June 24, 1918

Monday

These few days have been uneventful and unpleasant. I’ve spent most of them in a more or less quiet corner, reading or looking idly out to sea. This letter seems to sound like a library catalog, but it’s because that’s all that happens. A new book is as great an event now as a big drive will be later. So here goes: After Tarascon I found “The Adventures of Francois” by S. Weir Mitchell – a very well-written compendium of France in its revolution period.

Then Arnold Bennett’s “The Regent” which was most amusing. It is the book old F.P.A. used to talk about, as a sample of how hopeless it is for British authors to try to understand American manners and speech. They think all Americans say: “I reckon”. That, at any rate, will never be after this war, for I think all the nations are going to benefit in a better understanding of one another. And now I have Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” which at least may be interesting; it created quite a stir about 12 years ago.

Clarence Elmer and Jack Wagner are planning a little show tonight for some of the officers. Clarence will be a negro and Jack an Italian. It will be a sort of comic impression of transport life, and I’ve been called in to collaborate.

One of the boys I was talking to wanted to know if there was any way to get across by train. He was serious; he had no idea of geography; he wanted to know whether France and England are at the same place. Another has lost a belt and goes around placarded in this wise:

I’M THE FELLOW WHO HAS LOST

HIS BELT. HELP ME FIND IT.

He looks like a New York clothing strike, but it’s good sense. That’s about the best advertising I’ve seen since I left business. Ahem.

Sometimes I laugh at the thought of what a ghastly joke it would be if they were to take us to Italy or Russia or the Balkans or some other place than France, because of course we have no positive word yet that we are going to France. We’re just “going over”. But the joke would be on all of us, who have scratched our wool and burned the well-known but in this case figurative midnight oil, trying to train our tongues to twist Gaul-wise. What gnashings of teeth there would be.

The water today is smoother than the Hudson. I don’t understand it. Of course no one is sick in such weather. Food continues to be good. Also there is a canteen aboard where we can buy most anything. So we don’t suffer in any respect. Once I had a taste of luxury – a chunk of hot white bread which a sailor just from the bakery gave me; as welcome as it was indigestible.

The above space denotes that time has intervened since I wrote the foregoing. Even good things have an end. So with this little sail. At this time tomorrow we shall have landed.

This and the previous letters written while on board arrived on July 6.

Next post June 28.