“I shall myself take me to lunch if monsieur has no objections”
“This war,” he said, “should be called the War of Rumors. The war will be over by Christmas. The war won’t be over for ten years. The boche is starving. The Allies are getting fat. The boche has plenty to eat. The Allies are dying of hunger. Our last transport fleet sank five subs. Our last transport fleet was sunk by a whole flotilla of subs. Montenegro’s going to make a separate peace with Bosnia. There is talk of peace negotiations between Hungary and Indiana. Ireland, Brazil and Oklahoma are going to challenge the world. They’re going to move the entire war to the Balkans and charge admission. The Kaiser’s dying of whooping cough. You can learn anything you want to or don’t want to know. Why”—this to me—“don’t you fellas print the truth?”
“And where,” I asked him, “would you advise us to go and get it?”
“The same place I got it,” said the captain.
“And what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
We adjourned to the diner. A sign there said: “Non Fumeurs.” The captain pointed to it.
“That’s brief enough,” he said. “That’s once when the French is concise. But you ought to see the Chinese for that. I was in a town near the British front recently where some Chinese laborers are encamped. In the station waiting-room, it says: ‘No Smoking’ in French, English, Russian and Italian. The Russian is something like ‘Do notski smokevitch,’ and the Italian is ‘Non Smokore’. Recently they have added a Chinese version, and it’s longer than the Bible. A moderate smoker could disobey the rules forty times before he got through the first chapter and found out what they were driving at.”
Be that as it may, I have observed that everybody in France smokes whenever and wherever he or she desires, regardless of signs. We did now, and so did our guest, while waiting for the first course, which was black bread baked in a brickyard.
“I would love to go to America,” said mademoiselle.