John Passos - 1919

Back in Paris it suddenly got very exciting, so many people they knew turned up, Eveline’s brother George who was an interpreter at the headquarters of the S.O.S. and a Mr. Robbins, a friend of J.W.’s who was always drunk and had a very funny way of talking and Jerry Burnham and a lot of newspaper men and Major Appleton who was now a Colonel. They had little dinners and parties and the main difficulty was sorting out ranks and getting hold of people who mixed properly. Fortunately their friends were all officers or correspondents who ranked as officers. Only once Don Stevens turned up just before they were having Colonel Appleton and Brigadier General Byng to dinner, and Eveline’s asking him to stay made things very awkward because the General thought Quakers were slackers of the worst kind, and Don flared up and said a pacifist could be a better patriot than a staff officer in a soft job and that patriotism was a crime against humanity anyway. It would have been very disagreeable if Colonel Appleton who had drunk a great many cocktails hadn’t broken through the little gilt chair he was sitting on and the General had laughed and kidded the Colonel with a bad pun about avoir du poise that took everybody’s mind off the argument. Eleanor was very sore about Don, and after the guests had left she and Eveline had a standup quarrel. Next morning Eleanor wouldn’t speak to her; Eveline went out to look for another apartment.

Oh the eagles they fly high

In Mobile, in Mobile

Americans swim broad river and scale steep banks of canal in brilliant capture of Dun. It is a remarkable fact that the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, more familiarly known as the French Line, has not lost a single vessel in its regular passenger service during the entire period of the war

RED FLAG FLIES ON BALTIC

“I went through Egypt to join Allenby;” he said, “I flew in an aeroplane making the journey in two hours that it took the children of Israel forty years to make. That is something to set people thinking of the progress of modern science.”

Lucky cows don’t fly

In Mobile, in Mobile

PERSHING FORCES FOE FURTHER BACK

SINGS FOR WOUNDED SOLDIERS; NOT SHOT AS SPY

Je donnerais Versailles

Paris et Saint Denis

Le tours de Nôtre Dâme

Les clochers de mon pays

HELP THE FOOD ADMINISTRATION BY

REPORTING WAR PROFITEERS

the completeness of the accord reached on most points by the conferees caused satisfaction and even some surprise among participants

REDS FORCE MERCHANT VESSELS TO FLEE

HUNS ON RUN

Auprès de ma blonde

Qu’il fait bon fait bon fait bon

Auprès de ma blonde

Qu’il fait bon dormir

CHEZ LES SOCIALISTES LES AVEUGLES SONT ROI

The German government requests the President of the united States of America to take steps for the restoration of peace, to notify all the belligerents of this request and to invite them to delegate plenipotentiaries for the purpose of taking up negotiations. The German Government accepts, as a basis for the peace negotiations, the programme laid down by the President of the United States in his message to Congress of January 8th, 1918, and in his subsequent pronouncements, particularly in his address of September 27th, 1918. In order to avoid further bloodshed the German government requests the President of the United States to bring about the immediate conclusion of a general armistice on land, on the water, and in the air.

Joe had been hanging around New York and Brooklyn for a while, borrowing money from Mrs. Olsen and getting tanked up all the time. One day she went to work and threw him out. It was damned cold and he had to go to a mission a couple of nights. He was afraid of getting arrested for the draft and he was fed up with every goddam thing; it ended by his going out as ordinary seaman on the Appalachian , a big new freighter bound for Bordeaux and Genoa. It kinder went with the way he felt being treated like a jailbird again and swabbing decks and chipping paint. In the focastle there was mostly country kids who’d never seen the sea and a few old bums who weren’t good for anything. They got into a dirty blow four days out and shipped a small tidal wave that stove in two of the starboard lifeboats and the convoy got scattered and they found that the deck hadn’t been properly caulked and the water kept coming down into the focastle. It turned out that Joe was the only man they had on board the mate could trust at the wheel, so they took him off scrubbing paint and in his four hour tricks he had plenty of time to think about how lousy everything was. In Bordeaux he’d have liked to look up Marceline, but none of the crew got to go ashore.

The bosun went and got cockeyed with a couple of doughboys and came back with a bottle of cognac for Joe, whom he’d taken a shine to, and a lot of latrine talk about how the frogs were licked and the limeys and the wops were licked something terrible and how if it hadn’t been for us the Kaiser ud be riding into gay Paree any day and as it was it was nip and tuck. It was cold as hell. Joe and the bosun went and drank the cognac in the galley with the cook who was an old timer who’d been in the Klondike gold rush. They had the ship to themselves because the officers were all ashore taking a look at the mademosels and everybody else was asleep. The bosun said it was the end of civilization and the cook said he didn’t give a f — k and Joe said he didn’t give a f — k and the bosun said they were a couple of goddam bolshevikis and passed out cold.

It was a funny trip round Spain and through the Straits and up the French coast to Genoa. All the way there was a single file of camouflaged freighters, Greeks and Britishers and Norwegians and Americans, all hugging the coast and creeping along with lifepreservers piled on deck and boats swung out on the davits. Passing ’em was another line coming back light, transports and colliers from Italy and Saloniki, white hospital ships, every kind of old tub out of the seven seas, rusty freighters with their screws so far out of the water you could hear ’em thrashing a couple of hours after they were hull down and out of sight. Once they got into the Mediterranean there were French and British battleships to seaward all the time and sillylooking destroyers with their long smokesmudges that would hail you and come aboard to see the ship’s papers. Ashore it didn’t look like war a bit. The weather was sunny after they passed Gibraltar. The Spanish coast was green with bare pink and yellow mountains back of the shore and all scattered with little white houses like lumps of sugar that bunched up here and there into towns. Crossing the Gulf of Lyons in a drizzling rain and driving fog and nasty choppy sea they came within an ace of running down a big felucca loaded with barrels of wine. Then they were bowling along the French Riviera in a howling northwest wind, with the redroofed towns all bright and shiny and the dry hills rising rocky behind them, and snowmountains standing out clear up above. After they passed Monte Carlo it was a circus, the houses were all pink and blue and yellow and there were tall poplars and tall pointed churchsteeples in all the valleys.

That night they were on the lookout for the big light marked on the chart for Genoa when they saw a red glare ahead. Rumor went around that the heinies had captured the town and were burning it. The second mate put up to the skipper right on the bridge that they’d all be captured if they went any further and they’d better go back and put into Marseilles but the skipper told him it was none of his goddam business and to keep his mouth shut till his opinion was asked. The glare got brighter as they not nearer. It turned out to be a tanker on fire outside the breakwater. She was a big new Standard Oil tanker, settled a little in the bows with fire pouring out of her and spreading out over the water. You could see the breakwater and the lighthouses and the town piling up the hills behind with red glitter in all the windows and the crowded ships in the harbor all lit up with the red flare.