Last week flew quickly into the histories. Wednesday and Friday night were lesson nights. The lesson takes only an hour but the hour takes the whole evening. It means that I go around at about 7:15 arriving in time to drink coffee with the Streiffs. After which we talk till 8, when Mme. Bellamy arrives. We learn until 9 and talk till 10. Then we go our separate ways.
Thursday night I went downtown and saw the Chaplin picture and some others. It was the day of the arrival of the Belgian King and there was a mild sort of celebration. In the midst of a somewhat tedious French feature film, a band of them rushed the doorkeeper and did a tuneful snake-dance through the theater.
Saturday night I spent with four of the fellow, in and about the place, just talking. We talked a whole war and got many ideas as to how to run the photographic division. It ended with a resolution to lend our strongest support to the next war – morally, however, – and to do our bit for the brave soldiers by giving up strong drink and buying bonds.
Yesterday I was invited to Streiff’s for dinner, which stretched into two meals. I forget what it is they were celebrating, but then there is never any reference to the event; it serves only as a pretext. They are a family who live from fete to fete I don’t know how. But on fete days, they stint not, neither are they dry. At dinner I counted five different kinds of wine. The thing began with bivalves and ended with Benedictine. Maybe they were oysters – the program said they were – but if so preserve me from the French oyster, which tastes too much like army “goldfish” to be an epicurean treat.
Last week the powers that be took to thinking. It’s always a bad sign. They bethought them how a frog cop had once had to pick an American officer out of the muck and danger of a Paris rue and send him home to sleep it off. Alcoholic officers are not a good sight for little boys, so enlisted men must now keep off Paris streets after nine o’clock. This just a week before Wilson’s arrival, which is to be the biggest holiday yet. It is violating no rules to admit that there are drunken Americans in the city, and it is not telling tales to state that I have seen three times as many officers as men, in bad condition. So there is really very little weight to the fabris of quasi-facts in which the order is clothed. Another thing to add to the list of reasons for being a “moral supporter” in the next war.
There are many annoyances in this war business, which it doesn’t pay to notice. I used to think of a soldier as a lump of mud. Powers that be have never got beyond that elementary thought – he’s still so much unthinking unfeeling earth to them. If one wanted to take to heart all the rules and provisions made for mud –men, your returning soldiers would be gray-haired ones. It is better to be docile and make some show of humoring said powers, because there are more laughs to be had that way. Everytime I salute it raises an inward chuckle. There are mighty few members of the aristocracy of the shoulder-bar that make me dissatisfied with the distinction of being a private. By the way, don’t mention to anyone, that I’m a private 1st class. I don’t intend to remain one; it’s too much of a joke.
It appears that they’re not going to rush us home. We’ll probably languish here for some time, doing nothing useful and spending taxpayers’ money. Why on political grounds alone, they ought to shoot us back at once. If I ever get a chance to vote or influence votes against some of the people who are in or at the army, I’m going to have a beautiful fight.
That’s about all we have to look forward to now. I have no more interest in work here and I’m not the only one. All I do want is to get out of the country and the army.
Next post December 18.
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 