Women Wanted/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
Close Up Behind The Lines
"It is going to be perhaps a dangerous undertaking," says the French army officer the next day in the reception room at Maison de la Presse. He is speaking solemnly and impressively. "Do you still wish to go?" he asks, addressing me in particular. I look back steadily into his eyes. "Oui, Monsieur." Then his glance sweeps inquiringly the semicircle of faces. There are six journalists and a munitions manufacturer from Bridgeport, Connecticut. And they all nod assent. The room is singularly silent for an instant, the officer just standing quietly, his left hand resting on his sword-hilt. Then he turns and passes to each of us the official Permis de Correspondent de la Presse aux Armees, for our journey to Rheims the next day. And we all sign on the dotted line.
Before I retire that night I rip the pink rose from off my hat and lay out the long dark coat which is to envelop me from my neck to my heels. It is the camouflage which, in accordance with the army orders, blends one with the landscape as a means of concealment from the German gunners' range. Rheims is under bombardment. It was fired on yesterday. It may be to-morrow. There must not be, the army officer has assured us, even the flower on the lady's hat for a target.
My electric light winks once. Two minutes later it winks twice, and is gone, according to the martial law which puts out all lights in Paris from 11:30 at night until 8 o'clock in the morning. I grope my way to bed in the darkness and at 6 o'clock the next morning, I dress by candle light. I count carefully the "pieces de identitie" in the chamois safety bag that hangs over my left hip and place in my hand bag my passport and my French permis, both of which must be presented at the railway station before I can purchase a ticket. I look to make sure that the inside pocket of my purse still contains my business card with its pencilled request: "In case of death or disaster kindly notify the Pictorial Review, New York City." And as I pass the porter's desk at the hotel entrance I leave with the sleepy concierge one other last message: "If Mme. Daggett has not returned by midnight, will the hotel management kindly communicate with her friend Mme. Marie Perrin, 12 Rue Ordener?" All these are precautions that you take lest you be lost in the great European war.
The Gare l'Est is crowded always with throngs of soldiers arriving and departing for the front. It is necessary that our party assemble as early as seven o'clock to get in line at the ticket window for the eight o'clock train, for every traveller's credentials must be separately and carefully read and inspected. At Epernay, where we alight at 10:30, the station platform is densely packed with French soldiers in the sky blue uniforms that have been so carefully matched with the horizon color of France. A debonnair French captain has been appointed by the French government to receive us. He is in full uniform, splendid scarlet trousers and gold braided coat, with his left breast ornamented with the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de Honneur. After the formal salutations are over, however, his orderly envelops all of the captain's splendour too in the long sky blue coat for camouflage against the Germans. And we start for Rheims in the convoy of three luxuriously appointed "camoens," the limousines placed at our disposal by the government. They, too, are painted blue grey to blend with the landscape, and each flies a little French flag.
"Ou allez vous, Monsieur?" the sentry at the bridge of Epernay challenges our chauffeur. And the French captain himself leans from the window to answer, "À Rheims. Une mission de la gouvernement." So we pass sentry after sentry. It is 15 miles to Rheims. This is the Department of the Marne, with the vineyards that have produced the most famous wines of the world. The "smiling countryside of France," the poets have termed it. In September, 1914, history changed it to the grim field of carnage running red with the blood of civilisation that here made its stand against the onrushing Huns. Right across that valley see the battlefield of the Marne. Along this road the German army passed. From this little village that we are entering, all the inhabitants fled before their approach. The enemy now is not far away. Over there, just against that horizon, lie the trenches they now occupy. See this roadside along which we are driving, how it is curiously hung with linen curtains? They are strung on wires fifteen feet high. For miles we ride behind them. It is the camouflage, the French captain says, that hides us from German view. We have just emerged from the forest at the edge of the Mountain of Rheims when, hark! Hear it—the sharp, distinct sound of an explosion! What is it? Where is it? The captain lays his hand reassuringly on my arm: "It is, I think, a tire that has burst on the rear car."
"Captain," I say, "no automobile tire I ever heard sounded exactly like that."
"You are not nervous?" he asks. I shake my head. "Well," he admits, "it is sometimes that the Germans do take a chance shot at this road."
But at Rheims when we arrive, I notice that all our automobile tires are quite intact. We enter the city through the great bronze gate, the finishing ornaments of which have been nicked off by German shells. We stand in the midst of a scene of desolation that looks like the ruins of some long ago civilisation. Once, before this world that men had builded began to go to pieces, even as the blocks that children pile tumble to a nursery floor, here was a populous busy city of some 120,000 souls. Now our footsteps echo through deserted streets. Not a man or woman or child is in sight. The grass is growing in the pavement there between the streetcar tracks. The Hotel de Ville is only a shell of a building with the outer walls standing. This shop is shuttered tight. The next has the entire front gone, blown away in a bombardment. There are empty houses from which the occupants have months ago fled. Here stands the skeleton of a pretentious residence, the roof gone and the front riddled: we look directly in on the second-story room with a dresser and a bed in disarray. There a curtain from a deserted little front parlour flaps dismally through a shattered window-pane almost in our faces. Here above the cellar-grating of a house in ruins, there arises a sickening odour. We look at each other in questioning horror; perhaps the military with the pick and spade assigned to disinterment duty after some bombardment did not dig deep enough here. But the captain does not wish to understand and hurries us along to the next street.
A CRUMBLING CIVILISATION
In the ghastly stillness of this city that was once Rheims, at last there is a sound of life. Down the Rue de la Paix, the street of peace, an army supply-wagon clatters past us. And you have no idea how pleasant can be the sound even of noise.
Then across the way appears a miIk-woman, pushing her cart with four tin cans and jingling a little bell. There are a few people, it seems, still left, employés in the champagne industry, who cling to their homes even though they must live in the cellar. Now the devastation increases and the houses begin to be mere rubbish heaps of brick and mortar as we approach the Place de la Cathédrale.
At length we stand before the famous Cathedral of Rheims itself. I know of no more impressive place to be in the closing days of the year 1916 than here at the front of the terrible world war.
In this edifice is symbolised all that civilisation of ours that culminated in the Twentieth Century, now to be razed to the ground. For lo, these seven hundred years, even as the two great towers above us have lifted the infinite beauty of their architectural lace-work against the blue-domed sky, some thirty generations of the human soul have sent their aspirations heavenward on the incense of prayer. Over these very stones beneath our feet, king after king of France has walked, to receive the crown of Charlemagne and to be anointed before this altar from "le sainte ampouli." And now here to-day is history in no dead and musty pages but in the making, white-hot from the anvil of the hour! Only a little overa mile away are the German guns that from day to day shower the shell-fire of their destruction on the city. This spot upon which we stand is their particular objective point of attack. Hear! There is a rumbling detonation. We wait hushed for an instant. But the sound is not repeated. You see, already there have been some 30,000 shells poured on Rheims. Twelve hundred fell in one day only. At any moment there may be more.
"If the bombardment should begin," we had been instructed at Maison de la Presse, "you would rush for the nearest cellar." I think we all have listening ears. Every little while there is certainly repeated that desultory firing on the front.
But nothing is dropping on us. And reassured, we turn to examine the great shell hole in the pavement not five yards distant. The Archbishop's Palace, immediately adjoining the church, is flat on the ground in ruins. The cathedral itself is slowly being wrecked. But in the public square directly before it, look here! See Joan of Arc on her horse triumphantly facing the future! In her hand she is waving the bright flag of France. Amid the débris of the great war piling up about her, the famous statue stands absolutely untouched. Here at the very storm centre of the attack on civilisation, with the hell-fire of the enemy falling in a rain of thousands of shells about her, she seems as secure, as safe under God's heaven as when the people passed daily before her to prayer. Shall we not call it a miracle?
"See," says the captain, his head reverently uncovered, his eyes shining, "our Maid of Orleans. No German shall ever harm her!" And since the war began, it is true, no German ever has. Not a statue of the famous girl-warrior anywhere in France has been so much as scratched by the enemy. Her name was the password on the day of the Battle of the Marne and there are those who think it was the shadowy figure of a girl on a horse that led the troops to that victory. Oh, though cathedrals may crumble and cities be laid waste and fields be devastated, some time again it shall be well with the world. For the faith of the people of France in Joan of Arc shall never pass away.
That we realize, as we look on the rapt face of the captain who leads us now within the great church itself, where for three years all prayers have ceased. The marvellous stained glass from the thirteenth century, which made the religious light of the beautiful windows, now hangs literally in tatters like torn bed-quilts blowing in the wind. That great jagged hole in the roof was torn by a shell at the last bombardment. There are fissures in the side walls. The rain comes in, and the birds. Doves light there on the transept rail. Amid the rubbish of broken saints with which the floor is littered, there yet stands here and there a sorrowful statue hung with the garland of faded flowers reminiscent of some far-off fête day. And Requiescat in pace, you may read the legend cut in the stone of the eastern wall above the tomb of some Christian Father.
In the nearby Rue du Cardinal de Lorraine, in a garden saying his rosary, walks an old man in a red cap, one of the few remaining residents who will not leave the city. He is the venerable Mgr. Lucon, Cardinal of Rheims. Always he is praying, praying to God to spare the cathedral. And God does not. "I do not understand. I suppose that He in His wisdom must have some purpose in permitting the church to be destroyed," says the Cardinal of Rheims. "I do not understand," he always adds humbly.
"One may not understand," repeats the captain. And he takes us to luncheon at the Lion d'Or, the little inn where the wife of the proprietor still stays to serve any "mission of the French gouvernement." Then he shows us the famous champagne cellars of the Etablissement Pommery. Here one hundred feet below the ground, in the chalk caves built a thousand years ago by the Romans, are twelve miles of subterranean passageways with thirteen million bottles of the most celebrated champagne in the making.
The superintendent pours out his choicest brand: "Vive la France and the Allies," he says, lifting his glass. He talks more English than the captain can. He is telling us of when the Germans entered Rheims. "Four officers," he says, "came riding ahead of the army. And I met them by chance just as they arrived in the market place of Rheims."
"What did you do?" asks the New York correspondent of the London Daily Mail. "I wept," says the Frenchman, simply and impressively. "Gentlemen," he adds solemnly and sadly, "I hope you may never meet some day four conquering Chinamen riding up Broadway."
I find myself catching my breath suddenly at that. And I am glad when the captain hums a gay little French tune and holds out his glass a second time: "Give us again 'Vive la France.'"
The sun is dipping red in the west when we turn to leave Rheims and Joan of Arc bravely flying the French flag before its crumbling cathedral. There is the rumble of guns once more at the front. Then the winter dusk rapidly envelops the road along which we are speeding. It is the same road to Epernay. But now it is alive with traffic. Under the protecting cover of the soft darkness, all sorts of vehicles are passing. The headlights of our car flash on a continuous procession of motor-lorries, munition-wagons, army supply-wagons, tractors, and peasants' carts carrying produce to market. So we arrive at Epernay for a lunch of red wine and war bread at the little station. By ten o'clock we are safely within the walls of Paris. We have escaped bombardment!
It is two days later before the French official communiqué in the daily papers begins again recording: "At Rheims toward six o'clock last night, after a violent attack with trench mortars, the Germans twice stormed our advance posts. But these two attempts completely failed under our machine-gun fire and grenade bombing."
DIFFICULT DAYS IN THE WAR ZONE
It isn't what happens necessarily. It's what's always-going-to-happen that keeps one guessing between life and death in a war zone. And there are special torments of the inquisition devised for journalists. Ordinary civilians are occupied only with saving their lives. Journalists must save their notes.
At half-past eleven o'clock that night of my return from Rheims, there is dropped in the mail box on my hotel room door, a cablegram from America: "Steamship St. Louis here. Your material from London not on it." The room in which I stand, the Hotel Regina, and the city of Paris all reel unsteadily for an instant. Has the British Government eaten up all my journalistic findings so preciously entrusted to Wellington House? I grasp the brass foot rail of the bed and bring myself upstanding. If they have, it is no time for me to lose my head.
Jacques with the empty coat sleeve and the Croix de Guerre on his breast, who operates the elevator, I am sure thinks it a woman demented who is going out in the streets of Paris alone at midnight. But "an Americaine," one can never tell what "an Americaine" will do. "Pardon," he says hesitatingly as I step out, "madame knows the hour?" Yes, madame knows the hour. But an alien may not send a telegram without presenting a passport, the document that never for an instant goes out of one's personal possession. No messenger can do this errand for me.
Five minutes later I am in a taxicab tearing down the Rue Quatre Septembre to the cable office in the Bourse. My appeal for help to Sir Gilbert Parker in London is being counted on the blue telegraph blank by the operator at the little window, when suddenly I remember I have forgotten. My hand feels helplessly over my left hip where there is concealed a letter of credit for three thousand dollars. But I falter, "I haven't any money, that is, where I can get at it."
"I have," speaks a voice over my shoulder. I look around into a man's cheerful countenance. "What's the damage?" he says again in pleasant Manhattan English. I hesitate only for an instant. "It's sixteen francs I need."
He promptly pulls out his bank-roll. I ask for his card, of course, to return the loan the next day with many thanks for his courtesy. He, however, has no security that I will. As he puts me in my taxicab and lifts his hat beneath the faint war-dimmed light of the street lamps in the dark Rue Vivienne, he only knows that I am his countrywoman. And he is an American man. The Lord seems to send them when you need them most.
Three days later the awful silence in which I am suffering all the fears there are for a journalist in war-time, is broken by a reply from London: "Material only delayed. Sailed steamship New York instead of St. Louis." After another two weeks of fitful nights in which I dream of men in khaki who confiscate journalistic data, there comes the message from New York that is like hearing from Heaven: "Your consignment of material safely arrived." Meanwhile, before I may be permitted to take a line out of this country, Maison de la Presse must pass on my French data. I am feverishly editing it for their approval when there is a knock at my door. The maid is there with more letters than the little brass mail-box will hold. I eagerly open my American mail to find it filled with holiday greetings. So, it can still be Christmas somewhere in the world! I am standing at the window with a Christmas card in my hand, thinking pleasant thoughts of the faraway city called New York where there is still peace on earth, good-will to men, when down the Rue de Rivoli passes a motor-lorry piled high with black crosses. There are fields in France that are planted with black crosses, acres and acres of them. After each new push on the front, more are required, black crosses by the cartload! I glanced at my calendar. Why, to-day is Christmas! I had quite forgotten. You see, over here all joy-making occasions seem to have been such a long while ago, like the stories of once upon a time.
I turn once more to the task of making ready my data for Maison de la Presse. Here a too colourful sentence must be rejected. There is a too flagrantly feministic document that will be safest in the waste basket. It is the martial mind that I must meet. A press bureau, you see, is prepared to pass promptly propaganda on the battles of the Somme. But dare one risk, say, a pamphlet on the breast feeding of infants? Propaganda about the rising value of a baby! Dear, dear, it might, for all a man could tell, be treason, seditious material calculated to give aid and comfort to the enemy! Already to my inquiries about maternity measures in Paris, have I not been answered suspiciously: "But why do you ask? This matter it is not of the war."
My emasculated data at last are ready for review by le chef du service de la presse. He stamps it all over with his signature in red ink. It is done up in packages and officially sealed in red wax with the seal of the state of France. At the Post Office in the Rue Etienne Marcel, I register it and mail it, committing it with a sigh to the mercies of the great Atlantic.
DEALING WITH GOVERNMENT
Having crossed the Channel once alive, it seems like tempting fate to try it again. I draw in my breath as one about to plunge into a cold bath in the morning, and go out to secure from three governments the necessary permission that will allow me to return to England. From the police alone it sometimes takes eight days to secure this concession. But at the Prefecture of Police, they read my letter of introduction from the French consul in New York. And I have only to leave my photograph and sign on the dotted line. In five minutes they have given my passport the necessary visé. The American consul easily enough adds his. All my journey apparently is going as pleasantly as a summer holiday planned by a Cook's Agency, when at length I come up with a bump against the British Control office in the Rue Cheveaux Lagarde. And the going away from here requires some negotiations. The British lieutenant in charge reads my nice French letter and without comment tosses it aside. "You wish to go to London?" he asks in great surprise. "Now, why should you wish to go to London?" He gives me distinctly to understand this is not the open season for tourists in England. "We don't care to have people travelling," he says in a tone of voice as if that settles it. "Why have you come over here in these difficult and dangerous times, anyhow?" he asks querulously and a trifle suspiciously. "The best thing you can do is to go home directly. And America is right across the water from here."
"But, Lieutenant," I gasp, "my trunk is in England and I've got to have a few clothes."
"No," he says, "personal reasons like that don't interest the British Government. Neither am I able to understand a journalistic mission which should take a woman travelling in these days of war." He looks at me. "The New Position of Women! It is not of sufficient interest to the British Government that I should let you go," he says with finality.
"I know, Lieutenant," I agree. "But surely you are interested in the Allies' war propaganda for the United States?" The light from the window shines full on his face and I can see a faint relaxation about the lines of his mouth. "Now I wish to go to England so that I may tell the story of the British women's war work. The readers of Pictorial Review are four million women who vote." The lieutenant stirs visibly. His sword rattles against the rounds of his chair.
Well, my request hangs in the balance like this for a week. At length one day he says, "I'm thinking about letting you go. I shall have to consult with my superior officer. I don't at all know that he will consent."
There is the day that I have almost given up hope. I am waiting again before the lieutenant's desk. He has gone for a last consultation with the superior officer. Will he never come back? I stare at his empty chair. The clock on the mantel ticks and ticks. The fire in the grate snaps and snaps. Other people at the next desk who get easier visés than mine, come and go—a Red Cross nurse, two French sisters of charity, a little French boy returning to school. I have counted the pens in the lieutenant's glass tray. I know every blot on his desk-pad. The clock has ticked thirty-five minutes of suspense for me before the little French soldier in red trousers opens the door and the lieutenant is here.
"Well," he says, "we have decided. You are to be permitted to go, but on one condition." And he visés my passport, "No return to France during the period of the war."
It has taken nearly two weeks to win my case. Two days later at 6 a. m., when the gardens of the Tuileries are outlined dimly against the faint rays of dawn, my taxicab is reeling through the streets of Paris to the Gare St. Lazare. It is noon before the train reaches Havre. The Red Cross nurse, the London newspaper correspondent and the Belgian airman all file out of our compartment and the Irish major from Salonica is last. He turns to me with a frank Irish smile: "Your bag can just as well go along with my military luggage. And they'll never even open it."
At eight o'clock that night in Havre, my passport and the letter from the French consul in New York are handed down the steel line of ten men at a table. Each looks up with the same curious smile when his glance arrives at the last visé: "Who put that on your passport?" asks the officer at the head of the line. "The British Control Office?" he says with heat. "It's none of their business." In an inner room, four more men examine my documents. "Did the British officer see this letter from the French consul?" I am asked. I nod assent. A laugh goes round the room. "Pardon, madame," says the man with the most gold braid, "the British Control Office does not control France. You are welcome to France, madame, welcome to France any time you choose to come."
That is the War Office that speaks. So, with the French Government's cordial invitation ringing pleasantly in my ears, I go on board the Channel boat. But I have no intention of returning to France right away, gentlemen. I lay out my life-preserver with a feeling of great relief that if I survive this crossing, it will not have to be done over again. And once more the boat in the darkness steals safely and silently across the Channel.
In the morning, in Southampton, the major from Salonica hands me his card: "Letters," he says, a trifle wistfully, "will always reach me at that address." I look at the card here before me on my desk as I write and I wonder. The major with his Irish smile may now be lying dead on the field of battle somewhere on the front. In the midst of life we are in death almost anywhere in the world to-day.
THE STAFF OF THE GREAT WOMEN'S WAR HOSPITAL IN ENDEL STREET, LONDON
This is the shining citadel that marks the capitulations the world over of the medical profession to the new woman movement.
IN COLDEST ENGLAND
I have again "established my residence" with the police in London. I feel on terms of the most intimate acquaintance with the London police. So many of them have my photograph and are conversant with all the biographical and genealogical details of my life. You have to do it, register at a police station, every time you change your hotel. I have moved so often, I am nervous lest I seem like a German spy. But at the Bow Street Station, the officer in charge just nods genially: "Oh, that's quite all right. Looking for more heat, aren't you? I know. You Americans are all alike."
Have you ever shivered in London in January? Then you don't know what it is to be cold, not even when the thermometer drops to zero and New York's all snowed in but the subway, and the street cleaning department has to spend a million dollars to dig you out of the drifts. Yes, I know about the Gulf Stream. It does pleasantly moderate the outdoor climate so that it is never really winter in England. But the Gulf Stream does not get into their houses. I was a luncheon guest the other day at a residence with a crest on its note-paper. The hostess put on a wrap to pass down the staircase from the drawing-room to the dining-room, and with my bronchitis—all Americans get it in London—I was simply unable to remove my coat at all. This mansion, English ivy-covered, and mildewed with ages of aristocracy, has never had a real fire within its walls. There are only the tiny grate fires which are, as it were, mere ornaments beneath the mantelpiece. The drawing-room fire is lighted only just before the guests arrive: the men with lifted coat-tails back up to it, their hands crossed behind them spread to the blaze; the dog and the cat draw near to the fender; conversation about the fire becomes general in the tone of voice, well, in which one might admire a rare sunset. The dining-room fire, likewise, is lighted only just before the butler announces luncheon. And in all this grand mansion you discover there isn't any place to be warm, unless perchance the cook in the kitchen may have it.
Well, English hotels strive to be as coldly correct as this English high life. And I have suffered cold storage in Piccadilly at the rate of ten dollars a day as long as my bronchitis will bear it. I ought to be ill in bed at this moment. But I can't be. There isn't a hospital bed in Europe without a wounded soldier in it. Schools, orphanages, monasteries, country residences, castles and many hotels have been turned into hospitals, all of them full of soldiers. A civilian who may be ill literally has not where to lay his head. So I set out desperately to find heat in London. I think I have searched every hotel from Mayfair to Bloomsbury Square. As a special concession to American patronage a few of them have put steam-heat on their letter-heads, "central heat," they call it. But all European radiators, when there are any, are as reluctant as their elevators. "Lifts" move under groaning protest and if they go up, they let you know they do not expect to come down. The radiators are equally as sullen about radiating. They don't want to at all. English radiators are such toy affairs as to be incapable of any real action. They are so small they get lost behind the furniture. At the Hyde Park Hotel, the clerk and I hunted all over the place: "I'm sure we used to have them," he said. At last our search was rewarded. We found the one that was to keep me warm. It was behind the dresser and such a miniature affair, you'd surely have guessed Santa Claus must have left it for the children at Christmas time.
Some one advised me that English hotels really didn't do steam heat well and the best way to be warm was to go to Brown's, which is famous for its grate fires. The Queen of Holland and the English nobility always stop at Brown's. So I tried Brown's. I bought all the "coals" the management would sell at one time and tipped the maid liberally to start the fire in my room. To maintain the temperature anything above fifty, I had to sit by the grate and keep putting on the coals myself. In the bathroom there was no heat at all. "Oh, yes, there was," the management argued; "didn't the hot water pipe for the bath come right up through the floor?" No, they insisted, there couldn't be any fire in the grate in the bathroom—because there never had been since Brown's began. Why, probably the hotel would burn up with so much heat as that.
So I moved on and on. At last I came in the Strand to the Savoy, where all Americans eventually arrive. It is the only hotel in England with real steam-heat. Just pull out your dresser and your wash-stand. Concealed behind each you will discover a radiator, warm, real, life-size! Eureka! It is the only modern-comfort temperature in London. I am able to remove sundry clothing accessories of Shetland wool accumulated at Selfridge's Department Store in Oxford Street. And for the first time since my arrival on these shores I am sitting in my hotel room unwrapped in either a rose satin down bed-quilt or a steamer-rug. My soul once more uncurls itself for work. It is wonderful to be warm to-day, even if one must be drowned by the Germans to-morrow.
GREATEST DRAMA IN HISTORY
It begins to look gravely as if one may be. Out there in the yellow fog beyond my window, more and more ominous are the posters that come hourly drifting down the Strand from Fleet Street. Germany has announced to the world that she is going to do her worst. And she begins to tune her submarines for the sink-on-sight frightfulness more terrible than any that has preceded. The Dutch boats stop. The Scandinavian boats stop. The American boats stop. The entire ocean is now blanketed in one danger zone.
All the world's a stage of swift-moving events, the greatest and most terrible spectacle that has ever put on since civilisation began. And we in London are spectators before a drop-curtain tight buttoned down at the corners! It is lifted now and then by the hand of the censor to reveal only what the Government decides is good for the people to see. The plain citizen in London has no means of knowing how much it is that he does not know. It was six months after the Battle of Ypres had occurred before the English newspapers got around to mention the event. So you see with what a baffling sense of futility it is that one scans the newspapers here now while history is making so fast that a new page is turned every day. I am hungry for a real live paper, bright yellow from along Park Row. And over my breakfast coffee at the Savoy I have only the London Times, gravely discussing by the column, "What Is Religion?" and "The Value of Tudor Music," while the rest of the world is breathless before a Russian revolution, later to be given out in London exactly a week old.
But there is news that even the censor is playing up with a lavish hand. The Strand streams with the posters: "The United States on the Verge of War." My official permit from Downing Street to go to Holland has arrived in the morning's mail. I cannot get there. I cannot get to Scandinavia. Can I get home? It is the question that is agitating a number of Americans abroad. We watchfully wait for a warship to convoy us. But scan the Atlantic as we may from day to day, there is none arriving. The folks back home have a way of forgetting that we are here. Those that do remember are saying it serves us right. We had ho business to come in war-time. Sixteen Americans at the Savoy every day rush to read the news bulletins that hourly are tacked up in the lounge. But the wheels of government at Washington move so slowly. The Senate only debates and debates. And there is nothing said about us! Will it be possible to flag the attention of Congress? The same idea occurs simultaneously to Senator Hale in Paris and to several of us in London. This is the answer to my cabled inquiry to Washington: "Your request the fifth. Impracticable send warship convoy American liner bringing Americans back from Europe. Signed, Robert Lansing, Secretary of State."
So, that's settled. The only way for any of us to get away from here will be just—to go. And I begin to. There is myself to get home, and my data. Three consignments have already gone over under special government auspices. But there have been anxious periods of waiting before a cable, "Stuff safe," has reached me. I am going to sink or swim with the remainder of it. Wellington House arranges with the censor at Strand House. There the material is read and done up in packages, in each of which is enclosed a letter with the War Office Stamp: "Senior Aliens Officer. Port of Embarkation. Please allow the package in which this is enclosed to accompany bearer Mrs. M. P. Daggett as personal luggage. This package has been examined by the censorship." All these data are now packed in a suitcase that stands in my hotel room awaiting my departure.
When I was caught in the homeward rush of Americans from London in 1914, the steamship offices in Cockspur Street were jammed to the doors. To-day they are silent, empty, echoing places. In 1917 it is such a life and death matter to travel, that most people don't. So grave is the danger that the Government refuses to permit passports at all for English women. But for me, this that I am facing is the risk of my trade in war-time.
To-day I had a letter from my New York office:
"The best thing for you to do is to get home as quick as you can. Wouldn't it be safest by way of Spain? Any way of course is taking a chance and a big one. I wish to the Lord you were here, safe and sound. But there isn't a darn thing any of us can do about getting you back. You have either got to take your life in your hands and take a chance coming back, or stay in London. And God knows when this war is going to end now!"
It is "safest by way of Spain." Ambassador Gerard getting home from Germany selected that route. But my passport, I remember, is black-marked, "No return to France." And I shall have the British Foreign Office to explain to before I can reach my French friends who so cordially invited my return. There will be altogether some four steel lines to pass that way. I'd rather face the submarines. The Spanish boats are small, only about 4,000 tons, which would be like crossing the Atlantic in a bathtub. I'd rather be drowned than seasick. I think I shall make sure of comfort by a British boat.
And then—the posters in the Strand begin to announce, "Seven ships sunk to-day." Four Dutch boats trying for their home port, are submarined in English waters. The Laconia goes down. The Anchor liner California meets her fate. It's real, I tell you, on this side where they're daily bringing in the survivors. About nine hours in the open boats is the usual experience for the rescued. Do you see the deterring, dampening effect that this might have on one's enthusiasm for departure?
FACING LIFE OR DEATH?
This is the month of March. Oh, wouldn't it be well to wait until the water is warmer? It's a disquieting sensation to wake up in the night and meditate on whether, say, a week or ten days from now, you may find yourself at the bottom of the Atlantic. In this state of low depression, you decide to live a little longer. And so to-morrow you select a little later date for your sailing. Then the arrival of American mail proves that at least one more boat has run the blockade and escaped the submarines. Yours might.
So I take my courage in both hands, and my passport, too, and buy my ticket. When I have done this, a nice, quiet calm possesses me. It is as if I had been a long time dying. Now it is over and finished. I have nothing more to do about it. I pack my trunk just curiously wondering, shall I ever wear this gown again? Or shall I not? Oh, well, it is such a relief to be going away from all this Old World grief. Are the war clouds gathering over New York, too? But I still can see the city all golden in the sunlight beneath the clear blue sky.
Last night I was awakened at twelve o'clock by the sounds of a gay supper party's revelry in some room down my corridor. Which of the staid American gentlemen at this hotel is celebrating? Listen. They are singing, evidently with lifted glasses: "Hail, hail, the gang's all here." Not to the national anthem could my heart thrill more than to Tammany's own classic refrain. New York! New York! Not all the Kaiser's submarines can stop me from starting.
I may not send word of the steamship or the date of my departure. But I cable my home office: "If I do not succeed in reporting to you myself, apply for the latest information of my movements, to the International Franchise Club, 9 Grafton Street, London." You see, if I should get the last Long Assignment. …
There are only sixteen first-class passengers for this trip on the Carmania in her grim grey war-paint. Two of us are women, at whom the rest stare with curious interest. Each of us as we step aboard is handed a lifeboat ticket. Mine reads: "R. M. S. Carmania. Name, Mrs. M. P. Daggett, Boat No. 5."
I think I know now how a person feels who is going to his execution. We who walk up this steamship gangway are under sentence of death by the German Government. The old Latin proverb flashes into my mind: "Morituri te salutamus." It is we who may be about to die who salute each other here on the Carmania and then we are facing the steel line. Four British officers with swords at their sides and pistols in their belts wait for us in the drawing-room. All the other passengers go easily by but the New York Jewish gentleman with the German name. At last he, too, clears. But the British Government is not yet finished with a journalist. The Tower of London and its damp dark dungeons is again materialising clearly for me.
The lieutenant has been questioning me for half-an-hour. "I'm sorry," he says, "but I think I shall have to have you searched. This suitcase of journalistic data, you say that there is inside each package a note stating that the material has been passed by the Government? Why isn't that note on the outside of the package?"
"I don't know," I answer earnestly. "It's the question I asked in vain at Strand House. The censor said that it had to be this way. I assure you the note is there. But if you break the outside seal to find out, my government guarantee is gone. And if this boat by any chance goes to Halifax, how are they to know there that I'm not a German spy?"
The lieutenant's eyes are on my face. I think he believes I am telling the truth. "Well," he orders his corporal, "go to her stateroom with her and have a look at her luggage." The corporal is very nice. He finds a blank note book in my trunk. "You aren't supposed to have this," he says. And there is a package of business correspondence. "Did you tell him out there about these letters? Well, you needn't. And I won't." At the suitcase with the magic seals he gives only one glance. To his superior officer, when we return, the corporal reports: "Everything's quite all right. Stuff's stamped all over with the seal of the War Office."
The lieutenant looks at his watch. "I had breakfast at seven. It's now one o'clock. That's lunch time."
"Don't let me detain you," I suggest pleasantly. He shakes his head. "I've got to put this job through."
I am this job. But the lieutenant has smiled. The conversation eases up. "Pretty good suffrage data down at the Houses of Parliament," he himself suggests. "Do you know, I'm almost willing now that women should vote. I didn't used to be. But the war has changed my mind.
"By the way," he asked suddenly, "you're not mixed up with any of those militants, are you?" I explain that I am not a suffragette, just a plain suffragist. "Because I think those militants ought to be shot," he adds. I can only bite my tongue. Has the lieutenant no sense of humour? No militant in Holloway Jail was ever more militant than he is with his sword and pistol at this moment.
"There's a question I'd like to ask," he goes on. "In your country where women have the franchise, do you find that they all vote alike?" "No more than all the men," I answer. "Then that's all right," he says in a relieved tone. "I've been afraid that if we let women vote, they might all vote against war."
SHALL WE GO DOWN OR ACROSS?
"You really aren't a militant, are you?" he says again, thoughtfully. "Well, I'll let you go." So that's my last steel line.
The boat begins to move in the Mersey. And the ship's siren sounds shrilly. It is the summons to shipwreck drill. We assemble quickly in the lounge on the top deck, every one wearing a life-preserver. At a second call of the siren, we file out following the captain's lead, to stand by our boats in which the crew are already clambering to their oars.
So now we know how for the moment of disaster. The whole steamship waits for it. This is a weird voyage that we begin. Mine-sweepers out there ahead of us are cleaning up the seas. A Scandinavian boat has just been sowing mines all over the water. The Baltic, here beside us, poked her nose out yesterday, scented danger and returned to the river. We wait now in the Mersey twenty-four hours before the mysterious signal is given that it is the propitious moment for our boat to get away. We steal softly to sea under cover of a dense fog and a white snow-storm. The sea-gulls are screaming shrilly above us like birds of prey. And we who look into each other's eyes are facing we know not whither, it may be America or the Farthest Country of all.
Three men pace the wind-swept captain's bridge, scanning the horizon, and there are always two clinging in the crow's nest in the icy gale. This boat is manned by a pedigreed crew. From the captain to the last cabin-boy, everybody has been torpedoed at least once. The Marconi operator never smiles. He sits at his instrument with a grey, drawn look about his young boyish mouth. He was on the Lusitania when she went down. He was the last man off the Laconia the other day. The wrinkled suit he's wearing is the one they picked him up in out of the sea.
For two days out, we have the little destroyers with us, and then we are left to our luck and the gun in front and the watching men aloft. The lifeboats are always swung out on their davits for the siren's sudden call. The doors of the upper deck stand open, waiting beside each a preparedness exhibit, boxes of biscuit, flasks of brandy, and a pile of blankets we are to seize as we run. We two women have filled the pockets of our steamer-coats with safety-pins, hairpins and a comb, first aid that no one remembers to bring when they pick you up from the open boat. My fellow traveller is huddling very close to her six-foot husband, to be tucked safely under his arm at the emergency moment. It is good that we are having rough weather. When the waves are tossing high, the periscopes may not find us.
We are sixteen people who wander like disembodied spirits from the gay days of old through these great empty rooms that once rang with the joy of hundreds of tourists on their pleasure-jaunts over the world. There are no games. There is no dancing. There is no band. There are no steamer-chairs on deck. At sundown we are closed in tight behind iron shutters. No one may so much as light a cigaret outside.
In the ghastly silence of the days that pass, there is only the strain and quiver of the ship, and the solemn boom, boom of the sea. Death is so near that it seems fitting the glad activities of life should cease, as when a corpse is laid out in the front room of a house. For a while there is a tendency to whisper, as if we were at a funeral, or as if, perchance, the Germans in the sea could hear. But soon we find ourselves functioning quite normally. Not until the sixth day out, it is true, does any one venture to take a bath. You don't want to be rushed like that, you know, to your drowning. But we are sleeping regularly at night. We eat bacon and eggs for breakfast as usual. We are pleased when there is turkey and cranberry sauce for dinner. One does not maintain an agony of suspense forever. For most of us, I think it began to end when we had committed ourselves to the decision of this voyage. After that, the issue rests with God or with destiny, according to one's religion.
There is no attempt at dressing for dinner on the Carmania. Evening dress and all the time dress is life-preservers. We do not take them off even at night for a while. We sleep in them. With the new styles, of which there are many, you can. Mine is a garment that buttons up exactly like a man's vest. Next to the lining is a padded filling, an Indian vegetable matter that will keep one afloat like cork. To-day one desires the latest modern devices against death. A life-preserver costs anywhere from five to fifteen dollars. You carry yours with you as you do your toothbrush and your steamer-rug.
Time ticks off the minutes to life or to death to-morrow. We walk the decks and scan a nearly deserted ocean. Only twice do we sight a steamship on the horizon. At table we discuss as one does usually, oh, immortality and Christian Science and, woman suffrage. The Englishman says, "Votes for women are really impossible, don't you know. Why, if the British women had voted twelve years ago, there might not have been any battleships in 1914. And then where would England have been to-day?"
"But if the German women too had voted twelve years ago, have you thought how much happier the world might be to-day?" I ask. The Englishman does not see the point but the American at my left says, "Guess you handed him one that time."
On April sixth the Cunard Bulletin, the wireless newspaper, is laid beside our plates at breakfast with the announcement that's thrilled around a world, "The United States has declared for war." The Englishman next me says, "That must be a great relief for you." And I cannot answer for the choking in my throat. My country, oh, my country, too, at the gates of hell to go in regiment by regiment!
On Sunday the English clergyman reads the service including the phrases in brackets: "God save the King (and the President of the United States). Vanquish their enemies and preserve them in felicity." Down beneath the sea the Germans in their submarines too are praying like that to the same God. But one hopes, oh, one earnestly hopes, that God will not hear them.
After the sixth day out, we have probably escaped the submarines. The American men are no longer kindly asking me in anxious tone, "You're not nervous, are you?" On the eighth day they get out the shuffleboard. Two mornings later when we awake, the sea is a beautiful blue, all dimpling with sparkling points of golden light. It is real New York sunlight again! The captain comes down from the pilot-house smiling: "Well, we got away this time," he says.
The Statue of Liberty is rising on the horizon. The Manhattan sky-line etches itself against the heavens. Do you know, I'd rather be a doorkeeper here at Ellis Island, than a lady-in-waiting anywhere in Europe. The Carmania warps into dock in sight of the Metropolitan Tower. Was Fourteenth Street ever cheap, common, sordid? As my taxicab rolls across town, see how beautiful, oh, see how beautiful is Fourteenth street, a little landscape cross-section right out of Paradise! Nobody here is blinded, nobody maimed, nobody in crepe, nobody broken-hearted—yet. I have escaped from a nightmare of the Middle Ages. I lift my face to the sunlight again.
I know I am tired, terribly tired of doing difficult things and saving my life from day to day. But I have not realised how near collapse I am until I drop in a chair before the Editor's deck in the office of the Pictorial Review. I, who have been so crazy to get to the country where there is still free speech, that I had insanely hoped to stand in Broadway and shout, have suddenly lost my voice. I can only report in a whisper!
My chief looks at me in concern. "For God's sake, girl," he says, "go somewhere and go to bed!"