One met here, not merely the fighting-men, but the forces of all the complicated service behind the lines: gangs of lumbermen from the far North-west, who were to fell the forests of France and make them into railroad-ties and timber for trenches; railway-men, miners, and construction-gangs, engineers and signalmen, bridge-builders and road-makers, telephone-linemen and operators, the drivers of forty thousand motor-cars and of five thousand locomotives; bakers and cooks, menders of shoes and of clothing, farmers to till the soil of France, and doctors and nurses to tend its sick and wounded. There was nothing which the skill and knowledge of a nation of a hundred million people had to offer that was not gathered into this vast encampment. All the youngest and keenest were here, eager to do their part, laughing at danger, tingling with excitement, on tip-toe with curiosity and delight. Jimmie Higgins, watching them, found his doubts melting like an April snow-storm. How could any man see this activity and not be caught up in it? How could he be with these laughing boys and not share their mood?
Jimmie himself had not had a merry childhood, he did not know the youth of his own country—the breezy, slangy, rather shocking, utterly irrepressible youth of this democratic world. If there was anything they did not know—well, they did not know it; if there was anything they could not do—their motto was: “Show me!” Jimmie, not having been to school, found himself having a hard time with their weird slang. When one of these fellows hailed you, “Hey, pimp!” it did not necessarily mean that he did not like you: when he greeted you, “Hey, sweetness!” it did not mean that he felt for you any over-powering affection. If he referred to his officer as “hard-boiled”, he did not have in mind that this officer had been exposed to the action of water at 212 degrees Fahrenheit; he merely meant that the officer was a snob. When he remarked, “Good night!” in broad daylight, he meant you to understand that he disagreed with you.
He disagreed frequently and explosively with Jimmie Higgins, trying to point out a difference between the German rulers and the German people! Such subtleties had no interest for these all-knowing boys. When Jimmie persisted, they called him a “nut”, a “poor cheese”; they told him that he was “cuckoo”, that his “trolley was twisted”; they made whirling motions with their hands to indicate that he had “wheels in his head”, they made flapping motions over him to signify that there were “bats in his belfry”. So Jimmie subsided, and let them talk their own talk—imploring one another to “have a heart”, or to “get wise”, or to “make it snappy”, or to “cut out the rough stuff”. And he would sit and listen while they sang with zest a song telling about what they were going to do when they got to France:
Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll sing another song,
Sing it with a spirit that will move the world along,
Sing it as we love to sing it, just two million strong—
While we are canning the Kaiser.
CHORUS:
Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We're on the job to-day!
Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We'll seal you so you'll stay!
We'll put you up in ginger in the good old Yankee way—
While we are canning the Kaiser.
Hear the song we're singing on the shining roads of France;
Hear the Tommies cheering, and see the Poilus prance;
Africanders and Kanucks and Scots without their pants—
While we are canning the Kaiser. (Chorus)
Bring the guns from Bethlehem, by way of old New York;
Bring the beans from Boston, and don't leave out the pork;
Bring a load of soda-pop and pull the grape-juice cork—
While we are canning the Kaiser. (Chorus)
Come you men from Dixieland, you lumberjacks of Maine;
Come you Texas cowboys, and you farmers of the plain;
Florida to Oregon, we boast the Yankee strain—
While we are canning the Kaiser. (Chorus)
Now we've started on the job we mean to put it through;
Ship the kings and kaisers all, and make the world anew;
Clear the way for common folk, for men like me and you—
While we are canning the Kaiser.
CHORUS:
Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We're on the job to-day!
Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We'll seal you so you'll stay!
We'll put you up in ginger in the good old Yankee way—
While we are canning the Kaiser.
CHAPTER XX. JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES A SWIM
I.
You did not stop very long in the mobilization-camp, for the arrival of your train was timed with the arrival of the ship on which you were to sail. You had a meal, sometimes you slept a night, then you marched to the docks. Nor was there much of the traditional “sweet sorrow” about the departure of these great fleets; the weeping mothers and sisters had not been notified to be present, and the ladies of the canteen-service had given coffee and sandwiches, cigarettes and chocolate, to so many tens of thousands that they had forgotten about tears. It was like the emigration of a nation; the part of America that was now on the other side was so large that nobody would need to feel homesick.
Jimmie's embarking was done at night; on the long, covered piers, lighted by arc-lights, the soldiers set down their kits and stood about, munching food, singing songs, and keeping one another's wits sharpened for battle. They filtered on board, and then without a light or a sound the vessel stole down the long stretches of the harbour, and out to sea. One never knew at what hour the enemy submarines might attempt a raid on the American side, so the entrance to the harbour was mined and blockaded, a narrow passage being opened when the ships passed through.