With the Allies

by Richard Harding Davis

Every one is helping. Each day the King and Queen and Princess Mary review troops or visit the wounded in some hospital; and the day before sailing, while passing Buckingham Palace, I watched the young Prince of Wales change the guard. In a businesslike manner he was listening to the sentries repeat their orders; and in turn a young sergeant, also in a most businesslike manner, was in whispers coaching the boy officer in the proper manner to guard the home of his royal parents. Since then the young prince has gone to the front and is fighting for his country. And the King is in France with his soldiers.

As the song says, all the heroes do not go to war, and the warriors at the front are not the only ones this war has turned out-of-doors. The number of Englishwomen who have left their homes that the Red Cross may have the use of them for the wounded would fill a long roll of honor. Some give an entire house, like Mrs. Waldorf Astor, who has loaned to the wounded Cliveden, one of the best-known and most beautiful places on the Thames. Others can give only a room. But all over England the convalescents have been billeted in private houses and made nobly welcome.

Even the children of England are helping. The Boy Scouts, one of the most remarkable developments of this decade, has in this war scored a triumph of organization. This is equally true of the Boy Scouts in Belgium and France. In England military duties of the most serious nature have been intrusted to them. On the east coast they have taken the place of the coast guards, and all over England they are patrolling railroad junctions, guarding bridges, and carrying despatches. Even if the young men who are now drilling in the parks and the Boy Scouts never reach Berlin nor cross the Channel, the training and sense of responsibility that they are now enjoying are all for their future good.

They are coming out of this war better men, not because they have been taught the manual of arms, but in spite of that fact. What they have learned is much more than that. Each of them has, for an ideal, whether you call it a flag, or a king, or a geographical position on the map, offered his life, and for that ideal has trained his body and sacrificed his pleasures, and each of them is the better for it. And when peace comes his country will be the richer and the more powerful.

Chapter VIII Our Diplomats In The War Zone

When the war broke loose those persons in Europe it concerned the least were the most upset about it. They were our fellow countrymen. Even to-day, above the roar of shells, the crash of falling walls, forts, forests, cathedrals, above the scream of shrapnel, the sobs of widows and orphans, the cries of the wounded and dying, all over Europe, you still can hear the shrieks of the Americans calling for their lost suit-cases.

For some of the American women caught by the war on the wrong side of the Atlantic the situation was serious and distressing. There were thousands of them travelling alone, chaperoned only by a man from Cook's or a letter of credit. For years they had been saving to make this trip, and had allowed themselves only sufficient money after the trip was completed to pay the ship's stewards. Suddenly they found themselves facing the difficulties of existence in a foreign land without money, friends, or credit. During the first days of mobilization they could not realize on their checks or letters. American bank-notes and Bank of England notes were refused. Save gold, nothing was of value, and every one who possessed a gold piece, especially if he happened to be a banker, was clinging to it with the desperation of a dope fiend clutching his last pill of cocaine. We can imagine what it was like in Europe when we recall the conditions at home.

In New York, when I started for the seat of war, three banks in which for years I had kept a modest balance refused me a hundred dollars in gold, or a check, or a letter of credit. They simply put up the shutters and crawled under the bed. So in Europe, where there actually was war, the women tourists, with nothing but a worthless letter of credit between them and sleeping in a park, had every reason to be panic-stricken. But to explain the hysteria of the hundred thousand other Americans is difficult—so difficult that while they live they will still be explaining. The worst that could have happened to them was temporary discomfort offset by adventures. Of those they experienced they have not yet ceased boasting.

On August 5th, one day after England declared war, the American Government announced that it would send the Tennessee with a cargo of gold. In Rome and in Paris Thomas Nelson Page and Myron T. Herrick were assisting every American who applied to them, and committees of Americans to care for their fellow countrymen had been organized. All that was asked of the stranded Americans was to keep cool and, like true sports, suffer inconvenience. Around them were the French and English, facing the greatest tragedy of centuries, and meeting it calmly and with noble self-sacrifice. The men were marching to meet death, and in the streets, shops, and fields the women were taking up the burden the men had dropped. And in the Rue Scribe and in Cockspur Street thousands of Americans were struggling in panic-stricken groups, bewailing the loss of a hat-box, and protesting at having to return home second-class. Their suffering was something terrible. In London, in the Ritz and Carlton restaurants, American refugees, loaded down with fat pearls and seated at tables loaded with fat food, besought your pity. The imperial suite, which on the fast German liner was always reserved for them, "except when Prince Henry was using it," was no longer available, and they were subjected to the indignity of returning home on a nine- day boat and in the captain's cabin. It made their blue blood boil; and the thought that their emigrant ancestors had come over in the steerage did not help a bit.

The experiences of Judge Richard William Irwin, of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, and his party, as related in the Paris Herald, were heartrending. On leaving Switzerland for France they were forced to carry their own luggage, all the porters apparently having selfishly marched off to die for their country, and the train was not lighted, nor did any one collect their tickets. "We have them yet!" says Judge Irwin. He makes no complaint, he does not write to the Public- Service Commission about it, but he states the fact. No one came to collect his ticket, and he has it yet. Something should be done. Merely because France is at war Judge Irwin should not be condemned to go through life clinging to a first-class ticket.