In the subway their eyes pop as they spell out Apocalypse, typhus, cholera, shrapnel, insurrection, death in fire, death in water, death in hunger, death in mud.
Oh it’s a long way to Madymosell from Armenteers, over there! The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming. Down Fifth Avenue the bands blare for the Liberty Loan drive, for the Red Cross drive. Hospital ships sneak up the harbor and unload furtively at night in old docks in Jersey. Up Fifth Avenue the flags of the seventeen nations are flaring curling in the shrill hungry wind.
O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree
And green grows the grass in God’s country.
The great flags flap and tug at their lashings on the creaking goldknobbed poles up Fifth Avenue.
Captain James Merivale D.S.C. lay with his eyes closed while the barber’s padded fingers gently stroked his chin. The lather tickled his nostrils; he could smell bay rum, hear the drone of an electric vibrator, the snipping of scissors.
“A little face massage sir, get rid of a few of those blackheads sir,” burred the barber in his ear. The barber was bald and had a round blue chin.
“All right,” drawled Merivale, “go as far as you like. This is the first decent shave I’ve had since war was declared.”
“Just in from overseas, Captain?”
“Yare ... been making the world safe for democracy.”