You know it is going to take some time to get started again. There are so many things I shall want to do, but can’t. And, while I shall not hold out for large money, still a log fire must have wood. Also this cheero stuff about the soldiers getting the preference after the war is a lot of hickey. They always pull that kind of thing in the height and heat of patriotic fervor, but forget it promptly when you know at their door. American business is not so soft-hearted as hard-headed. Then, too, we shall not be the first ones home, by any means. I’m almost resigned to being about the last. The boys who have had the hardest and the longest share of the war must no doubt get the best of the home-going.
One thing is comforting. When I do get through, it will not have been wasted time, for the work I am doing is such that I could pursue it in peace times. That is one advantage I have over most of the 2 million.
It has given me a taste for news. I have been learning the other side of the publishing game. Most of my former experience was on the business end. I don’t know which I like better, or which will be the illustrious one to furnish our family fortune. But it will be one of the two, I hope, because I like the game and feel that, somehow or other I am qualified to be a player in it.
Do you know what it is that makes newspaper and magazine people so interesting? I can hazard a lot of guesses but can’t say that they’re right. In the first place, they’re broad. In the second, they’re young – no, not young, but youthful. It must be the fascination of speed and the constant contact with the happenings of the whole world. Their business demands some degree of education, and I’m very much inclined to be what you call – an intellectual snob. I don’t claim the brains and cultivation of them; I only admire them. I can forgive a man for beating his wife if only he talks good English. And my people ware witty, humorous and sympathetic. They do creative work. They mold opinions. They can appreciate F.P.A. Maybe the last is my real reason for liking them.
The progress of peace will be interesting to watch. Just what happens no one can say. Does the fighting stop first or does it go on while they all have peace in their hearts? What becomes of the trenches and dugouts and advances? As one fellow put it the other day, “What will all these cooties do when the war’s over?” Fortunately I’m not bereaving any worthy families of these most domestic animals when I leave France.
All this might give the impression that the world has quit warring. As a matter of fact you have just had another huge Liberty Loan and France is starting on the Liberation Loan. Paris is said to be all het up about it. The Place Concorde is filled with German guns and aeroplanes, and at the Concorde bridge over the Seine is a captured German submarine. I haven’t seen these war trophies, but “they say.”
I don’t know how much longer we are to be confined, but I hope it’s not too much. The chances are I should not do anything if I were free, but I never wanted so much to walk around the corner or something, as now.
Frank is getting into his blankets on the “shelf” above mine, and has just bumped his head against the ceiling. You see when Eddie Peters built this two-story bed, he made it too high. Frank says if he had had less wood or more brains it would have been a good bed.
Next post October 27
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 