Even the British Tommy, though he enjoys no such income as the Americans and colonials, is nevertheless quite likely to have a bit of private income from the folks “back in Blighty” to supplement the meager pay he draws. The portionless French maid sees in these prosperous young men who have come to fight for her country not only the saviors of the nation, but a possibility of emancipation from the dot system that has broken down in these times.
On the other side, there are more than a few young women in France who must be rated “good catches” to-day, though their dots would have been unimportant before the war. A girl who has inherited the little property of her family, because father and brothers all lie beneath the white crosses along the Marne, not infrequently finds herself possessed of a little fortune she could never have expected under other conditions. Many of these, likewise, bereft of sweethearts as well as relatives, have been married to English and colonial soldiers or workmen; and pretty soon we will be learning that their partiality for America—for there is such a partiality, and it is a decided one—will be responsible for many alliances in that direction.
How it will all work out in the end is only to be guessed at as yet. The British officers who have been observing these Anglo-French romances for a long time assert that the British Tommy who weds a Frenchwoman is quite likely to settle in France; particularly if his bride brings him a village house or a few hectares of land in the country.
On the other hand, the colonials insist on taking their French brides back to New Zealand or Canada, or wherever it may be—India, Shanghai, somewhere in Africa—no matter, the colonial is a colonial forever; he has no idea of going back to the cramped conditions of England. He likes the motherland, all right, is willing to fight for it, but wants room to swing a bull by the tail, and that isn’t to be had in England, he assures you.
Probably the Americans will be like the colonials; those who find French wives will take them home after the war. That a good many of them will marry French wives can hardly be doubted.
Yes, the French girls like the American boys. But there is another scene. It is that of the country billet, which varies from a château to a cellar, the ideal one—from the point of view of a billeting officer—being a bed for every officer, and nice clean straw for the men. Get this picture of “Our Village, Somewhere in France,” back of the line, as drawn by Sterling Hielig in the Los Angeles Times:
A French valley full of empty villages, close to the fighting line. No city of tents. No mass of shack constructions. The village streets are empty. Geese and ducks waddle to the pond in Main Street.
It is 4 o’clock a. m.
Bugle!
Up and down the valley, in the empty villages, there is a moving-picture transformation. The streets are alive with American soldiers—tumbling out of village dwelling-houses!