one summoned turned without comment
or exclamation or expletive, picked up his kit dumped in a corner,
slung on the heavy equipment, saw that the huge loaf of bread was
secure--the extra shoes--refilled his canteen and moved over to
the barred gate. Occasionally one shook hands with a comrade and
all saluted the women of the little flower-bedecked hut. An order
was given and the gate was opened. They filed out into the dusty
road on their march to the railway station. The gate was closed.
A little hill rose higher than the ground of the barracks and we could
see them once again--stout little men in patched uniforms--bending
unresistingly under their burdens, the heavy steel helmets gleaming
but faintly in the sun. Another detachment entered the barracks.

It was coffee time now. The soldiers were lingering politely about
with their tin cups in hand--not too expectantly, so as to assure
the ladies that if by any chance there was no coffee they would not
be disappointed. The gentlewoman in attendance had recently come
from a canteen near the front where soup is made and often eight
thousand bowls of it served in a day. The skin of her arms and
hands is, I fear, permanently unlovely from the steam of the great
kettles--or perhaps I should say permanently lovely now that one
knows the cause of the branding. I offered to pour in her place
and she assented.

The men came up to the little bar. I began to pour. I had thought
I was about to do them a service. I knew with the first cup that
it was they who were doing me one. All the unrest and misery of
my idle if observing days in France was leaving me. I was pushing
back the recollection with the sweetness of physical effort. I
was at work. There is no living in France--or anywhere now--unless
one is at work. I served and served and urged fresh cups upon them.
They thought I was generous--I could not tell them that I had not
known a happy instant till this coffee pouring time. I had not
recognized that it was toiling with the hands that would bring a
surcease to the beating of queries at my bewildered brain. There
are no answers to this war. One can only labor for it and so,
strangely, forget it.

Late that afternoon I had a cup of tea in a ground floor room of
a big Parisian hotel which has been freely assigned to an American
woman for the least known of all our relief work. I had come that
I might argue with her into giving up her long task for a brief
rest. My contention was to have been that she could stop at any
time as her work is never recognized. I found her doing up a parcel
of excellent garments for a man and three women. They were to be
assigned to the family of a respected painter of the Latin Quarter.
They will never know who is the middleman, and it has chanced that
she has dined in company with her day's donation.

As I observed her tired tranquility I felt my argument growing
pointless. Whether it was coffee or the unacknowledged dispenser
of clothing to the uncrying needy it was service, and though my arm
muscles ached I could understand that it is the idle boy in Paris
which does not rest at night.

And so I come tot he last sheet of the romance which is serving
so humbly my war-time needs. There is space for the dinner and
the closing in of the gentle night thanks to the repeated, fervid
declarations of the lovers on the other side of the paper. We
had been with the men that afternoon. We were among the officers
that evening. We dined at one of the great restaurants which has
timorously reopened its doors to find eager families ready to feast
honored sons. At one table sat three generations, the father of
the boy concealing his pride with a Gallic interest in the menu,
but the grandfather futilely stabbed the snails as his gleaming old
eyes kept at attention upon the be-medalled lad. Pretty women, too,
were there, subdued in costuming but with that amiable acceptance
of their position which is not to be found among the more eager
"lost ones" of other countries. And I enjoyed some relief in their
evidence once more, and some inward and scarcely to-be-expressed
solace in the thought that those soldiers who henceforth must go
disfigured through a fastidious world can every buy companionship.

There was a theater attached to the restaurant. Through the glass
doors we could see an iridescence of scant costumes, but the audience
was light, and we ourselves preferred, as a more satisfactory ending
to our day, to walk quietly toward the Arc de Triomphe which is
waiting, waiting for fresh glories. On the other side of this last
sheet of paper my lovers had so walked together. But upon looking
over their passionate adventures I have discovered, at last, why
the romance has never found a market. On one side and then on the
other I have read and reread the two experiences. Yes, I find the
LOVE-story curiously lacking in love.

[signed] Louise Closser Hale

Children of War

Not for a transient victory, or some
Stubborn belief that we alone are right;
Not for a code or conquest do we fight,
But for the crowded millions still to come.

This, unborn generations, is your war,
Although it is our blood that pays the price.
Be worthy, children, of our sacrifice,
And dare to make your lives worth fighting for.

We give up all we love that you may loathe
Intrigue and darkness, that you may disperse
The ranks of ugly tyrannies and, worse,
The sodden languor and complacent sloth.

Do not betray us, then, but come to be
Creation's crowning splendor, not its slave;
Knowing our lives were spent to keep you brave,
And that our deaths were meant to make you free.

[signed] Louis Untermeyer

Courtesy "Collier's Weekly."

Khaki-Boy

Where the torrent of Broadway leaps highest in folly and the nights
are riddled with incandescent tire and chewing gum signs; jazz
bands and musical comedies to the ticket speculators' tune of five
dollars a seat, My Khaki-Boy, covered with the golden hoar of three
hundred Metropolitan nights rose to the slightly off key grand
finale of its eighty-first matinee, curtain slithering down to
the rub-a-dud-dub of a score of pink satin drummer boys with slim
ankles and curls; a Military Sextette of the most blooded of Broadway
ponies; a back ground of purple eye-lidded privates enlisted from
the ranks of Forty-Second Street; a three hundred and fifty dollar
a week sartorial sergeant in khaki and spotlight, embracing a ninety
pound ingenue in rhinestone shoulder-straps. The tired business
man and his lady friend, the Bronx and his wife, Adelia Ohio, Dead
heads, Bald heads, Sore heads, Suburbanites, Sybarites; the poor
dear public making exit sadder than wiser.

On the unpainted side of the down slithering curtain, a canvas
mountain-side was already rumbling rearward on castors. An overhead
of foliage jerked suddenly higher, revealed a vista of brick wall.
A soldiers' encampment, tents and all, rolled up like a window shade.
The ninety pound ingenue, withholding her silver-lace flouncings
from the raw edges of moving landscape, high-stepped to a rearward
dressing room; the khaki clad hero brushing past her and the pink
satin drummer boys for first place down a spiral staircase.

Miss Blossom De Voe, pinkest of satin drummer boys, withdrew
an affronted elbow, the corners of her mouth quivering slightly,
possibly of their own richness. They were dewy, fruit-like lips,
as if Nature were smiling with them at her own handiwork.

"Say, somebody around here better look where he's going or mama's
khaki-boy will be calling for an arnica high-ball. What does he
think I yam, the six o'clock subway rush?"

Miss Elaine Vavasour wound down the spiral ahead of Miss De Voe,
the pink satin blouse already in the removing.

"Go suck a quince Blos. It's good for crazy bone and fallen arch."

"If you was any funnier, Elaine, you'd float," said Miss De Voe
withdrawing a hair pin as she wound downward, an immediate avalanche
of springy curls released.

Beneath the stage of the Gotham Theater a corridor of dressing rooms
ran the musty subterranean length of the sub cellar. A gaseous
gloomy dampness here; this cave of the purple lidded, so far below
the level of reality.

At the door of Miss De Voe's eight by ten, shared by four, dressing
room, one of the back drop of privates, erect, squarebacked, head
thrown up by the deep-dipping cap vizor, emerged at sight of her,
lifted hat revealing a great permanent wave of hair that could only
be born not bought.

"H'lo, Hal."

"Hello, Blossum."

"Whose hot water bottle did you come to borrow?"

"Hot water bottle?"

"Yeh, you look like you got the double pneumonia and each one of
the pneumonia's got the tooth ache. Who stole your kite, ikkie
boy?"

Mr. Hal Sanderson flung up a fine impatient head, the permanent
hair-wave lifting,

"We'll can the comedy, Blossum," he said.

She lowered to a mock curtsey, mouth skewed to control laughter,
arms akimbo.

"We will now sing psalm twenty-three."

"Come to supper with me, Blos? You been dodging me pretty steady
here lately."

She clapped her hand to her brow, plastering a curl there.

"Migaw, I am now in the act of dropping thirty cents and ten cents
tip into my Pig Bank. Will I go to supper with him? Say, darling,
will the Hudson flow by Grant's monument to-night at twelve? On
a Saturday matinee he asks me to supper with a question mark."

"Honest, Bloss, you'd hand a fellow a ha ha if he invited you to
his funeral."

She sobered at that, leaning against the cold plastered wall,
winding one of the shining curls about her fore finger.

"What's the matter--Hal?"

He handed her a torn newspaper sheet, blue penciled.

She took it but did not glance down.

"Drafted?"

"Yes," he said.

The voice of a soubrette trilling snatches of her topical song as
she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom
of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing
room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the
chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created a remote sort of thunder.
She stood looking up at him, her young mouth parted.

"I--oh, Hal--well--well, whatta you know about that--Hal
Sanderson--drafted."

He stepped closer, the pallor coming out stronger in his face,
enclosed her wrist, pressing it.

"Grover's drafted too."

"Grover--too?"

"He's three thousand and one. Ten numbers before me."

Her irises were growing, blackening.

"Well, whatta you know about that? Grover White, the world's dancing
tenor, and Hal Sanderson the world dancing tenor's understudy,
drafted! The little tin soldiers are covered with rust and Uncle
Sam is going to--"

"Hurry, Bloss, get into your duds. I want to talk. Hurry. We'll
eat over at Ramy's."

She turned but flung out an arm, grasping now his wrist.

"I--oh, Hal--I--I just never was so--so sad and so--so glad!"

The door opened to a slit enclosing her. In his imitation uniform,
hand on empty carriage belt, Mr. Hal Sanderson stood there a moment,
his face whitening, tightening.

In Ramy's glorified basement, situated in one of the Forties which
flow like tributaries into the heady waters of Broadway, one may
dine from soup to nuts, raisins and regrest for one hour and sixty
cents. In Ramy's, courses may come and courses may go, but the
initiated one holds on to his fork forever. Here red wine flows
like water, being ninety-nine per cent., just that.

Across a water tumbler of ruby contents, Miss Blossom De Voe, the
turbulent curls all piled up beneath a slightly dusty but highly
effective amethyst velvet hat, regarded Mr. Sanderson, her perfect
lips trembling as it were, against an actual nausea of the spirit
which seemed to pull at them.

"Whadda you putting things up to me for, Hal? You're old enough
to know your own business."

Blue shaved, too correct in one of Broadway's black and white checked
Campus Suits, his face as cleanly chiseled and thrust forward as a
Discobolus, Mr. Sanderson patted an open letter spread out on the
table cloth between them, his voice rising carefully above the din
of diners.

"There's fellows claiming exemption every hour of the day that
ain't got this much to show, Bloss. I was just wise enough to see
these things and get ready for 'em."

"You ain't your mother's sole support. What about them snapshots
of the two farms of hers out in Ohio you gave me?"

"But I got to be in this country to take charge of her affairs for
her--my mother's old, honey--ain't I the one to manager for her?
Only child and all that. Honest, Bloss, you need a brick house."

"Well, that old lawyer that wrote that letter has been doing it
all the time, why all of a sudden should you--"

He cast his eyes ceilingward, flopping his hands down loosely to
the table in an attitude of mock exhaustion.

"Oh, Lord, Bloss, lemme whistle it, maybe you can catch on the.
Brains, honey, little Hal's brains is what got that letter there
written. I seen this coming from the minute conscription was in
the air. Little Hal seen it coming, and got out his little hatchet.
Try to prove that I ain't the sole one to take charge of my mother's
affairs. Try to prove it. That's what I been fixing for myself
these two months, try to--"

"Sh-h-h-h, Charley--"

"Brains is what done it,--every little thing of my mother's is in
my care. I fixed it. Now little Blossy-blossum will you be good?"

He regarded her with cocked head and face receptive for her approval.
"Now will you be good!"

She sat loosely, meeting his gaze, but her face as relaxed as her
attitude. A wintry stare had set in.

"Oh," she said, "I see." And turned away her head.

He reached closer across the table, regardless of the conglomerate
diners about, felt for her hand which lay limp and cold beside her
plate, and which she withdrew.

"Darling," he said, straining for her gaze.

"Don't, Hal."

"Darling, don't you see? It's fate knocking at our door. There's
not a chance rover can get exemption. He ain't eve got a fifth
cousin or a flat-foot!"

"Maybe he could claim exemption on dandruff."

"I'm serious, honey. It's going to be one of those cases where
an understudy wakes up to find himself famous. I can't fail if I
get this chance, Bloss. It's the moment I have been drudging for,
for five solid years. I never was in such voice as now, I never
was so fit. Not an ounce of fat. Not a song in the part I don't
know backwards. I tell you it's the hand of fate, Bloss, giving
us a hand-out. I can afford now, darling, to make good with you.
On three fifty a week I can ask a little queen like you to double
up with me. From thirty-five to three fifty! I tell you honey,
we're made. I'm going to dress my little dolly in cloth of gold
and silver fox. I'm going to perch her in the suite de luxe of
the swellest hotel in town. I'm--"

She pushed back from the table, turning more broadly from him.

"Don't," she said pressing her kerchief against her lips.

"Why--why what's the matter, Bloss? Why--why, what's the matter?"

"Don't talk to me for a minute," she said, still in profile; "I'll
be all right, only don't talk."

"Why, Bloss, you--sick?"

She shook her head. "No. No."

"You ain't getting cold feet now that we got the thing before us--in
our hand?"

"I dunno. I dunno. I--don't want nothing. That's all, nothing
but to be left alone."

He sucked his lips inward, biting at them.

"Don't--don't think I ain't noticed, Bloss, that you--you ain't
been the same--that you been different--for weeks. Sometimes I
think maybe you're going cold on--on this long engagement stuff.
That's why this thing is breaking just right for us, honey. I
felt you slippin' a little. I'm ready now, Peaches, we can't go
taxi-cabbing down for that license none too soon to suit me."

She shook her head, beating softly with one small fist into her
other palm.

"No, Hal," she said, her mouth tightening and drawing down.

"Why--why, Bloss!"

Suddenly she faced him, her hands both fists now, and coming down
with a force that shivered the china.

"You--you ain't a man, you ain't. You ain't a man, you--you're
a slacker! You're a slacker, that's what you are, and Gawd, how
I--how I hate a slacker!"

"Bloss--why, girl--you--you're cra---"

"Oh, I've known it. Deep down inside of me I've known it since
the day we found ourselves in the mess of this war. I knew it,
and all those months kept kidding myself that maybe--you--wasn't."

"You--"

"Thought maybe when you'd read the newspapers enough and heard the
khaki-boys on the street corners enough, and listened to--to your
country pleading enough that--that you'd rise up to show you was
a man. I knew all these months down inside of me that you was a
slacker, but I kept hopin'. Gawd how I kept hopin'."

"You--you can't talk to me that way! You're---"

"Can't I! Ha! Anybody can talk any old way to a slacker he wants
to and then not say enough. You ain't got no guts you--you're
yellow, that's what you are, you--"

"Blossum!"

"You, sneaking up to me with trumped up exemption stuff when your
country's talking her great heart out for men to stand by 'er!
Gawd! If I was a man--If was a man she wouldn't have to ask me
twice, but before I went marching off I'd take time off to help the
street cleaning department wipe up a few streets with the slackers
I found loafing around under a government they were afraid to fight
for. I'd show 'em. I'd show 'em if a government is good enough
to live under it's good enough to fight under. I'd show 'em."

"If you was a man, Blossum, you'd eat those words. By God, you'd
eat 'em. I'm no coward--I--"

"I know you're not, Hal--that's why I--I--"

"I got the right to decide for myself if I want to fight when I
don't know what I'm fighting for. This ain't my war, this ain't
America's war. Before I fight in it I want a darn sight to know
what I'm fighting for, and not all the street corner rah rah stuff
has told me yet. I ain't a bull to go crazy with a lot of red
waved in my face. I've got no blood to spill in the other fellow's
battle. I'm---"

"No, but you--"

"I'm at a point in my life that I've worked like a dog to reach.
Let the fellows that love the hero stuff give up their arms and
their legs and the breath that's in them for something they don't
know the meaning of. Because some big-gun of a Emperor out in
Austria was assassinated, I ain't going to bleed to death for it.
It's us poor devils that get the least out of the government that
right away are called on to give the most, it's us---"

"Hal, ain't--ain't you ashamed!"

"No. I ain't ashamed and I ain't afraid. You know it ain't because
I'm afraid. I've licked more fellows in my time than most fellows
can boast. I--I got the Fifty-fifth Street fire rescue medal to my
credit if anybody should ask you. I--I--ask anybody from my town
if any kid in it ever licked me. But I ain't going to fight when
I ain't got a grudge against no man. Call that being a coward if
you like, but then you and me don't speak the same language."

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