Believe You Me!

by Nina Wilcox Putnam

I

Palatial Apartments,
0256 Riverside Drive,
New York City,
U. S. A. America.

(Kindly forward if on tower)
Passed by censor.

Dear Mary:

Well say little one, I am certainly glad your health, new contracts and the two fool dogs is both doing so nicely and as for the cigarettes they were O.K. not to say swell. Only dearie, it ain't hardly necessary to have my monogram on the next lot for Fritz has never waited for me to catch up to him so's I could offer him one and he's about the only person would be impressed by the J. La T. because our own boys kid me about any little thing like that on account of their knowing me to be your dancing-partner and not to mention husband and they are still slow to realize that it takes a real he-man to swing you around my neck twenty times like we do in the Tango de Lux, and I have to continually keep showing them.

Then another good reason for no gold monogram is that the price of same would cover quite a bunch of cheap smokes and dearie handing them about is more to me than my own personal vanity and would be the same with my shirts if necessary, while over here in distant Belgium I realise it was also a waste to have them embroidered on the sleeve because the dam chinaman always used to mark them up with monograms of his own anyways.

Speaking of money we used to spend on un-essentials before the war, I tell you dearie we certainly learn in the army, especially since getting into this recaptured territory, that many objects we would have swore could not be done without is laid off like the extra people after the ball-room scene and nobody misses them until somebody sends over one of them—like them monogramed smokes of yours. Immediately I got them I commenced to think about little old B'way and dry-martinis and my little old roadster with the purple body and the red wheels, and us dancing at the palatial with the juice full on us, red and green, violet and amber. Oh Kid! it made me home-sick!! But then we got a order to start on cleaning up after them Botches again and so I forgot everything but you and my new step—which was forward, double line!

Well, sweetie, now about this smokes question. Of course your Ma having been with the circus is used to giving up things, as naturally in a trapese-act such as hers used to be she would need all the nerve she had and even eating a welsh rabbit would of been a wild party to her. The center ring is no joke and forty feet above it on a trapese from the center canvas less so. But trapese work has not yet been offered to the Allies except mebbe Itily on them mountains and any lady which starts a society to keep smokes from soldiers may be strong in morals but is surely weak in the head, which I never knew your Ma to be before. She being always not only a lady but a great little picker on contracts and what would we of done without her that time Goldringer tried to slip the "satisfactory to the Goldringer Theatrical Productions Corp." stuff over on us and she spotted it?

But for the love of liberty can this idea of hers about it not being good for the boys to smoke and make her quit worrying about us tearing around France learning no new sins. For sweetie the crimes a man can committ on whats left of his pay after the alotment is took out and the insurance and the liberty bonds instalments would be sanctioned by anybody in the country even if his coller buttoned up the back. For take it or leave it, liquor, ladies and lyrics is as expensive here as north of 42nd str., and our pay dont go for them even after distracting the above.

Why me and a fellow went off on leave to a general store in a town which I couldn't spell for you much less mention it, even if permitted. But anyways we went to it and Mac bought some winterweights and they was four-fifty a pair and no better than the U.S. seventy-five cent kind, and I got two pair socks a dollar per each and two bananas for 25c, which only goes to show everything here is terrible expensive except nessessaties. So dont let your Ma worry over me spending my remaining nickel on vice.

I note what you say about the way folks at home get your goat by passing the buck on war-reliefs—if it's chocolet they say they've just given to tobacco, if it's tobacco they just bought a W.S.S., and if it's W.S.S. they just got a hatful of bonds, or if it's bonds they just give their last cent to chocolet—passing the buck all along the line. Well dearie, I guess mebbe that's their way of getting a little war-relief of their own, but as you say why would they need any relief when the fact that they are for the most part without cooties ought to be relief enough in itself? Let alone having to dodge only taxi cabs and bill-collectors instead of shells. Only of course we dont have to do that now, only shell-holes, and dodge them in a hurry to get one last look at the German army before it puts on its good old soup and fish—or whatever the German for civilized clothing is, that is if they have any.

But you are right girlie, to boost the smokes. We'll need them for a long while yet. I know you have been obliged to keep your own from your Ma and what with not really caring for peppermints it has been hard all these years. But while her trapeese work stood alone in its day and no one on Broadway is more respected at this writing and as a mother-in-law I have no complaint on her outside of her wearing my dress-pumps, this one time she is dead wrong. Soldiers are not always acrobats and they do need to smoke and your Ma will put herself in the small-time reform class if she dont look out. When I think of the stuff I seen up and down Broadway and elsewhere in my days which could be reformed and no one miss it, I get hot when I hear this talk about keeping the army pure. Take it or leave it, but the truth is the Huns has kept us pure alright—they sweat all the wickedness out of us running after them.

But to get back to the tobacco stuff. Dont let nothing hinder you from bothering everybody you see to send smokes. We'll use 'em up never fear! And if you was to be walking down the Avenue or mebbe Broadway sometime and a box in your hand and asking for Smoke Funds or something whichever way its done—and your Ma was to fight her way through the howling mob which would undoubtedly be surrounding you on account of course the best known parlor-dancing act in America and the world wouldn't walk out looking for funds and not draw a mob which was only too glad to see you for five cents in the smoke-fund-box instead of two dollars in the box office—well, anyways, if your Ma was to force her way through this mob which with her weight she could do easily, why she would forgive you in the end if not right there on the street, and I believe that a hand-organ would start and play hearts and flowers at that.

Anyways, keep up the good work only never mind the monograms as long as they taste like tobacco and can be lit. And if you fall out with Ma just tell her this story which I will tell you and she will see mebbe God didn't put tobacco in the world merely for little slum children to pluck on their two weeks vacation in all its green beauty.

Well, the story is like this sweetie, and I will write it as good as I can and if it seems comicle go ahead and get a good laugh only take it or leave it, it was no comedy at the time. But if you was to news it around mebbe the folks at home would start dropping something beside coppers in them soda-fountain boxes you was talking about, and commence trying to squeeze a quarter through the slot now and again. Come to think of it, the biggest thing a copper penny can buy is the feeling a person gets from dropping one in a Belgium milk bottle or home for crippled children or Merry Xmas for the Salvation Army. You know the cheap chest it gives you. Many a liberty bond has been left in the Govts. hands by a prospective buyer stumbling on a "drop a penny" box in a cigar store on his way to the cupon-cutters, or I miss my guess. I've done the same in my day and the man who says he aint raised his own stock with himself by giving a nickle to the Newsboys Annual Outing is as big a liar as the guy which says he never loved another girl. And if pennies was to be cut out of the currency a whole lot of cheap philanthropists would have to make their conscience work or fight.

Well, anyways you go right on boosting the smoke-fund and never mind Ma. She'll learn different some day.

Now about this story I was going to tell you. First off leave me explain that the drinking regulations over here is different to uniforms than on the Rialto and America. I hunch it that the managers and booking agents and so forth in the U. S. Military Amusements Co. inc. figure that a few of the rules have to be let down while the big show is on. Same as the stars can lean against a No Smoking sign on the big time and roll a makin's quite openly. So when on leave and even sometimes in the dressing-room or I should say rest-billets a bottle of wine is not out of order. Very different sweetie, from the night Goldringer gave me in my uniform the big send off at the Ritz with all the newspaper bird and the leads and everybody and me and you the only sober person present, do you remember?

Well, its no news to you to say that I havent forgot I am a professional dancer and good condition is my middle name for my future, not to mention my present contract with Uncle Sam and that a sober man is worth more to both—also to you and myself.

But the Allies dont look on liquor like we do. As a matter of fact they seldom look on what we would call liquor at all, hardly ever getting a glympse of anything hard such as rye, scotch or gin, and a cocktail being practically a stranger and a repulsive one at that to them. But wine is something different again. Which while with us it is the high sign for a big party and flowing only in extremely good classes such as at the lobster layouts—leaving aside dago spaghetti parlors when folks is resting—with them it is a common matter and everybody drinks it and while there aint much kick to it, still it has it all over the water we get and coming under their idea of necessities, is low in price. Of course by wine I do not mean champagne like we used to for publicity purposes order for our dinner in public, but stuff made out of common grapes, I guess, and with the seltzer left out.

Well, dearie, the reason I hand you all this info. is that the story I am going to tell you got started because of this wine. "In Venus Veritas" you know or so they say, and I confess that in trying to get a little kick out of the stuff I got sort of lit and that's what caused me the story.