But now she wrote thanking me for what she called “my consideration and kindness” toward what she called her “blunders and mistakes.” Just what she meant, I do not know. It was enough for me that she should end with “sincere and affectionate regard”—enough because I knew she understood what I had never put into words, that for her I had never had anything but a sincere regard—a regard which our associations had turned to real affection.
The only professional work I did in this period was a few weeks of lecturing, a contract which I had made before we went into the War.
I have spoken of the quietness and steadiness with which people through the country seemed to me to be taking the call for troops in 1916 when I was on the Chautauqua circuit—of the conviction I had as I saw them in the Middle West on the declaration of war in April of 1917, that they had already made up their minds, were ready to go.
But I confess I was unprepared for what I everywhere met early in 1918, traveling chiefly in the South, the Middle West, and the Southwest. The country was no longer quiet, no longer reflective. On every street corner, around every table, it was fighting the War, watchfully, suspiciously, determinedly. All the paraphernalia of life had taken on war coloring; the platforms from which I spoke were so swathed in flags that I often had to watch my step entering and leaving. I found I was expected to wear a flag—not a corsage. At every lunch or dinner where I was a guest all declarations were red, white, and blue.
When you are on a lecture trip one of your few resources is the newsstand. I had the habit of searching the postal-card racks for local points of interest—local celebrations. But now all these had disappeared. The racks were filled with pictures of soldiers in all of their scores of operations, humble and otherwise—not only on parade, but on “spud duty.” There were thrilling pictures of cavalry charges, of marches across country, of aeroplanes directing field maneuvers, touching scenes in hospitals, cheering ones of games, endless sentimental ones to be sent to the boys.
A change had come over the literature of the newsstands. Serious magazines I had never before seen in certain southwestern towns were there now. “Anything that pertains to patriotism is a good seller,” a railroad station news agent told me. “Why, look at the books we carry!” And there they were, Hankey, Empey, Boyd Cable, disputing attention with “Slashaway, the Fearless,” “Gunpowder Jim,” “The Mystery of Demon Hollow.”
The libraries of scores of towns made a specialty of war books. At Council Bluffs—an old, large, rich, and cultivated town of course—I found on an open shelf beside the librarian’s desk Hazen’s “Modern European History,” John Masefield’s “Gallipoli,” “The Old Front Line,” André Chéradame’s essays, Hueffer’s “Between St. Denis and St. George,” and a score of others. They all showed signs of much reading.
As for the newspapers, they were given over to the war. It was my duty to make sure that they were giving the releases of our committee fair attention. They were—the local women were attending to that. Editors might and did grumble because Washington was swamping them with information and suggestions which often they felt were “old stuff,” repetition; but they sweated to do their part.
The editorial attitude was not characterized by excessive respect for great names, particularly if the great name was that of an enemy. I was in Texas when the Zimmermann note was given out by the President. Nothing could have been more amusing than the contemptuous attitude of the average Texan citizen whom I met. Some of the country newspapers did not even take the trouble to print the gentleman’s name, but called him “Zim.” You received the impression that a German-Japanese attack on our Southwest border would be a very simple matter for Texans to clean up. All they asked, I was told, was for Uncle Sam to keep his hands off. They would take care of it. There was little anger but much contempt.
Everywhere the boys were the absorbing interest. In the Southwest and along the Atlantic coast I practically lived with them. They crowded every railroad station, hustled into every train. There was rarely a night that I was not wakened by their demanding beds in already overflowing sleepers. Troop trains passed you en route, all sorts of slogans scribbled in chalk on the cars. From wherever they came they were sure to announce that they were bound for Berlin.