Sunday I took a little walk in the afternoon, though the weather wasn’t too good. In the evening I took Billy Hamilton down to the Theatre Palais Royal, a little house in a quaint and conventionally typical Paris street. The play was “Le Filon,” a very French farce-comedy, with the usual bedroom flavor, but well acted and amusing. The flavor, I might add, is not unusual in France; nor on Broadway. But over here the people live it into their lives. Thus it becomes equally important in plays, with slick business deals in our drama, and is equally true to life.
Bill and I had a good time together. He is a pretty keen and shrewd Irishman, with a rough exterior and an underlying sense and regard for the right. He looks and talks like a tough, drunken, fighting bum, and isn’t any of those things. H lacks education and polish but has a pretty good head. He can appreciate art and even drama of which he doesn’t understand more than about a fourth of the words, with a real sense of values.
Since then there has been nothing at all exciting. I should think a careful administration could avoid such blunders as this; The Stars and Stripes last week said that 140,000 had been sent home, while in today’s Herald Gen. March is quoted as saying that 96,000 have gone. Both include Jan. 10th. Now what do you make of it? I have given up hope of any light on the subject. All we can do is wait till they move of their own accord, and in this letter during working hours – time for more of them time to read, to smoke, to talk – and nothing essential to do. And I still work harder than most of the people around here.
Do you feel that I’m not so full of the beauties of France as I used to be? I do. I’m fuller of the shortcomings. That’s because it’s hard to enjoy a rosy sunset over the Tuileries Gardens, when you feel all the time that when you go home the chances are three to one that the electric lights will be out and the place in total darkness. It’s hard to appreciate the fragrance of the woods, when the consciousness obtrudes itself that the sewer under your room smells to heaven.
I guess the French are a good deal like me. If there were someone here to show them how to build electric light systems that wouldn’t go out of commission every few hours, and how to make water drop down a hole and go away, it would be well with them. As it is, they seem to have no sense of the practical; they struggle along with makeshifts much as I should throw my clothes on the bunk if there was no Frank.
The lieutenant who sits near me has just made some remarks that throw a little light on going home. He says we shall be here eight to ten months yet. That leads me to believe that we shall not, because if he says we are, we’re not. Sounds paradoxical, but he has a perverted and delicious sense of humor that loves to play little tricks like that, so I am somewhat encouraged.
Next post January 17.
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 