FRANCO-YANKO ROMANCES
THE story is told of a British “Tommy” who could not make up his mind whether to acquire a farm or a village store, by marriage, “somewhere in France.” He could have either, but not both. Dispatches say that the banns have already been read for some of our “Sammies,” and when the war is over France will have some sturdy Yankee citizens. Difference of language seems to form no bar; in fact, the kindly efforts of each to learn the language of the other acts as an aid. It must be said that the British, so far, have rather the best of it. They have beaten the Yankees to the altar of Hymen, but they had the field to themselves for some time. By the end of the war the Americans may have caught up, for love and war have always walked hand in hand with Uncle Sam’s boys. Nevertheless the British have a big start, for Judson C. Welliver, writing to the New York Sun from Paris, says that in Calais hundreds of young English mechanics have married French girls. The writer tells of being accosted by a young man from “the States” at the corner of the Avenue de l’Opéra and “one of those funny little crooked streets that run into it.” Breezily the American introduced himself and said:
“Say, do you happen to know a little caffy right around here called the—the—blame it, I can’t even remember what that sign looked like it was trying to spell.”
I admitted that the description was a trifle too vague to fit into my geographic scheme of Paris.
“Because,” he went on, “there’s a girl there that talks United States, and she’s been waiting on me lately. I get all the best of everything there and don’t eat anywhere else. But this morning I took a walk and coming from a new direction I can’t locate the place. I promised her I’d be in for breakfast this morning.”
“Something nifty?” I ventured, being willing to encourage that line of conversation. Whereat he plainly bridled:
“She’s a nice girl,” he said; “family were real people before the war. Learned to talk United States in England; went to school there awhile. Why, she wouldn’t let me walk home with her last night, but said maybe she would tonight.”
There isn’t anybody quite so adaptable as the young Frenchwoman. Only in the last few months has Paris seen any considerable number of English-speaking soldiers, because earlier in the war the British military authorities kept their men pretty religiously away from the alleged “temptations” of the gay capital. Later they discovered that Paris was rather a better place than London for the men to go.
So the French girls, in shops and cafés, have been learning English recently at an astounding rate. They began the study because of the English invasion; they have continued it with increased zeal because since the Americans have been coming it has been profitable.