Over Here: Impressions of America by a British officer

by Hector MacQuarrie

So he has called across the water to France: "I'm coming to help you, Lafayette," and he has shouted across the water to Great Britain: "John, I have never been quite sure of you, but I guess you're on the right track, and if you can wait a little I expect to be able to help you quite a lot."

Of course, Germany expects to starve Great Britain into subjection before Uncle Sam is ready to do much. She also, in her overwhelming pride, believes that her own nationals in the States possess sufficient power to stultify any great war effort. She also believes that the American people are naturally pacifists and that the President will have a big job in front of him. And indeed he might have had a difficult job, too, for great prosperity tends to weaken the offensive power of a democracy and there were many men here who disliked intensely the idea of sending an army of American men to France to fight side by side with England, but his job has become child's play since Zimmermann's wily scheme to ally Mexico and Japan against the States has been exposed. This exposure united the people as if by magic. The people began to scent danger, and danger close at home, and they saw at once that the only enemy they possessed was Kaiser William. When the Kaiser dies, and I suppose he will die some day, it would be interesting to be present (just for a second, of course) when he meets his grandfather's great friend, Bismarck. One would not desire to stay long on account of the climate but it would be interesting nevertheless. Would Bismarck weep or laugh?

Of course, the Zimmermann scheme counted for very little with the great minds at the helm of state here, but it did rouse the ordinary people and settled many arguments.

So the war lord is going to drown thousands of sailors in order that a million lives may be saved on the battlefields of Europe! What a pity that we inefficient and contemptible British, American, and French people cannot agree with him. What fools we all must seem to him to prefer death a thousand times rather than to spend a single second in the world with His Imperial Highness as our lord and master.

Thank heaven we can see him as he is really—just a mad chauffeur with his foot on the accelerator dashing down a very steep hill with not a chance in the world of getting around that nasty turning at the bottom. The car he is driving to destruction is a very fine machine, too. It is a great pity. Perhaps it will break down suddenly before he gets to the bottom and the mad chauffeur will come an awful cropper, but there will be something left of the machine.

I have now left the hotel and am established in a very happy home. It was difficult to get lodgings, but I applied to J—— C—— for help and he sent me down to Harry's wife. Harry is the butler of a friend of mine, one of the head steel officials. Anyone who applies to J—— C—— for help always gets it. He is an Irishman who has not been in Ireland for half a century, but he has still got a brogue. I called on Harry's wife and found a sweet faced English girl with a small young lady who made love to me promptly. I decided to move as soon as possible, and now I am perfectly happy. Harry's wife will do anything in the world to make a fellow comfortable and "himself" keeps my clothes pressed in his spare time. They both do nice little things for me. I can do precisely what I please and I know that the two of them are very interested.

One night, four cheery people came in; one seized a mandolin, another a guitar, while a third played the piano. It was quite late and I wondered what my gentle landlord and his lady would think. While the music was still going on I stole out to reconnoitre and saw the two of them fox-trotting round the kitchen like a couple of happy children, just loving the music. Harry's wife's father and her brothers are all soldiers and she was brought up at Aldershot. When I write things for magazines she listens to me in the middle of her work while I read them and she always expresses enthusiasm. When the ominous package returns she is as depressed as I am about it.

A friend offered me what he alleged to be a well-bred Western Highland terrier in Philadelphia, and I, of course, fell, for Becky, Harry's little girl, wanted a dog. My friend called up his daughter and told her to send one of the puppies along. I observed that I wanted a male puppy and he said: "Yep." Communications must have broken down somewhere, for a tiny female puppy arrived in a pink basket. The person who said that my puppy was a Western Highland terrier was an optimist, or a liar. I fear that her family tree would not bear close inspection. However, she hopped out of the basket and expressed a good deal of pleasure. She ought to have been at least another month with her mother. We gave her milk and she at once grew so stout in front of our eyes that we all shuddered, wondering what would happen next. She couldn't walk, but after a time her figure became more normal. She had very nice manners on the whole, and had a clinging disposition and would worm her way right round a person's back under his coat and emerge from under his collar close up to his neck. In a few days she became perfectly nude and Jack, calling, mistook her for a rat, but was disappointed. She mistook him for a relation and too actively showed her affection. He refused to look at her, placed both feet on my shoulders, looked with astonishment at me, and left the house. He has refused to enter ever since. Sally, as we had named her, got even more nude, so I got some anti-eczema dope and rubbed her with it. This had the desired effect and her hair grew again. I wish you could see her and her young mistress together, mixed up with six rabbits.

Sally refuses to look like a Western Highland terrier, and follows me about looking like a tiny rat. A man pointed to us one day and said: "Wots that?" His friend, thinking he meant an automobile that was passing said: "Just a flivver." So we have decided upon Sally's breed and she is called a flivver dog. Like all dogs of mixed breed she is wonderfully intelligent, and her young mistress and her mistress's mother would not sell her for a million dollars. She has more friends throughout this town than we can ever have. Her greatest friend is a fat policeman who lives opposite. I took her to a picnic once and she buried all our sausages which they call "Frankfurters" here. We saw her disappearing with the last one almost as big as herself.

I am very lucky to have secured such a wonderful home in Bethlehem. No woman enjoys having strange men ruining her carpets and making themselves a nuisance generally, and as the Bethlehem people are mostly well off, few of them desire to take in lodgers. Harry's wife has taken me in because she has soldier blood and royal artillery blood in her veins and she wants to do her bit.