NEWSREEL XX 1 страница

Oh the infantree the infantree
With the dirt behind their ears.

ARMIES CLASH AT VERDUN IN GLOBE'S
GREATEST BATTLE
150,000 MEN AND WOMEN PARADE

but another question and a very important one is raised.
The New York Stock Exchange is today the only free securities
market in the world. If it maintains that position it is sure to
become perhaps the world's greatest center for the marketing of

BRITISH FLEET SENT TO SEIZE
GOLDEN HORN

The cavalree artilleree
And the goddamned engineers
Will never beat the infantree
In eleven thousand years

TURKS FLEE BEFORE TOMMIES AT
GALLIPOLI

when they return home what will our war veterans think
of the American who babbles about some vague new order,
while dabbling in the sand of shoal water? From his weak
folly they who have lived through the spectacle will recall the
vast new No Man's Land of Europe reeking with murder and
the lust of rapine, aflame with the fires of revolution

STRIKING WAITERS ASK AID OF WOMEN

Oh the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree
And green grows the grass in North Amerikee

coincident with a position of that kind will be the bringing
from abroad of vast quantities of money for the purposes of
maintaining balances in this country

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When I think of the flag which our ships carry, the only
touch of color about them, the only thing that moves as if it
had a settled spirit in their solid structure; it seems to
me I see alternate strips of parchment upon which are written
the rights of liberty and justice and strips of blood spilt to vindi-
cate these, rights, and then, -- in the corner a prediction of the
blue serene' into which every nation may swim which stands
for these things.

Oh we'll nail Old Glory to the top of the pole
And we'll all reenlist in the pig's a -- h --

JOE WILLIAMS

Joe Williams put on the secondhand suit and dropped
his uniform, with a cobblestone wrapped up in it, off the
edge of the dock into the muddy water of the basin. It
was noon. There was nobody around. He felt bad when
he found he didn't have the cigarbox with him. Back in
the shed he found it where he'd left it. It was a box that
had once held Flor de Mayo cigars he'd bought when he
was drunk in Guantanamo. In the box under the gold-
paper lace were Janey's high school graduation picture, a
snapshot of Alec with his motorcycle, a picture with the
signatures of the coach and all the players of the whole
highschool junior team that he was captain of all in base-
ball clothes, an old pink almost faded snapshot of his
Dad's tug, the Mary B. Sullivan, taken, off the Virginia
Capes with a fullrigged ship in tow, an undressed post-
card picture of a girl named Antoinette he'd been with in
Villefranche, some safetyrazor blades, a postcard photo
of himself and two other guys, all gobs in white suits,
taken against the background of a moorish arch in Malaga,

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a bunch of foreign stamps, a package of Merry Widows,
and ten little pink and red shells he'd picked up on the
beach at Santiago. With the box tucked right under his
arm, feeling crummy in the baggy civies, he walked slowly
out to the beacon and watched the fleet in formation
steaming down the River Plate. The day was overcast; the
lean cruisers soon blurred into their trailing smoke-
smudges.

Joe stopped looking at them and watched a rusty tramp
come in. She had a heavy list to port and you could see
the hull below the waterline green and slimy with weed.
There was a blue and white Greek flag on the stern and a
dingy yellow quarantine flag halfway up the fore.

A man who had come up behind him said something
to Joe in Spanish. He was a smiling ruddy man in blue
denims and was smoking a cigar, but for some reason he
made Joe feel panicky. "No savvy," Joe said and walked
away and out between the warehouses into the streets back
of the waterfront.

He had trouble finding Maria's place, all the blocks
looked so much alike. It was by the mechanical violin in
the window that he recognized it. Once he got inside the
stuffy anisesmelling dump he stood a long time at the bar
with one hand round a sticky beerglass looking out at the
street he could see in bright streaks through the bead-
curtain that hung in the door. Any minute he expected
the white uniform and yellow holster of a marine to go
past.

Behind the bar a yellow youth with a crooked nose
leaned against the wall looking at nothing. When Joe
made up his mind he jerked his chin up. The youth came
over and craned confidentially across the bar, leaning on
one hand and swabbing at the oilcloth with the rag he held
in the other. The flies that had been grouped on the
rings left by beerglasses on the oilcloth flew up to join

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the buzzing mass on the ceiling. "Say, bo, tell Maria I
want to see her," Joe said out of the corner of his mouth.
The youth behind the bar held up two fingers. "Dos
pesos," he said. "Hell, no, I only want to talk to her."

Maria beckoned to him from the door in back. She was
a sallow woman with big eyes set far apart in bluish
sacks. Through the crumpled pink dress tight over the
bulge of her breasts Joe could make out the rings of
crinkled flesh round the nipples. They sat down at a table
in the back room. "Gimme two beers," Joe yelled through
the door.

"Watta you wan', iho de mi alma?" asked Maria. "You
savvy Doc Sidner?" "Sure me savvy all yanki. Watta you
wan) you no go wid beeg sheep?" "No go wid beeg
sheep. . . Fight wid beeg sonofabeech, see?"

"Ché!" Maria's breasts shook like jelly when she
laughed. She put a fat hand at the back of his neck and
drew his face towards hers. "Poor baby . . . black eye."
"Sure he gave me a black eye." Joe pulled away from her.
"Petty officer. I knocked him cold, see . . . Navy's no
place for me after that. . . I'm through. Say, Doc said
you knew a guy could fake A.B. certificates. . . able sea-
man savvy? Me for the Merchant Marine from now on,
Maria."

Joe drank down his beer.

She sat shaking her head saying, "Ché. . . pobrecito
. . . Ché." Then she said in a tearful voice, " 'Ow much
dollars you got?" "Twenty," said Joe. "Heem want fif-
tee." "I guess I'm f -- d for fair then."

Maria walked round to the back of his chair and put a
fat arm round his neck, leaning over him with little cluck-
ing noises. "Wait a minute, we rink. . . sabes?" Her big
breast pressing against his neck and shoulder made him
feel itchy; he didn't like her touching him in the morning
when he was sober like this. But he sat there until she
suddenly let out a parrot screech. " Paquito . . . ven acá."

-6-

A dirty pearshaped man with a red face and neck came
in from the back. They talked Spanish over Joe's head.
At last she patted his cheek and said, "Awright Paquito
sabe where heem live. . . maybe heem take twenty,
sabes?"

Joe got to his feet. Paquito took off the smudged cook's
apron and lit a cigarette. "You savvy A.B. papers?" said Joe
walking up and facing him. He nodded, "Awright." Joe.
gave Maria a hug and a little pinch. "You're a good girl,
Maria." She followed them grinning to the door of the
bar.

Outside Joe looked sharply up and down the street.
Not a uniform. At the end of the street a crane tilted
black above the cement warehouse buildings. They got on
a'streetcar and rode a long time without saying anything.
Joe sat staring at the floor with his hands dangling be-
tween his knees until Paquito poked him. They got out in
a cheaplooking suburban section of new cement houses
already dingy. Paquito rang at a door like all the other
doors and after a while a man with redrimmed eyes and
big teeth like a horse came and opened it. He and Paquito
talked Spanish a long while through the halfopen door.
Joe stood first on one foot and then on the other. He
could tell that they were sizing up how much they could
get out of him by the way they looked at him sideways as
they talked.

He was just about to break in when the man in the
door spoke to him in cracked cockney. "You give the
blighter five pesos for his trouble, mytey, an' we'll settle
this hup between wahte men." Joe shelled out what silver
he had in his pocket and Paquito went.

Joe followed the limey into the front hall that smelt.
of cabbage and frying grease and wash day. When he got
inside he put his hand on Joe's shoulder and said, blowing
stale whiskeybreath in his face, "Well, mytey, 'ow much
can you afford?" Joe drew away. "Twenty American

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dollars's all I got," he said through his teeth. The limey
shook his head, "Only four quid . . . well, there's no
'arm in seein' what we can do, is there, mytey? Let?s see
it." While the limey stood looking at him Joe took off his
belt, picked out a couple of stitches with the small blade of
his jackknife and pulled out two orangebacked American
bills folded long. He unfolded them carefully and was
about to hand them over when he thought better of it and
put them in his pocket. "Now let's take a look at the
paper," he said grinning.

The limey's redrimmed eyes looked tearful; he said
we ought to be 'elpful one to another and gryteful when
a bloke risked a forger's hend to 'elp 'is fellow creatures.
Then he asked Joe his name, age and birthplace, how
long he'd been to sea and all that and went into an inside
room, carefully locking the door after him.

Joe stood in the hall. There was a clock ticking some-
where. The ticks dragged slower and slower. At last Joe
heard the key turn in the lock and the limey came out with
two papers in his hand. "You oughter realize what I'm
doin' for yez, mytey. . . ." Joe took the paper. He wrin-
kled his forehead and studied it; looked all right to him.
The other paper was a note authorizing Titterton's Marine
Agency to garnishee Joe's pay monthly until the sum of
ten pounds had been collected. "But look here you," he
said, "that makes seventy dollars I'm shelling out." The
limey said think of the risk he was tyking and 'ow times
was 'ard and that arfter all he could tyke it or leave it.
Joe followed him into the paperlittered inside room and
leaned over the desk and signed with a fountain pen.

They went downtown on the streetcar and got off at
Rivadavia Street. Joe followed the limey into a small
office back of a warehouse. " 'Ere's a smart young 'and for
you, Mr. McGregor," the limey said to a biliouslooking
Scotchman who was walking up and down chewing his
nails.

-8-

Joe and Mr. McGregor looked at each other. "Ameri-
can?" "Yes." "You're not expectin' American pay I'm
supposin'?"

The limey went up to him and whispered something;
McGregor looked at the certificate and seemed satisfied.
"All right, sign in the book. . . . Sign under the last
name." Joe signed and handed the limey the twenty dol-
lars. That left him flat. "Well, cheeryoh, mytey." Joe
hesitated a moment before he took the limey's hand. "So
long," he said.

"Go get your dunnage and be back here in an hour,"
said McGregor in a rasping voice. "Haven't got any dun-
nage. I've been on the beach," said Joe, weighing the
cigarbox in his hand. "Wait outside then and I'll take you
aboard the Argyle by and by." Joe stood for a while in
the warehouse door looking out into the street. Hell, he'd
seen enough of B.A. He sat on a packingcase marked Tib-
bett & Tibbett, Enameled Ware, Blackpool, to wait for
Mr. McGregor, wondering if he was the skipper or the
mate. Time sure would drag all right till he got out of
B.A.

THE CAMERA EYE (28)

when the telegram came that she was dying (the
streetcarwheels screeched round the bellglass like all the
pencils on all the slates in all the schools) walking around
Fresh Pond the smell of puddlewater willowbuds in the
raw wind shrieking streetcarwheels rattling on loose trucks
through the Boston suburbs grief isnt a uniform

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and go shock the Booch and drink wine for supper at the
Lenox before catching the Federal

I'm so tired of violets
Take them all away

when the telegram came that she was dying the bell-
glass cracked in a screech of slate pencils (have you ever
never been able to sleep for a week in April?) and He
met me in the grey trainshed my eyes were stinging with
vermillion bronze and chromegreen inks that oozed from
the spinning April hills His moustaches were white the
tired droop of an old man's cheeks She's gone Jack
grief isnt a uniform and the in the parlor the waxen
odor of lilies in the parlor (He and I we must bury the
uniform of grief)

then the riversmell the shimmering Potomac reaches
the little choppysilver waves at Indian Head there
were mockingbirds in the graveyard and the roadsides
steamed with spring April enough to shock the world

when the cable came that He was dead I walked
through the streets full of fiveoclock Madrid seething with
twilight in shivered cubes of aguardiente redwine gaslamp-
green sunsetpink tileochre eyes lips red cheeks brown
pillar of the throat climbed on the night train at the
Norte station without knowing why

I'm so tired of violets
Take them all away

-10-

the shattered iridescent bellglass the carefully copied
busts the architectural details the grammar of styles

it was the end of that book and I left the Oxford
poets in the little noisy room that smelt of stale oliveoil in
the Pension Boston Ahora. Now Maintenant Vita
Nuova but we

who had heard Copey's beautiful reading voice and
read the handsomely bound books and breathed deep
(breathe deep one two three four) of the waxwork
lilies and the artificial parmaviolet scent under the ether-
cone and sat breakfasting in the library where the bust was
of Octavius

were now dead at the cableoffice

on the rumblebumping wooden bench on the train
slamming through midnight climbing up from the steer-
age to get a whiff of Atlantic on the lunging steamship
(the ovalfaced Swiss girl and her husband were my
friends) she had slightly popeyes and a little gruff way of
saying Zut alors and throwing us a little smile a fish to a
sealion that warmed our darkness when the immigra-
tion officer came for her passport he couldn't send her to
Ellis Islandla grippe espagnole she was dead

washing those windows
K.P.
cleaning the sparkplugs with a pocketknife

-11-

A. W. O. L.

grinding the American Beauty roses to dust in that
whore's bed (the foggy night flamed with proclamations
of the League: of the Rights of Man) the almond smell
of high explosives sending singing éclats through the
sweetish puking grandiloquence of the rotting dead

tomorrow I hoped would be the first day of the first
month of the first year

PLAYBOY

Jack Reed
was the son of a United States Marshal, a promi-
nent citizen of Portland Oregon.

He was a likely boy
so his folks sent him east to school
and to Harvard.

Harvard stood for the broad a and those contacts
so useful in later life and good English prose . . . if
the hedgehog cant be cultured at Harvard the hedge-
hog cant

at all and the Lowells only speak to the Cabots
and the Cabots

and the Oxford Book of Verse.

Reed was a likely youngster, he wasnt a jew or a
socialist and he didnt come from Roxbury; he was
husky greedy had appetite for everything: a man's got
to like many things in his life.

Reed was a man; he liked men he liked women
he liked eating and writing and foggy nights and drink-
ing and foggy nights and swimming and football and

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rhymed verse and being cheerleader ivy orator making
clubs (not the very best clubs, his blood didn't run thin
enough for the very best clubs)

and Copey voice reading The Man Who Would
Be King, the dying fall Urnburial, good English prose
the lamps coming on across the Yard, under the elms
in the twilight

dim voices in lecturehalls,

the dying fall the elms the Discobulus the bricks of
the old buildings and the commemorative gates and the
goodies and the deans and the instructors all crying in
thin voices refrain,

refrain; the rusty machinery creaked, the deans
quivered under their mortarboards, the cogs turned to
Class Day, and Reed was out in the world:

Washington Square!
Conventional turns out to be a cussword;

Villon seeking a lodging for the night in the
Italian tenements on Sullivan Street, Bleecker, Car-
mine;

research proves R.L.S. to have been a great cocks-
man,

and as for the Elizabethans

to hell with them.

Ship on a cattleboat and see the world have ad-
ventures you can tell funny stories about every evening;
a man's got to love. . . the quickening pulse the feel
that today in foggy evenings footsteps taxicabs women's
eyes. . . many things in his life.

Europe with a dash of horseradish, gulp Paris like
an oyster;

but there's more to it than the Oxford Book of
English Verse. Linc Steffens talked the cooperative
commonwealth.

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revolution in a voice as mellow as Copey's, Diog-
enes Steffens with Marx for a lantern going through
the west looking for a good man, Socrates Steffens kept
asking why not revolution?

Jack Reed wanted to live in a tub and write verses;

but he kept meeting bums workingmen husky guys
he liked out of luck out of work why not revolution?

He couldnt keep his mind on his work with so
many people out of luck;
in school hadnt he learned the Declaration of In-
dependence by heart? Reed was a westerner and words
meant what they said; when he said something standing
with a classmate at the Harvard Club bar, he meant
what he said from the soles of his feet to the waves of
his untidy hair (his blood didnt run thin enough for
the Harvard Club and the Dutch Treat Club and re-
spectable New York freelance Bohemia).

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
not much of that round the silkmills when
in 1913,

he went over to Paterson to write up the strike,
textile workers parading beaten up by the cops, the
strikers in jail; before he knew it he was a striker parad-
ing beaten up by the cops in jail;
he wouldn't let the editor bail him out, he'd learn
more with the strikers in jail.
He learned enough to put on the pageant of the
Paterson Strike in Madison Square garden.
He learned the hope of a new society where no-
body would be out of luck,
why not revolution?

The Metropolitan Magazine sent him to Mexico
to write up Pancho Villa.
Pancho Villa taught him to write and the skeleton

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mountains and the tall organ cactus and the armored
trains and the bands playing in little plazas full of dark
girls in blue scarfs
and the bloody dust and the ping of rifleshots
in the enormous night of the desert, and the brown
quietvoiced peons dying starving killing for liberty
for land for water for schools.
Mexico taught him to write.

Reed was a westerner and words meant what they
said.

The war was a blast that blew out all the Diogenes
lanterns;

the good men began to gang up to call for ma-
chineguns. Jack Reed was the last of the great race of
warcorrespondents who ducked under censorships and
risked their skins for a story.

Jack Reed was the best American writer of his
time, if anybody had wanted to know about the war
they could have read about it in the articles he wrote

about the German front,
the Serbian retreat,
Saloniki;

behind the lines in the tottering empire of the
Czar,
dodging the secret police,
jail in Cholm.

The brasshats wouldnt let him go to France be-
cause they said one night in the German trenches kid-
ding with the Boche guncrew he'd pulled the string on a
Hun gun pointed at the heart of France . . . playboy
stuff but after all what did it matter who fired the guns
or which way they were pointed? Reed was with the
boys who were being blown to hell,

with the Germans the French the Russians the

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Bulgarians the seven little tailors in the Ghetto in
Salonique,

and in 1917
he was with the soldiers and peasants
in Petrograd in October:
Smolny,
Ten Days That Shook the World;

no more Villa picturesque Mexico, no more Harv-
ard Club playboy stuff, plans for Greek theatres, rhym-
ing verse, good stories of an oldtime warcorrespondent,

this wasnt fun anymore
this was grim.

Delegate,

back in the States indictments, the Masses trial,
the Wobbly trial, Wilson cramming the jails,

forged passports, speeches, secret documents, rid-
ing the rods across the cordon sanitaire, hiding in the
bunkers on steamboats;

jail in Finland all his papers stolen,

no more chance to write verses now, no more warm
chats with every guy you met up with, the college boy
with the nice smile talking himself out of trouble with
the judge;

at the Harvard Club they're all in the Intelligence
Service making the world safe for the Morgan-Baker-
Stillman combination of banks;

that old tramp sipping his coffee out of a tomato-
can's a spy of the General Staff.

The world's no fun anymore,
only machinegunfire and arson
starvation lice bedbugs cholera typhus

no lint for bandages no chloroform or ether thou-
sands dead of gangrened wounds cordon sanitaire and
everywhere spies.

-16-

The windows of Smolny glow whitehot like a
bessemer,

no sleep in Smolny,

Smolny the giant rollingmill running twentyfour
hours a day rolling out men nations hopes millenniums
impulses fears,

rawmaterial
for the foundations
of a new society.

A man has to do many things in his life.

Reed was a westerner words meant what they said.
He threw everything he had and himself into
Smolny,

dictatorship of the proletariat;
U.S.S.R.
The first workers republic
was established and stands.

Reed wrote, undertook missions (there were spies
everywhere), worked till he dropped,
caught typhus and died in Moscow.

JOE WILLIAMS

Twentyfive days at sea on the steamer Argyle, Glas-
gow, Captain Thompson, loaded with hides, chipping rust,
daubing red lead on steel plates that were sizzling hot
griddles in the sun, painting the stack from dawn to dark,
pitching and rolling in the heavy dirty swelli bedbugs in
the bunks in the stinking focastle, slumgullion for grub,
with potatoes full of eyes and mouldy beans, cockroaches
mashed on the messtable, but a tot of limejuice every day
in accordance with the regulations; then sickening rainy
heat and Trinidad blue in the mist across the ruddy water.

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Going through the Boca it started to rain and the islands
heaped with ferny parisgreen foliage went grey under the
downpour. By the time they got her warped into the
wharf at Port of Spain, everybody was soaked to the skin
with rain and sweat. Mr. McGregor, striding up and
down in a souwester purple in the face, lost his voice from
the heat and had to hiss out his orders in a mean whisper.
Then the curtain of the rain lifted, the sun came out and
everything steamed. Apart from the heat everybody was
sore because there was talk that they were going up to the
Pitch Lake to load asphaltum.

Next day nothing happened. The hides in the forward
hold stank when they unbattened the hatches. Clothes and
bedding, hung out to dry in the torrid glare of sun be-
tween showers, was always getting soaked again before
they could get it in. While it was raining there was no-
where you could keep dry; the awning over the deck
dripped continually.

In the afternoon, Joe's watch got off, though it wasn't
much use going ashore because nobody had gotten any
pay. Joe found himself sitting under a palm tree on a
bench in a sort of a park near the waterfront staring at
his feet. It began to rain and he ducked under an awning
in front of a bar. There were electric fans in the bar; a
cool whiff of limes and rum and whiskey in iced drinks
wafted out through the open door. Joe was thirsty for a
beer but he didn't have a red cent. The rain hung like a
bead curtain at the edge of the awning.

Standing beside him was a youngish man in a white suit
and a panama hat, who looked like an American. He
glanced at Joe several times, then he caught his eye and
smiled, "Are you an Am-m-merican," he said. He stut-
tered a little when he talked. "I am that," said Joe.

There was a pause. Then the man held out his hand.
"Welcome to our city," he said. Joe noticed that he had a
slight edge on. The man's palm was soft when he shook

-18-

his hand. Joe didn't like the way his handshake felt. "You
live here?" he asked. The man laughed. He had blue eyes
and a round poutlipped face that looked friendly. "Hell
no . . . I'm only here for a couple of days on this West
India cruise. Much b-b-better have saved my money and
stayed home. I wanted to go to Europe but you c-c-can't
on account of the war." "Yare, that's all they talk about
on the bloody limejuicer I'm on, the war."