This is going to be the worst part of the war for me – waiting to go home. It may be two or six or twelve months. Father says 18 or 24, but I think he’s wrong. France needs rebuilding and new blood, I know. The French admire Yankee nerve and vim and would ask nothing better than the building up or their ruined land by so energetic an agency.

The thing is that my family doesn’t want me to stay in France after it’s all settled. Multiply that by 2 million A.E.F.ers and it becomes a power not to be overlooked. Then again 2 million votes will be a considerable power in the next election. No party wants that many votes against it.

Even if they do keep us over here a while longer we are still having a merry time, what with Billy and others, and log fired and roast chestnuts. If it was a tough war, it is also a pretty terrible peace.

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Next post November 14

At 11 on the 11^th day of the 11^th month, they stopped fighting. France has had 1561 days of it – 4 years and 100 days. Altogether it has lasted 1564 days. And from the avidity with which the enemy sought and seized a most severe peace …[?]

So for thirty-six days they’ll stop battering one another.

It was a great day in Paris. They went wild, in fact they’re still wild, and we expect them to be for a week or so. That’s the Latin of it. I can never describe the thing to you. There is a “je ne sais quoi” – an indefinable something – in the French blood that makes this people peculiarly fitted to commemorate such an event fittingly. It seems to combine a keen sense of the dramatic with a faculty for complete abandon to joy.

It is more than just happiness for the French – it’s joy. Can you imagine the great open Place de la Concorde full of captured cannon, machine guns, grenade throwers, tanks, aeroplanes; the great statues with a specially cheering mob before the Strasbourg statue; and the crowd! There must have been a hundred thousand people.

When America celebrates it splits into a hundred or a thousand little fetes. One man gets drunk, another dances, another goes to a show, a fourth parades the streets. Here it’s all one grand affair – everyone does everything. All the boulevards and Places were alive with mobs parading, singing and laughing. Lots of soldiers – British, French and American. Everywhere and on everybody were French and American flags – I think more American than anything else. Just a case of the lid being off – a complete abandon to the day, without any civil or military restrictions.

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Next post November 14

Last night – the third in succession – we tried to get into the movies. I had begun to make inquiries about what one had to be, join or do, to rate a movie show. They were closed tighter than a French art gallery in war time. Last night we discovered it isn’t so hard to get in if only you go when it’s open. We did.

They had some French war pictures that were ordinary; the only thing that saved them was the English titles. I had written those. You see the things are run with French captions on one side of the screen and English on the other. One day I translated into good English a lot of these captions but I had never seen the film. It was funny to see my own words flashed up unexpectedly before me. Also I couldn’t help noticing that in one place where I had said something about three old men, the picture showed that two of them were women.

Then we had an old Vitagraph three-reeler, which was so bad it was amusing. Then a Liberation Loan song, illustrated with some good war pictures. And at last, Chaplin in The Pawnbroker. He was worth the franc and a half admission.

There is a large house here, build to the idea of a man with money, and aspirations, but no sense or taste. It must have forty rooms. It is full of painted ceilings and rococo gilt fresco work, but it has no bath tub. That is France for you. One must go to the public baths, just as one goes to the public barber. A bathtub is unheard of in the ordinary home.

I often wondered what people here think of their conditions. Most of them I have found, know no different; hence, they don’t think. It is always those who have been away from France, who realize that their own country is a “surface” land. Show and front without foundation, is what one Frenchman told me. Perfume is stronger than water. I go down stairs at the same time as a bunch of factory girls. The accumulated perfume is intoxicating; it is as if I inhaled a glass of pure alcohol. But their hands are usually pretty dirty.

Frank is out tonight taking a French lesson. It’s good to get away from him once in a while. Please hurry with that name of Dulcy’s brother.

This is a great country for rumors. In the first place, news is likely to come in most any language, and of course the translator can pat it up and add little touches of his own here and there, where he feels it will do the most good. In addition, since the latest paper is on the streets before 4 P.M., any chance word can pass as authentic, without fear of successful contradiction until morning. After 4 P.M. rumors are rife in these swift days. We have to have a new war every morning because the current one is always finished up and polished off before supper.

Yesterday I consumed a lot of dampness, exuded much French and exhumed all my Profane, trying to make a French newsboy comprehend a state of affairs that should bring about an “extra”. Such a thing was entirely beyond him. It lay outside the pale of his power of perception, like peace, heaven and America.

Of course you read, as soon as I did, the account of the German plenipotentiaries with the white flag. To me that is one of the most dramatic episodes of the war. As I have said before, the process of peace has always been a baffler. I’ve always wanted to know how they’d go about it. Doesn’t it seem mediaeval to you, just to come out between the two armies with a white flag? I feel that this war, which has shown the world so many new wonders of human ingenuity, should have improved on the peace procedure of the Hundred Years’ War.

However, the important thing, I suppose, is not how, but when? I have become a sceptic to the extent that, like most people in the news game or on the fringe of it, nothing is news now unless it is past. Only official word, definitely and irrevocably set forth in black ink, that there is peace, will raise a thrill.

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The Chaplin film The Pawnbroker is available online. Click on this link to watch.

Next post November 12

Raining torrents today and I feel fine. Don’t notice the missing molar much. Any way, all the allies made big advances and American airplanes could be 80 minutes from Berlin. Maybe they’ll know what sirens mean there, as well as in Paris. And the allies could establish a front less than 40 miles from Dresden and Munich. Think what that means – what the Austrian defalcation means to the Huns. It looks like a great day for peace.

We did want to end our celebration yesterday with the movies and Chaplin but the cinema is limited to three nights and Sunday and Tuesday isn’t one of the nights.

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Next post November 8

This is a gala day despite a steady downpour. In the first place, they paid us at noon. In the second place, Frank treated to supper tonight, and it was good. Also – at 11 A.M. in the midst of some real work, I got a terrible toothache. I couldn’t think. One of the officers asked me to do some interpreting and I didn’t know what he, the frog or I was saying. So I came over to quarters and got the medico to put something on it for temporary relief. It certainly was temporary. This afternoon I went downtown and the army dentist said there was nothing to do but draw it. He did; it didn’t hurt – much. So I’m minus a back tooth. How does that sound for a gala day? Tomorrow will be another, I think. I’m going to get my hair cut.

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Next post November 6

Cast your eye over an expanse of ocean and look at me. Yesterday afternoon they made us do some real physical work, and as a result I was so tired that I stayed in bed until 11:45 today. Isn’t that a shameful waste of none too frequent leisure?

Now it is gray and afternoon and I am up in the office, feeling very heavy and sleepy. I missed some mighty good war news, too, for the Americans made a very satisfactory advance and our map looks good now. Most of the bunch has gone to a football game or is working, but I hadn’t enough energy for either. This Sunday business of sleeping late is demoralizing. I hereby vow to you that when I get back, if ever, I won’t do it. I’ll be up bright and more or less early every Sunday, so we can catch the __ o’clock boat for something or other.

But did you know that I was coming back surely? Once I wrote you about staying here. I don’t want to now. I think it was a foolish idea in the first place. One good rule in the army is never to volunteer for anything. It never is a success. It would be better to take my chances on the regular course of things and not tie up to an unknown proposition like a stay in France.

Paris is beginning to feel peace in the air. Yesterday I saw a householder scraping from her windows the blue paper which provides low visibility of light from within to the acute observer two miles above in a Boche plane. Every lamp in Paris and outskirts has been shielded in this way for a long time, because blue of course is the color of lowest visibility. Now lights are commencing to re-appear. In some sections of the city one can even see one’s way in the streets.

People are sitting around now awaiting the end. You can’t imagine how it feels to be in on the finish of the world’s greatest event, and to realise how small a part of it is your own daily work. It seems so far removed from war – this business of a half hour’s drill in the morning, eight hours of work which is about the same stuff I used to do in civil life, an idle evening and a lazy Sunday. It is hard to comprehend that I am really acting some part in the greatest thing in history.

And you are too, did you know it? All the stay-at-homes are doing something for the world. One of them is the man who will dictate how peace shall be made. From him down they’re all for us, and it is good to know that.

I am reading “Le Maitre de Forges” by Georges Ohnet, in French. It is sort of mid-victorian, verging on the new. Good French practice, if nothing else. My English pupil, who by the way is suffering from grippe and hasn’t had a lesson in two weeks or more, sent it to me.

I haven’t had any pictures taken recently, because we haven’t been down to see old Lozach recently. Some Sunday we are going down again and then you’ll have some more. Also, Frank is making a pinhole camera, which ought to be some good, judging from the amount of effort he seems to have put into it.

These French around here have been having a three-day holiday, which doesn’t make for top-notch efficiency in the Americans who have to work. We are feeling rather like drudges, and extending a great deal of self-pity.

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Next post November 5.

Now I feel much better than last time I wrote. I was in bed at quarter to ten and had an awful struggle making reveille at 6:50 this morning.

They have given us an extra mid-day half hour – from 1 to 1:30 – and I’m using today’s to start my letter to you. It is a wonderful day – balmy and blue, sunny and sienna. It makes me long for the old Hackensak and for those walks on the Palisades.

And it is great to be freed again – to know you can walk around the block if you want, or do down to the park or eat at Mme. Jeanne’s or go to Paris. Hope no one else around here gets sick.

6:45 P.M.

Supper and the day’s work finished. At four o’clock I went out and bought the evening paper, which contains the afternoon communiques. These were almost out – boldfaced by the headline: “Austria Demands Separate Peace.” I don’t see how this note can well be refused, but it’s too bad it’s crumbling this way. I’d much rather it were crushed at one time than gradually. I want them to be convincingly beaten.

Tonight at 7:30 I’m going to try to talk the supply sergeant out of a new pair of breeks. My old ones are still good to sit down in; if there is a wall well within manoeuvring distance, they’re not so bad to stand in. After that job is done, guess I’ll get a trailer or something and cart my laundry around to the blanchisseuse.

Ten minutes off writing time while I discussed yesterday’s football game with George Kummerow, one of the shattered survivors. He is about 6 foot 2 and weighs some 200 lbs. – the biggest man in the game, and consequently the mark for our opponents. He was knocked out in the second quarter, but his vitality didn’t suffer, and he got back in for the end of the game. We play again next Sunday. I have a notion we’ll win.

Did you ever have some on in your family learn to play the saxophone? No, I know you didn’t, but you’ve missed something. Downstairs in the dugout Jim Harding is scaling up and down and it’s awful. Every ten minutes he holes out with the middle line of some song, and leaves it hanging in the air. If only he’d get a last line it would help.

They’ve O.K.’d my bum pant and some day I can draw a new pair. While in line I weakly yielded to the suasions of one Gowing who rooms at Mme. Streiffs’, and went over to see her for the first time in two weeks. Spent an hour and a half there. And then back to finish this.

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Next post November 3

Please do a large amount of cheering, etc., for we are free! Today the old M.D. smiled us “forth from Egypt, out of the house of bondage”. No one sick now. Cripples were marvelously cured over night and all that sort of thing.

Today was a fine day. Everyone was up early and all primed to murder any one whom the doctor should call sick. For he had said he would lift the ban if he found no more sore throats. When the car drove into the yard we were all lined up. There we stood, fingers crossed, out in the yard as the doctor passed one “ah-ing” man after another. Two or three were held to one side just to tease us, but everyone was O.K. and there was a mad rush for the gate.

We had dinner early today because of a football game. They’ve sort of beaten a team into shape here and we’re in the Paris league. This was our first game. It was held at a large field outside the city, and I had the job of piloting some 16 royal rooters to it. We lost, however – 19-0. It was a fine game, and the score doesn’t tell half. Watch us next time.

Aren’t you rather glad that the peace talk came to nothing? After all, the best news has always been that of the daily gain. That’s what’s bringing us peace faster than anything else. One doughboy is better than a hundred words.

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Next post October 28

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.

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Next post October 27

In the last letter I told you about the Dugout, infested by Jack and H Harding, etc. That is not the only. There is a fireplace in Billy Hamilton’s room also, and they believe in keeping the home fires burning. Bergmark, Watson, Geisel and a chap named Bonde are the other tenants. A sign on the door states; “This is no Y.M.C.A.” but that doesn’t mean anything. There is always a good crowd around.

Bill is certainly a character. He is Irish, tough and none too clean in person and personality. But he has a keen sense of humor, a great gift of fun and an original and laughable way of relating the most commonplace incident. He likes to have me around because he knows I appreciate and enjoy it all thoroughly.

He is the kind of Irishman who “doesn’t give a damn for anything.” He likes nothing better than to get drunk and have a good scrap. That isn’t any fun for me, but I do enjoy the vicarious benefits of his stories.

So I have two places to visit when I stay at home. Then there is our own room. It is comfortable here now. I’ve taken off my shoes and leggings and wrapped a blanket over the lower part of me, so that I’m comfortably warm. Also I have a good 10 cent American cigar, which costs 13 cents at home but 10 at our canteen. It’s not a bad way to spend a rainy Sunday.

Quarantines sort of follow us around, like the proverbial villain in the conventional melodrama. This time we are again the trite heroines – the villain still pursues us. Somebody here has tonsillitis, so they have called it diphtheria and confined us all. The joke of it is that we go over to work every day, mingling right in with lots of men and women in the factory. They seem to think the thing is contagious only after 6 P.M. But since it’s a medical order and a captain’s, one mustn’t criticise or break it. So we are having a good time around the place. I hope it doesn’t last much longer – the confinement, I mean.

Four minutes have intervened during which I had my hands under the blanket to warm them. Frank has promised to make an electric heater for the room out of some wire and nails. I have a trusting disposition and cold hands.

The war is beginning to look interesting. Do you realize that the Germans have not been strong enough to take the offensive away from the Allies since July 1^st? That the whole Belgian seacoast is in our hands, including the two submarine bases of Ostend and Zeebrugge? That they are almost out of France and unable to stem the retreat in Belgium? That it is quite possible at some points for the Americans to reach the Rhine by Xmas.

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Next post October 22