Le chef de gare il est cocu
Qui est cocu? Le chef de gare
Sa femme elle l’a voulut
there can be no reason to believe these officers of an established news organization serving newspapers all over the country failed to realize their responsibilities at a moment of supreme significance to the people of this country. Even to anticipate the event in a matter of such moment would be a grave imposition for which those responsible must be called to account
Any complaynts this morning?
Do we complayn? Not we
Wats the matter with lumps of onion
Floatin’ around in the tea?
PEACE DOVE IN JEWELS GIVEN
MRS. WILSON
and the watershed of the Cols di Polberdo, Podlaniscam and Idria. From this point the line turns southeast towards the Schneeberg, excludes the whole basin of the Saave and its tributaries. From Schneeberg it goes down to the coast in such a way as to include Castna, Mattuglia and Volusca
The Camera Eye (38)
sealed signed and delivered all over Tours you can smell lindens in bloom it’s hot my uniform sticks the OD chafes me under the chin
only four days ago AWOL crawling under the freight cars at the station of St. Pierre-des-Corps waiting in the buvette for the MP on guard to look away from the door so’s I could slink out with a cigarette (and my heart) in my mouth then in a tiny box of a hotel room changing the date on that old movement order
but today
my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off sparks in my pocket like a romancandle
I walk past the headquarters of the SOS Hay sojer your tunic’s unbuttoned (f—k you buddy) and down the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court with flowers in the middle of it the hot water gushes green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub through the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sunlight lengthens on the ceiling towel’s dry and warm smells of steam in the suitcase I’ve got a suit of civvies I borrowed from a fellow I know the buck private in the rear rank of Uncle Sam’s Medical Corps (serial number . . . never could remember the number anyway I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a gurgle and hiss and
having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the fat woman who swept up the towels
I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside only officers may set their whipcord behinds and order a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long pants in the iron chair
an anonymous civilian
Newsreel XXXIII
CAN’T RECALL KILLING SISTER; CLAIMS
I’ve got the blues
I’ve got the blues
I’ve got the alcohoholic blues
SOAP CRISIS THREATENED
with the gay sunlight and the resumption of racing Paris has resumed its normal life. The thousands and thousands of flags of all nations hang on dozens of lines stretching from mast to mast making a fairylike effect that is positively astonishing
THREAT LETTERS REVEALED
I love my country indeed I do
But this war is making me blue
I like fightin fightin’s my name
But fightin is the least about this fightin game
the police found an anteroom full of mysteriouslooking packages which when opened were found full of pamphlets in Yiddish Russian and English and of membership cards for the Industrial Workers of the World
HIGH WIND INCREASES DANGER OF MEN
WHILE PEACE IS TALKED OF WORLDWIDE WAR RAGES
the agents said the arrests were ordered from the State Department. The detention was so sudden neither of the men had time to obtain his baggage from the vessel. Then came a plaintive message from two business men at Lure; the consignment had arrived, the sacks had been opened and their contents was ordinary building plaster. The huge car remained suspended in some trees upside down while the passengers were thrown into the torrent twenty feet below
Lordy, lordy, war is hell
Since he amputated my booze
OUTRAGE PERPETRATED IN SEOUL
I’ve got the alcohohoholic blues
The Department of Justice Has the Goods on the Packers According to Attorney General Palmer
L’Ecole du Malheur Nous Rend Optimistes
Unity of Free Peoples Will Prevent any Inequitable Outcome of Peace of Paris
it is only too clear that the league of nations lies in pieces on the floor of the Hotel Crillon and the modest alliance that might with advantage occupy its place is but a vague sketch
HOW TO DEAL WITH BOLSHEVISTS?
SHOOT THEM! POLES’ WAY!
Hamburg Crowds Flock to See Ford
HINTS AT BIG POOL TO DEVELOP ASIA
When Mr. Hoover said to cut our eatin down
I did it and I didn’t ever raise a frown
Then when he said to cut out coal,
But now he’s cut right into my soul
Allons-nous Assister à la Panique des Sots?
stones were clattering on the roof and crashing through the windows and wild men were shrieking through the keyhole while enormous issues depended on them that required calm and deliberation at any rate the President did not speak to the leaders of the democratic movements
LIEBKNECHT KILLED ON WAY TO PRISON
Eveline Hutchins
Eveline had moved to a little place on the rue de Bussy where there was a street market every day. Eleanor to show that there was no hard feeling had given her a couple of her Italian painted panels to decorate the dark parlor with. In early November rumors of an armistice began to fly around and then suddenly one afternoon Major Wood ran into the office that Eleanor and Eveline shared and dragged them both away from their desks and kissed them both and shouted, “At last it’s come.” Before she knew it Eveline found herself kissing Major Moorehouse right on the mouth. The Red Cross office turned into a college dormitory the night of a football victory: it was the Armistice.
Everybody seemed suddenly to have bottles of cognac and to be singing, There’s a long long trail awinding or La Madellon pour nous n’est pas sévère.
She and Eleanor and J.W. and Major Wood were in a taxicab going to the Café de la Paix.
For some reason they kept getting out of taxicabs and other people kept getting in. They had to get to the Café de la Paix but whenever they got into a taxicab it was stopped by the crowd and the driver disappeared. But when they got there they found every table filled and files of people singing and dancing streaming in and out all the doors. They were Greeks, Polish legionaires, Russians, Serbs, Albanians in white kilts, a Highlander with bagpipes and a lot of girls in Alsatian costume. It was annoying not being able to find a table. Eleanor said maybe they ought to go somewhere else. J.W. was preoccupied and wanted to get to a telephone.
Only Major Wood seemed to be enjoying himself. He was a greyhaired man with a little grizzled mustache and kept saying, “Ah, the lid’s off today.” He and Eveline went upstairs to see if they could find room there and ran into two Anzacs seated on a billiard table surrounded by a dozen bottles of champagne. Soon they were all drinking champagne with the Anzacs. They couldn’t get anything to eat although Eleanor said she was starving and when J.W. tried to get into the phone booth he found an Italian officer and a girl tightly wedged together in it. The Anzacs were pretty drunk, and one of them was saying that the Armistice was probably just another bloody piece of lying propaganda; so Eleanor suggested they try to go back to her place to have something to eat. J.W. said yes, they could stop at the Bourse so that he could send some cables. He must get in touch with his broker. The Anzacs didn’t like it when they left and were rather rude.
They stood around for a long time in front of the opera in the middle of swirling crowds. The streetlights were on; the grey outlines of th
e opera were edged along the cornices with shimmering gas flames. They were jostled and pushed about. There were no busses, no automobiles; occasionally they passed a taxicab stranded in the crowd like a rock in a stream. At last on a side street they found themselves alongside a Red Cross staffcar that had nobody in it. The driver, who wasn’t too sober, said he was trying to get the car back to the garage and said he’d take them down to the quai de la Tournelle first.
Eveline was just climbing in when somehow she felt it was just too tiresome and she couldn’t. The next minute she was marching arm in arm with a little French sailor in a group of people mostly in Polish uniform who were following a Greek flag and singing la Brabançonne.
A minute later she realized she’d lost the car and her friends and was scared. She couldn’t recognize the streets even, in this new Paris full of arclights and flags and bands and drunken people. She found herself dancing with the little sailor in the asphalt square in front of a church with two towers, then with a French colonial officer in a red cloak, then with a Polish legionaire who spoke a little English and had lived in Newark, New Jersey, and then suddenly some young French soldiers were dancing in a ring around her holding hands. The game was you had to kiss one of them to break the ring. When she caught on she kissed one of them and everybody clapped and cheered and cried Vive l’Amerique. Another bunch came and kept on and on dancing around her until she began to feel scared. Her head was beginning to whirl around when she caught sight of an American uniform on the outskirts of the crowd. She broke through the ring bowling over a little fat Frenchman and fell on the doughboy’s neck and kissed him, and everybody laughed and cheered and cried encore. He looked embarrassed; the man with him was Paul Johnson, Don Stevens’ friend. “You see I had to kiss somebody,” Eveline said blushing. The doughboy laughed and looked pleased.
“Oh, I hope you didn’t mind, Miss Hutchins, I hope you don’t mind this crowd and everything,” apologized Paul Johnson.
People spun around them dancing and shouting and she had to kiss Paul Johnson too before they’d let them go. He apologized solemnly again and said, “Isn’t it wonderful to be in Paris to see the armistice and everything, if you don’t mind the crowd and everything . . . but honestly, Miss Hutchins, they’re awful goodnatured. No fights or nothin’. . . Say, Don’s in this café.”
Don was behind a little zinc bar in the entrance to the café shaking up cocktails for a big crowd of Canadian and Anzac officers all very drunk. “I can’t get him out of there,” whispered Paul. “He’s had more than he ought.” They got Don out from behind the bar. There seemed to be nobody there to pay for the drinks. In the door he pulled off his grey cap and cried, “Vive les quakers . . . à bas la guerre,” and everybody cheered. They roamed around aimlessly for a while, now and then they’d be stopped by a ring of people dancing around her and Don would kiss her. He was noisy drunk and she didn’t like the way he acted as if she was his girl. She began to feel tired by the time they got to the place de la Concorde and suggested that they cross the river and try to get to her apartment where she had some cold veal and salad.
Paul was embarrassedly saying perhaps he’d better not come, when Don ran off after a group of Alsatian girls who were hopping and skipping up the Champs Elysées. “Now you’ve got to come,” she said. “To keep me from being kissed too much by strange men.”
“But Miss Hutchins, you mustn’t think Don meant anything running off like that. He’s very excitable, especially when he drinks.” She laughed and they walked on without saying anything more.
When they got to her apartment the old concièrge hobbled out from her box and shook hands with both of them. “Ah, madame, c’est la victoire,” she said, “but it won’t make my dead son come back to life, will it? For some reason Eveline could not think of anything to do but give her five francs and she went back muttering a singsong, “Merci, m’sieur, madame.”
Up in Eveline’s tiny rooms Paul seemed terribly embarrassed. They ate everything there was to the last crumb of stale bread and talked a little vaguely. Paul sat on the edge of his chair and told her about his travels back and forth with despatches. He said how wonderful it had been for him coming abroad and seeing the army and European cities and meeting people like her and Don Sevens and that he hoped she didn’t mind his not knowing much about all the things she and Don talked about. “If this really is the beginning of peace I wonder what we’ll all do, Miss Hutchins.” “Oh, do call me Eveline, Paul.” “I really do think it is the peace, Eveline, according to Wilson’s Fourteen Points. I think Wilson’s a great man myself in spite of all Don says, I know he’s a darn sight cleverer than I am, but still . . . maybe this is the last war there’ll ever be. Gosh, think of that . . .” She hoped he’d kiss her when he left but all he did was shake hands awkwardly and say all in a breath, “I hope you won’t mind if I come to see you next time I can get to Paris.”
For the Peace Conference, J.W. had a suite at the Crillon, with his blonde secretary Miss Williams at a desk in a little anteroom, and Morton his English valet serving tea in the late afternoon. Eveline looked dropping into the Crillon late in the afternoon after walking up the arcades of the rue de Rivoli from her office. The antiquated corridors of the hotel were crowded with Americans coming and going. In J.W.’s big salon there’d be Morton stealthily handing around tea, and people in uniform and in frock coats and the cigarettesmoky air would be full of halftold anecdotes. J.W. fascinated her, dressed in grey Scotch tweeds that always had a crease on the trousers (he’d given up wearing his Red Cross major’s uniform), with such an aloof agreeable manner, tempered by the preoccupied look of a very busy man always being called up on the phone, receiving telegrams or notes from his secretary, disappearing into the embrasure of one of the windows that looked out on the place de la Concorde with someone for a whispered conversation, or being asked to step in to see Colonel House for a moment; and still when he handed her a champagne cocktail just before they all went out to dinner on nights he didn’t have to go to some official function, or asked if she wanted another cup of tea, she’d feel for a second in her eyes the direct glance of two boyish blue eyes with a funny candid partly humorous look that teased her. She wanted to know him better; Eleanor, she felt, watched them like a cat watching a mouse. After all, Eveline kept saying to herself, she hadn’t any right. It wasn’t as if there was anything really between them.
When J.W. was busy they often went out with Edgar Robbins who seemed to be a sort of assistant of J.W.’s. Eleanor couldn’t abide him, said there was something insulting in his cynicism, but Eveline liked to hear him talk. He said the peace was going to be ghastlier than the war, said it was a good thing nobody ever asked his opinion about anything because he’d certainly land in jail if he gave it. Robbins’ favorite hangout was Freddy’s up back of Montmartre. They’d sit there all evening in the small smokycrowded rooms while Freddy, who had a big white beard like Walt Whitman, would play on the guitar and sing. Sometimes he’d get drunk and set the company up to drinks on the house. Then his wife, a cross woman who looked like a gypsy, would come out of the back room and curse and scream at him. People at the tables would get up and recite long poems about La Grand’ route, La Misère, L’Assassinat or sing old French songs like Les Filles de Nantes. If it went over everybody present would clap hands in unison. They called that giving a bon. Freddy got to know them and would make a great fuss when they arrived, “Ah, les belles Américaines.” Robbins would sit there moodily drinking calvados after calvados, now and then letting out a crack about the day’s happenings at the peace conference. He said that the place was a fake that the calvados was wretched and that Freddy was a dirty old bum, but for some reason he always wanted to go back.
J.W. went there a couple of times, and occasionally they’d take some delegate from the peace conference who’d be mightily impressed by their knowledge of the inner life of Paris. J.W. was enchanted by the old French songs, but he said the place made him feel itchy and that he thought t
here were fleas there. Eveline liked to watch him when he was listening to a song with his eyes half closed and his head thrown back. She felt that Robbins didn’t appreciate the rich potentialities of his nature and always shut him up when he started to say something sarcastic about the big cheese, as he called him. She thought it was disagreeable of Eleanor to laugh at things like that, especially when J.W. seemed so devoted to her.
When Jerry Burnham came back from Armenia and found that Eveline was going around with J. Ward Moorehouse all the time he was terribly upset. He took her out to lunch at the Medicis Grill on the left bank and talked and talked about it.
“Why, Eveline, I thought of you as a person who wouldn’t be taken in by a big bluff like that. The guys nothing but a goddam megaphone. . . . Honestly, Eveline, it’s not that I expect you to fall for me, I know very well you don’t give a damn about me and why should you? . . . But Christ, a damn publicity agent.”
“Now, Jerry,” said Eveline with her mouth full of hors dœuvres, “you know very well I’m fond of you . . . It’s just too tiresome of you to talk like that.”