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."
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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."
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