Canada in war-paint

by Ralph W. Bell

Madame searches in the innermost recesses of an old drawer, and produces one French penny, two sous, a two-franc bill of the Commune of Lisseville, stuck together with bits of sticking-paper, a very dirty one-franc bill labelled St. Omer, and two 50-centimes notes from somewhere the other side of Amiens.

“Je regrette, M’sieu,” Madame waves her hands in the air, “mais c’est tout ce que j’ai.... All dat I ’ave, M’sieu!”

The transaction, which has taken a full ten minutes, is at last completed. They are very long-suffering, the natives, taken on the whole. In the first place “C’est la guerre.” Secondly, they, too, have soldier husbands, sons, and brothers and cousins serving in the Grandes Armées. Is it to be expected that they be well treated unless we do our share? And—these British soldiers, they have much money. And they are generous for the most part.

So Madame, whose husband is in Champagne, gives up the best bedroom to Messieurs les Officiers, and sleeps with her baby in the attic. The batmen use her poële, and sit around it in the evening drinking her coffee. Le Commandant buys butter, milk, eggs—“mais, mon dieu, one would think a hen laid an egg every hour to hear him! Trois douzaine! But, Monsieur, I have but six poules, and they overwork themselves already! There is not another egg above eleven dans tous le pays, M’sieu. Champagne? But yes, certainement. Bénédictine? Ah, non, M’sieu, it is défendu, and we sold the last bottle to an officier with skirts a week ago. Un treès bon officier, M’sieu; he stay two days, and make love to Juliette. Juliette fiancée? Tiens, she has a million, M’sieu, to hear them talk, like every pretty girl in France. So soon you enter the doorway, M’sieu, and see Juliette, you say ‘Moi fiancé, vous?’ You are très taquin—verree bad boys—les Anglais!”

Sometimes there is war, red war. Madame enters, wringing her hands, her hair suggestive of lamentation and despair. She wishes to see M’sieu l’Officier who speaks a little French.

“Ah, M’sieu, but it is terrible. I give to the Ordonnances my fire, my cook-pots, and a bed of good hay in the stable, next to the cows, and what do they do? M’sieu, they steal my gate that was put there by my grandfather—he who won a decoration in soixante et six—and they get a little axe and make of it fire-wood! And in the early morning they milk the cows. Ah, but, M’sieu, I will go to the Maire and make a réclammation! Fifteen francs for a new gate, and seventeen sous for the milk that they have stolen! And the cuillers! Before the war I buy a new set, with Henri, of twenty-four cuillers. Where are they? All but three are volées, M’sieu! It is not juste. M’sieu le Capitaine who was here a week ago last Dimanche—for I went to Mass—say it is a dam shame, M’sieu. I do not like to make the trouble, M’sieu, but I must live. La veuve Marnot over yonder, two houses down the street on the left-hand side, she could have a hundred gates burned and say nothing. She is très riche. They say the Mayor make déjà his advances. But me, what shall I do, my gate a desecration in the stoves, M’sieu, and the milk of my cows drunk by the maudits ordonnances!”

Note in the mess president’s accounts: “To one gate (burned) and milk stolen, 7.50 francs.”

All over France and Belgium little stores have grown and flourished. They sell tinned goods without limit, from cigarettes, through lobster, to peaches.

Both are practical countries.

In nearly all these boutiques there is a pretty girl. Both nations have learned the commercial value of a pretty girl. It increases the credit side of the business 75 per cent. In the Estaminets it is the same, only more so. Their turnover is a thing which will be spoken of by their great-grandchildren with bated breath.