There are, of course, sharp degrees of comparison. The great Paris morning journals are nothing in our young lives. They are written in a language which we do not know, and their headlines are lacking in enterprise. The Paris issue of the London Daily Mail is better. It reaches us in the form of a special American edition, which caters generously to our national predilection for type several inches high. But beyond that it does not go. Blossom and blossom and blossom, but never the promise of fruit! The reading matter below the headlines is constrained, lacking in pep—dead stuff. At least, so Joe McCarthy says. The Paris editions of the New York Herald and Chicago Tribune furnish more nourishment, although in these days of paper famine they are sadly attenuated affairs—mere single sheets, sometimes. Then there is our own A.E.F. weekly—The Stars and Stripes. It is ably conducted and full of meat; but at the best it is only an official publication, mainly about the War. And it was not printed in America. What we crave for is home news—home gossip—home advertisements. A single copy of an American Sunday newspaper, with comic supplement complete, would fetch its weight in dollar bills over here. Our spirits yearn to participate once more in the Bringing up of Father, or the fratricidal rivalries of Mutt and Jeff; or to witness the perennial discomfitures of those two intensely human impostors, Percy and Ferdy. Even those nasty little Boche abortions, the Katzenjammer Kids, would be something.
The happiest man is he who receives once in a while a copy of his local newspaper from home. These come rarely enough, for second-class mail matter is incurring mysterious casualties these days.
However, one of these priceless packages arrived not long ago for Eddie Gillette, all the way from a little town in the Northwest. Eddie tore off the wrapper, and almost set his teeth into the paper. Everything was there for which his soul hungered—news about America, about his own town, about people whom he knew personally—conveyed by means of the arresting headline, the pointed phrase, and the intellectual pemmican of the heavily leaded summary. The War news, of course, was weeks old, but Ed devoured it rapturously. He knew now how the War was really going.
“This guy Allenby must be some dandy fighter,” he observed to Al Thompson, looking up.
“Sure, Ed!” replied Al pleasantly. “Why?”
“He’s been doing fine in the Holy Land. See what it says here.”
Ed held up the newspaper for Al to see, and pointed to the head of a column:
BRITISH CRUSADERS IN NAZARETH
ALLENBY WINS JESUS CHRIST’S HOME TOWN FROM TURKS