John Passos - 1919

but today

my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off sparks in my pocket like a romancandle

I walk past the headquarters of the SOS Hay sojer your tunic’s unbuttoned (f — k you buddy) and down the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court with flowers in the middle of it the hot water gushes green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub through the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sunlight lengthens on the ceiling towel’s dry and warm smells of steam in the suitcase I’ve got a suit of civvies I borrowed from a fellow I know the buck private in the rear rank of Uncle Sam’s Medical Corps (serial number… never could remember the number anyway I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a gurgle and hiss and

having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the fat woman who swept up the towels

I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside only officers may set their whipcord behinds and order a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long pants in the iron chair

an anonymous civilian

CAN’T RECALL KILLING SISTER; CLAIMS

I’ve got the blues

I’ve got the blues

I’ve got the alcohoholic blues

SOAP CRISIS THREATENED

with the gay sunlight and the resumption of racing Paris has resumed its normal life. The thousands and thousands of flags of all nations hang on dozens of lines stretching from mast to mast making a fairylike effect that is positively astonishing

THREAT LETTERS REVEALED

I love my country indeed I do

But this war is making me blue

I like fightin fightin’s my name

But fightin is the least about this fightin game

the police found an anteroom full of mysteriouslooking packages which when opened were found full of pamphlets in Yiddish Russian and English and of membership cards for the Industrial Workers of the World

HIGH WIND INCREASES DANGER OF MEN

WHILE PEACE IS TALKED OF WORLDWIDE WAR RAGES

the agents said the arrests were ordered from the State Department. The detention was so sudden neither of the men had time to obtain his baggage from the vessel. Then came a plaintive message from two business men at Lure; the consignment had arrived, the sacks had been opened and their contents was ordinary building plaster. The huge car remained suspended in some trees upside down while the passengers were thrown into the torrent twenty feet below

Lordy, lordy, war is hell

Since he amputated my booze

OUTRAGE PERPETRATED IN SEOUL

I’ve got the alcohohoholic blues

The Department of Justice Has the Goods on the Packers According to Attorney General Palmer

L’Ecole du Malheur Nous Rend Optimistes

Unity of Free Peoples Will Prevent any Inequitable Outcome of Peace of Paris

it is only too clear that the league of nations lies in pieces on the floor of the Hotel Crillon and the modest alliance that might with advantage occupy its place is but a vague sketch

HOW TO DEAL WITH BOLSHEVISTS?

SHOOT THEM! POLES’ WAY!

Hamburg Crowds Flock to See Ford

HINTS AT BIG POOL TO DEVELOP ASIA

When Mr. Hoover said to cut our eatin down

I did it and I didn’t ever raise a frown

Then when he said to cut out coal ,

But now he’s cut right into my soul

Allons-nous Assister à la Panique des Sots?

stones were clattering on the roof and crashing through the windows and wild men were shrieking through the keyhole while enormous issues depended on them that required calm and deliberation at any rate the President did not speak to the leaders of the democratic movements

LIEBKNECHT KILLED ON WAY TO PRISON

Eveline had moved to a little place on the rue de Bussy where there was a street market every day. Eleanor to show that there was no hard feeling had given her a couple of her Italian painted panels to decorate the dark parlor with. In early November rumors of an armistice began to fly around and then suddenly one afternoon Major Wood ran into the office that Eleanor and Eveline shared and dragged them both away from their desks and kissed them both and shouted, “At last it’s come.” Before she knew it Eveline found herself kissing Major Moorehouse right on the mouth. The Red Cross office turned into a college dormitory the night of a football victory: it was the Armistice.

Everybody seemed suddenly to have bottles of cognac and to be singing, There’s a long long trail awinding or La Madellon pour nous n’est pas sévère.

She and Eleanor and J.W. and Major Wood were in a taxicab going to the Café de la Paix.

For some reason they kept getting out of taxicabs and other people kept getting in. They had to get to the Café de la Paix but whenever they got into a taxicab it was stopped by the crowd and the driver disappeared. But when they got there they found every table filled and files of people singing and dancing streaming in and out all the doors. They were Greeks, Polish legionaires, Russians, Serbs, Albanians in white kilts, a Highlander with bagpipes and a lot of girls in Alsatian costume. It was annoying not being able to find a table. Eleanor said maybe they ought to go somewhere else. J.W. was preoccupied and wanted to get to a telephone.

Only Major Wood seemed to be enjoying himself. He was a greyhaired man with a little grizzled mustache and kept saying, “Ah, the lid’s off today.” He and Eveline went upstairs to see if they could find room there and ran into two Anzacs seated on a billiard table surrounded by a dozen bottles of champagne. Soon they were all drinking champagne with the Anzacs. They couldn’t get anything to eat although Eleanor said she was starving and when J.W. tried to get into the phone booth he found an Italian officer and a girl tightly wedged together in it. The Anzacs were pretty drunk, and one of them was saying that the Armistice was probably just another bloody piece of lying propaganda; so Eleanor suggested they try to go back to her place to have something to eat. J.W. said yes, they could stop at the Bourse so that he could send some cables. He must get in touch with his broker. The Anzacs didn’t like it when they left and were rather rude.

They stood around for a long time in front of the opera in the middle of swirling crowds. The streetlights were on; the grey outlines of the opera were edged along the cornices with shimmering gas flames. They were jostled and pushed about. There were no busses, no automobiles; occasionally they passed a taxicab stranded in the crowd like a rock in a stream. At last on a side street they found themselves alongside a Red Cross staffcar that had nobody in it. The driver, who wasn’t too sober, said he was trying to get the car back to the garage and said he’d take them down to the quai de la Tournelle first.

Eveline was just climbing in when somehow she felt it was just too tiresome and she couldn’t. The next minute she was marching arm in arm with a little French sailor in a group of people mostly in Polish uniform who were following a Greek flag and singing la Brabançonne.

A minute later she realized she’d lost the car and her friends and was scared. She couldn’t recognize the streets even, in this new Paris full of arclights and flags and bands and drunken people. She found herself dancing with the little sailor in the asphalt square in front of a church with two towers, then with a French colonial officer in a red cloak, then with a Polish legionaire who spoke a little English and had lived in Newark, New Jersey, and then suddenly some young French soldiers were dancing in a ring around her holding hands. The game was you had to kiss one of them to break the ring. When she caught on she kissed one of them and everybody clapped and cheered and cried Vive l’Amerique. Another bunch came and kept on and on dancing around her until she began to feel scared. Her head was beginning to whirl around when she caught sight of an American uniform on the outskirts of the crowd. She broke through the ring bowling over a little fat Frenchman and fell on the doughboy’s neck and kissed him, and everybody laughed and cheered and cried encore. He looked embarrassed; the man with him was Paul Johnson, Don Stevens’ friend. “You see I had to kiss somebody,” Eveline said blushing. The doughboy laughed and looked pleased.