17
AFTER THE ARMISTICE
The War was over and the United States was setting the brakes on its war machinery, setting them so hurriedly in some cases that they created situations almost as destructive as war. There was nothing left now for the Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense but to clean up and move out. Dr. Anna stayed by while an admirable executive secretary and a small clerical force put things into order, reported what had been done, thanked everybody for his or her cooperation.
By the end of the year my desk had been cleared and I was preparing for a new job, to go to France for the Red Cross Magazine. My old editor, John S. Phillips, had been in charge there for some months, making a really significant and stimulating journal. He wanted a fresh eye on the rehabilitation work the organization was carrying on in France. He thought I might furnish it. I agreed to try.
Crossing the ocean in January, 1919, gave one some notions of what war had done to the accustomed orderly procedure of life. I was to sail to Bordeaux at a fixed hour; but no ship as yet went on time, though passengers were expected to arrive on time and to sit for hours as we were locked in the waiting room at the dock. At least it gave you an opportunity to eye as a whole those who were to be your fellow passengers. Everybody on my ship was evidently connected with some problem of restoration, the most interesting being the French bent on rehabilitating families they feared were stripped of everything. They were even taking food. As we waited a woman who guarded two enormous hams explained to me that her mother had begged her to bring a jambon. She had not had a jambon for so long. It was a new idea to me. I knew that sweets would be welcome to my friends, and I had armed myself with chocolates and bonbons; but a jambon! Why should I not take one to my dear Madame Marillier? Securing a permit to leave the dock, I hunted up a neighboring market and after much negotiation persuaded a wholesale dealer to sell me a ham, almost as big as I was. It was a problem to get it into the ship, but it was more of a problem to get it off, get it to Paris. I had queer ideas of what I might need in the way of luggage, and in my equipment was a pair of enormous saddlebags into which I had thrown high boots, heavy blankets, sweaters, woolen tights and hose—just in case. Crowding them all into one bag, into the other I put my jambon. In the long and tedious railroad journey from Bordeaux to Paris, I was packed in with a group of fine serious young Quakers going over to help a reconstruction project, and that terrible piece of luggage jumped from the rack and almost brained one of my companions. I cannot recall all the adventures of that ham, but I know that I was never more relieved than when I laid it at the feet of my old friend.
“What in the world?” she exclaimed (or its equivalent). And Seignobos said, “Oh, these Americans.”
I was not long in Paris before I felt keenly that many of the French were saying, “Oh, these Americans!” We seemed to swarm over everything, to absorb things. At least this was true in the quarters where, at the urgency of my friends Auguste Jaccaci and William Allen White, I had gone to live—the Hôtel de Vouillemont just off the Place de la Concorde.
Walking down the Rue de Rivoli to the Red Cross Headquarters was like walking the streets of Washington in the vicinity of the governmental departments active in the prosecution of the War. All the familiar faces seemed to have been transported to Paris, as indeed great numbers of them had. Mingling with them were officers and men on leave, many seeking desperately to drown ghastly memories in any form of pleasure that would bring forgetfulness, more of them intent on sightseeing, buying gifts to take home. I found the pleasantest duty my Red Cross uniform brought me in Paris was when stalwart doughboys accosted me. “Say, sister, won’t you help me find something to take home to my mother—my girl?” Before we were through with the shopping I had the family history but never a word about the war—that was done with. They wanted to forget it and go home. They resented the delay.
“We have paid our debt to Lafayette. Now who in hell do we owe?” This was the legend I saw once on a camion crossing the Place de la Concorde. I was told it was torn down by a scandalized officer and forbidden to be used in the future. But it expressed the doughboy’s opinion, as I got it, better than anything else I saw or heard.
Not only the scenes in my quarter but the conditions of living shattered all my preconceived notions of hardship. I had been prepared for hardtack, but once at Vouillemont I found that if I took the trouble to market and bring in my purchases I could supplement the unbalanced meals with almost anything I wanted. The prices were high to be sure—sixteen cents each for eggs—two to four dollars a pound for butter—a dollar and a half for a little jar of honey. Many extras could be bought more cheaply at the American Commissariat. William Allen White was buying at the Commissariat the prunes on which he seemed principally to live, but marketing gave me the opportunity I wanted for finding out what the alert Parisian shopkeepers were thinking and saying. I sounded out that opinion daily until it was cut off by the conviction running through the town that America no longer sympathized fully with the French, that she was not going to force Germany to pay the sixty-five billion dollars the people felt they should have.
