FRENCH FRONT

sure they can play well enough for him not to be ashamed of them. They're still under lock and key. The Admiral's not heard them yet, and they're good and anxious about that first time."

I went to the Navy hospital. It had been a Carmelite convent, unsuited to hospital methods of any sort, especially American. It had been completely overhauled. I admired certain innovations.

"Yes," agreed the physician. "We put those in particularly because of the Admiral. He's very proud of this hospital; and we have to live up to his faith in us.'

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On a bed a rather white Filipino attracted my attention. He's the Admiral's mess-boy. We just operated on him. He'll be here several weeks more. It was a pretty delicate operation, especially as we knew the Admiral would never forgive us if anything happened to his mess-boy."

"You mustn't forget about the show at the Opera-House tonight,” a bluejacket smiled to me one morning. "Our ship's giving it, and the French Admiral and ours are going to have the two center boxes. Tell you what, ours enjoys a good show." This was the attitude of that port, which is, in reality, our naval front in France, yet in no respect imposes its authority so as to injure the liaison with the French navy. I began to see how the French and American navies worked together, and how the respect of our own Admiral and his staff for the French was reflected in the commonest seaman. I gained a wholesome admiration for the French navy, handicapped though it is for men and materials, and for ours. I saw, so far as a woman may, the business of our destroyers, of our little converted yachts, of the mine-sweepers and hydro-airplanes, and, through it all, directing it, guiding it, the kindly, firm arm of Admiral Wilson, a hand that touches everything from the search for submarines to questions of uniforms, from praise of his commanders to praise of his bluejackets.

"I never saw such a democratic navy!" his orderly grumbled one night when the Admiral helped a bluejacket who had been dining with him on with his coat-his orderly, who had been until last spring a student at Lehigh University, and had joined the navy of any nation only a brief six months ago. Perhaps it was democratic, too, when I asked if I might somehow see it in the working, and, after extenuating circumstances were presented, was finally permitted to come aboard this "empty" and cross the Atlantic as one of the troops, orI wonder as a temporarily accredited correspondent of the United States Navy.

Traveling officially, I and my war dog and my luggage were driven from the hotel in a battleship-gray motor car to the dock. I was expected, and was shown at once to my cabin-the only one that boasts of a bath, and is usually occupied by the general or colonel in command of troops.

Though I was expected, I found that the dog was not. Dogs are put dismally into the hold of liners; here, with no provision for them, it was suggested that I keep him in my bath-room. I had to hunt up the galley to see about his chow."

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So we started. The ship, with no preliminary warning, slid away from her dock. We were accompanied by destroyers and balloons, with the same precautions as if we had carried thousands of troops.

Below, in the galley, I found a place full of Filipinos in white suits. They were very curious about the dog and my explanation of his food. We had to find a dish large enough, and, as a butter-dish was offered me first, and my dog is nearly as large as a Great Dane, we proceeded by graduated process until we finally rose to a salad-bowl. Meanwhile I looked about me. Everything was clean, there were no odors and no excess food about-in fact, the kind of kitchen one always hopes one's hotel

possesses.

66 'But you mustn't trust those Filipinos too much," a cautious steward advised me. "They forget to do things regularly sometimes; and, you see," he whispered, "most of them were swinging in their trees until a few months ago."

As the only woman, I frankly felt a little shy at first. There were in all, I should guess, four hundred men on the ship, crew included. I had a few early moments when I wondered if it would not have been more pleasant had there been some stray Red Cross nurse aboard. A number of months ago I had been in

England, where the Woman's Army Auxiliary Corps asked me to start their publicity work. In order to do this I had become a temporary member of the Waacs, and had purchased their military uniform of khaki-a uniform both sensible and inconspicuous. I decided to wear this for the entire trip.

We were carrying back to America casuals, mostly officers sent for ill health, under charges, as instructors, and for other home duty. At first my only way of differentiating them was by the silver eagle or gold leaf or the bars on their shoulders: it was several days before I separated the faces.

During the first days also we were more or less concealed by our life-jackets and canteens, which we wore day and night—and which made my luxury of a bath-room a mere aggravation. Then, little by little, the horror or annoyance or curiosity I created wore away. The dog was a conversation-opener; he would speak first, and he could not tell the difference by insignia, as I could; the skipper and a second-class seaman were the same to him; he did not even distinguish between a sanitary colonel and a colored stevedore.

Our transport is one of the smaller ones, compared with Leviathan standards; but she is, according to the crew at least, the best in the service. Certainly she is the fastest, is oil-burning, and therefore shows no smoke or dust, and, as the chief engineer puts it," sits in the water like a big destroyer." She is long and slim and gray, and imitates the destroyers by having a roll of 23 degrees. In a heavy sea she can be-well, active. Mechanically she is very beautiful-not German; she has an immaculate engine-room, no black gang, and several big guns. In fact, if you leave her decks and cabins and bridge and go inside, you find that what she really is is nothing but a huge floating engine-room more or less camouflaged as a boat. Last time we shot all the guns at one go, I was unofficially told, “she vibrated so that one of her papermash doors was smashed in."

It took me several seconds to decode "papermash." Among the returning officers my eyes gradually fastened on a large, upstanding man with major's marks. He was playing an impromptu tennis with rope-quoits when I first caught sight of him, and his infantry fore-and-aft cap was on sideways. At last, in spite of his off-duty garb, I recognized him for a major I had met away back last November in a muddy American camp town. He had shown me through his village, and we had slopped our way from ancient barn to ancient barn, billet to billet-tents in some to keep the openwork roofs from deluging the sleepers.

"And what d'you think "-I remembered his indignantly asking me at that time-"the farmers here actually complain that my soldiers keep their sheep awake nights by talking too loud!"

More up-to-date yarns were in progress now. A colonel was telling about our salvage workers, who imitate the British on a large scale; one heard the inside stories of certain raids ; the French methods were now censured, now praised; there were incidents of bravery on the part of cooks; and there was the terrible tangle of prestige, in which, fortunately, I was not concerned. It must have been a trial to arrange the seating at table exactly according to rank, in order to avoid injured dignity.

"Are you a real soldier?" I heard an artilleryman ask a Red Cross lieutenant. "I mean, have you had cooties?"

And he showed his arm with the marks of bites.

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No; I haven't got them now," the artilleryman laughed. "Two coal-oil baths and one with carbolic soap, and new clothes from head to toe, did the trick." He caught my eye. "Oh," he said, "you mustn't put them down to uncleanliness. They're just there."

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Yes," commented a naval man; "I guess that's why, on a destroyer, when we rescue men from those trawlers, we first of all have to give them a bath in bichloride; otherwise we'd swarm."

As the danger zone disappeared behind us, the crew came more in evidence. There was plenty of work, but with so few passengers and the passing of that week of anxiety of a return journey through the danger zone, a little relaxation was possible. Indeed, the strain would be unbearable if these boys were not allowed a few hours now and then. It was interesting to notice,

too, the difference between these men and the crews on peacetime liners. In the merchant service the ship was run for the purpose of providing speed and luxury for the passengers and making money for the company; the crew were only the civil servants of the proprietors, and kept in the background. Here, though the crew did the manual work of running the ship-did everything from plumbing to wig wagging, from polishing brass to etching identity disks-they belong to the Navy, and not to a private company; those enlisted within the year have enlisted to fight; the ship is "in the zone of the navies," and these are the sailors' trenches. We passengers are guests in a besieged

house.

Three months ago most of the men in the engine-room had never been to sea. Now the chief engineer wouldn't trade them for any in the Navy. They are expert oil-burners. They have come from all grades of life and all parts of the country. Here is a bank clerk from New Orleans, and there an Indian from Colorado.

The former sun-parlors of a liner are now crew's quarters. There the men mess at long tables, and I think theirs was the same as ours-officers' mess; but I may be mistaken. Anyhow, I have seen them eating very large pieces of pie, and their beef and onions smelled appetizing when I had to walk through there yesterday to avoid the paint. I know they have plenty of coffee, for we all have it three times a day; and I suspect that the ice-cream freezer, a recent acquisition, has tried out its icecream on them as well as on us.

On sunny afternoons some of them appear on deck, in the large open space astern. Then, for a few hours, you see them over by the swinging boats, unprotected by a rail, many barefoot, sleeping face up in the sun, or if the less skillful soldiers have not lost it overboard-balancing themselves while they pass a medicine ball, or practicing wigwagging with colored flags. Just behind them you see their blouses and shirts and drawers-which they themselves have washed-waving on swaying ropes and fastened, not by clothespins, but by tie-ties.

"I was with the Grand Fleet until two trips ago," one man told me. “I may be going back again any time. Two of our crew lately came off the destroyers.'

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Another man sorrowfully confessed that with the utmost difficulty he had had himself transferred from the mother ship," stationed at base headquarters abroad, to the transport service, just to see his best girl in America, and now, after two round trips, he hadn't seen her. The first time they had landed at an unexpected port in order to pick up troops, and the next they had drawn lots for liberty, and he'd lost out.

The thing that is hard for the soldier element to realize is that, though their own sea danger passes, the danger of the sailor continues constantly, and, in proportion to their numbers, more sailors risk their lives than soldiers. It is as if a sailor were taken as a guest once, close to the trenches, in order to transfer him from one locality to another, whereas the khaki fighting-man sticks to his trenches; that is the analogy. And added to the unnatural dangers of Fritz, which beset both soldier and sailor, are, on the sea, those ever-present threats of nature herself.

Then there is the monotony, that ceaseless monotony of intermingled safety and danger, now in packed quarters, now in empty ones, the latter soon to be changed by the advent of the wounded permanently discharged from the army; so many bedridden, so many tubercular, so many insane, and so many convalescent, to be looked after and saved at all costs by the Navy; each trip a recurrence of the last, each with its horizon full of possible periscopes; and, gradually acquired from being told by each set of fresh soldiers, voyage after voyage, that they are going to clean up the war in no time, the attitude of the bluejackets that they themselves are really doing nothing worthy of home consideration. I have never met such modesty as the modesty of the sailor. Back and forth, with that never-ending strain of work and personal risk, and they hardly know they are doing anything brave.

It is the repetitions that are wearing-for instance, the repetition of fumigation. After each unloading of troops every bunk of the several thousands must be overhauled, each mattress brought out on deck and stuffed into the fumigator and steamed for at least fifteen minutes.

"Guess that'll roast all the bed bugs," I heard a sailor cheer fully comment while he was working with them.

There is, too, the sudden interruption of sleep and regular duties; the summoning of the crew in their life-jackets and their long gray-hooded sweaters that transform them into swiftly moving, silent monks to boat drill in the dark night while the passengers sleep, in the day as the passengers look on idly. And those passengers either watch curiously and laugh at the nimble scramblings over ropes and into the boats or glue their eyes on the crew's action with horrified fascination.

"Would you mind moving back a little?" one of the gun crew said to an army major who was carelessly smoking beside an open hatch. "That's full of ammunition, you know, and-" He didn't have to finish. The major bounded back ten feet. I was surprised at the youth of the crew; they might still be a lot of high school juniors. The average age, I learned, is twenty-two years, and, "since a number of the men have grown old in the service, that means that a good many are kids." "But"-and I agreed with the chief gunner-" they're pretty nice youngsters. Two-thirds of them enlisted after we declared war, and all my gun crew are new hands. I've kept them constantly at it, so that now there isn't one that's gun-shy. "That? Oh, they're getting up their shore gunnery for a funeral. The first member of the crew died last trip. We've got him aboard. His family don't know about it yet."

Last night I stood alone for an hour on the boat deck. The sea rippled in the wake of a crescent moon-we ourselves made no wake the dark masts of the ship and her stacks moved away from a line of stars only enough to make you know the ship breathed. There was no smoke, no noise except the rustle of the water against our sides, like a woman's taffeta petticoat. Not a boat in the vast circle of sea, unless it were those phosphorescent jellyfish with sails that they call Portuguese men-of-war, not a periscope, not a danger; navigation was unhampered and war was for the moment out of reach of our ears.

Below, in the smoking-room, I knew that forty-odd army officers were laughing at Sidney Drew as he chased his pet mouse, or Madge Kennedy as she tried to remarry a husband that strenuous scenario circumstances had estranged from her. I knew that they were discussing the newest musical comedies on Broadway, considering hotels, wondering about leave, and wording telegrams.

The chief gunner had "got slept up" after his ceaseless watch in the danger zone; the chief engineer was counting his barrels of oil to speculate on the speed he could allow-he had gallantly refused to take advantage of five thousand barrels in France when he realized how short France was; the chief surgeon had no more cases of appendicitis to operate on; the paymaster was making out his mess bills of a dollar a day; the soldiers were rehearsing their stories of heroism; the bluejackets, who lay in their hammocks, were dreaming of "liberty" and wondering if they would get any; while, on the bridge, the skipper quietly guided the transport. Submarines, mines, the lack of lights, engine trouble, and ice would be no excuse-he personally was responsible; and he was already thinking of the pile of official documents awaiting him, as usual, on his arrival: orders, reports, requests for reports, new doctrine, change of course, slight repairs and alterations. He was already thinking, too, of his return journey.

"I suppose," he said, "we're more of a troop-ship than any of the others, because we can carry more troops per cubic space than they can, and, so far, our round trips hold the record. Our return voyages, too, are entirely prepared for our conversion into a hospital ship. But the chief engineer is right; you mustn't think of us as a transport in the ordinary sense at all. What you've been traveling on is really a big destroyer-the biggest destroyer in our Navy."

My dog no longer wears his life-preserver; neither do I. The novelty of being the only woman aboard has worn away, and no one, I believe, particularly remembers it. There's no more chance of seasickness in a sea like a dancing-floor. But I shall always remember that no liner could give me the feeling of personal security that this troop-ship has given me, and that, though accident might occur anywhere, I have never crossed the ocean with such efficient protection as this time, when, under the official auspices of the United States Navy, I am soon to be brought safely to that haven where I would be.