1917

American soldier maimed in the war. Author's collection.

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“If they see one American uniform that is supposed to make them believe others are coming.” 

Ernest Hemingway

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January 4: Like so many other leaders of the Western nations in this era, President Woodrow Wilson had a giant blind spot, where matters of race were involved. He explained his desire to keep the U.S. at peace in the following terms: “This country does not intend to become involved in this war. We are the only one of the great white nations that is free from war today, and it would be a crime against civilization for us to go in.” (10/77 II) 

As Arthur Walworth writes:

 

… a debate began that was to last for three years and to be recognized as one of the most portentous in the history of the century. [Sen. William] Borah of Idaho argued that Wilson’s proposal, committing American armed forces to protect the integrity of every little country, would plunge the nation into the storm center of European politics, and that the advice of the founding fathers would be renounced and the Monroe Doctrine destroyed. …

 

Nevertheless, the prophet was so confident of the receptiveness of the plain people of the world that he resolved to speak to them over the heads of their rulers. …

 

This blogger, in reviewing old notes on Wilson, would call him “messianic” in his thinking.

 

* 

“A struggle for a just and secure peace?” 

January 22: After an early round of golf in Virginia, Woodrow Wilson goes before the Senate. Walworth sets the scene:

 

Believing that he spoke for “liberals and friends of humanity in every nation,” he stood as pastor to the whole human race, with compassion for all peoples and condemnation for none. Reviewing the discouraging replies to his December request for the peace terms of the belligerents, he asserted optimistically that the world was “that much nearer a definitive discussion of the peace which shall end the present war.” When the settlement did come, he said it must be followed by “some definite concert of power which will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again.” (10/78 II)

 

Wilson went on to say:

 

The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? … There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power: not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.

 

There “must be a peace without victory,” he concluded. 

Wilson later told the French ambassador that a better term would have been “a scientific peace.” 

The president warned:

 

Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit. …

 

The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply difference between the big nations and small… Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power… the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world… (10/78-79 II)

 

* 

February 1: The German General Staff had promised the Kaiser that submarine fleets could “paralyze” Great Britain before U.S. aid would make a difference. 

As Walworth explains, at a somber cabinet meeting, as war clouds darken, members rise when the president enters the room.

 

In so solemn a moment they hesitated to give advice, and the President drew it out with questions. “Shall I break off diplomatic relations with Germany?” he asked, repeating what he had said before about his willingness to bear imputations of weakness, even of cowardice, in order to keep the white race strong. (10/83 II)

 

* 

February 17: A German U-boat sinks the Cunard liner Laconia, with the loss of two American passengers. Submarines were now sinking 600,000 tons of shipping per month.

 

* 

“Unsettlement of the foundations of civilization.” 

February 18: Three American vessels are torpedoed and sunk. 

President Wilson refuses to be stampeded into war. “We are not governed by public opinion in our conclusion,” he tells his cabinet. “I want to do right whether it is popular or not.” 

Walworth adds:

 

He did not sleep well, however. In fact, he had been lying awake night after night, agitated by the doubts that he kept submerged under a cool exterior. The vital question, to him, was not the immediate cause of war, but rather the larger problem that he had recognized as early as May, 1916, when he had said: “The danger of our time is nothing less than the unsettlement of the foundations of civilization.” And so he asked himself: What would be the probable consequences to humanity if the United States entered the fight? (10/96 II)

 

Why should Americans support the Allies, and ignore their insults? “Property can be paid for,” Wilson said. “The lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot.” (10/98 II)

 

* 

February 25: Wilson receives information showing that Germany was offering Mexico an alliance. Foreign Minster Arthur Zimmerman dangles the hope of regaining the “lost territory of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona,” should Mexico join forces with the Germans. He also suggested that Mexico seek the cooperation of Japan. (10/89 II)

 

* 

“The world must be made safe for democracy.” 

April 6: The United States declares war on Germany. The vote in favor in the Senate, two days earlier, was 82-6. The House of Representatives now votes in favor, 373 to 50. 

President Wilson explains our goals to the world:

 

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. … it is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. … The day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other

 

Walworth describes the reaction in Congress to Mr. Wilson’s speech:

 

In thirty-two minutes he had finished speaking. For a few seconds there was stillness…then a deafening roar in which Republicans and Democrats – Americans alike – gave voice to the feelings of a preponderance of the people. Henry Cabot Lodge, his face slightly puffed as a result of fisticuffs with a pacifist, shook the hand of the president warmly. At last the time had come for which Wilson had waited so patiently, the time when, as he explained later, his people were willing not merely to follow him, but to do so “with a whoop.” In no previous crisis in American history had feeling been so unanimous.

 

War resolutions were quickly passed, with few dissenting votes. At one-eighteen on the afternoon of April 7 Wilson left his luncheon and with his wife stepped into the head usher’s office. He was given the proclamation that formally declared  the state of war that had been “thrust upon the United States.” He read it with rigid jaw and grim countenance, then signed with a gold pen that he had given to Edith Wilson and that she asked him to use. The occasion was too solemn, he thought, to be witnessed by newsmen or photographed. .(10/99-100 II)

 

Walworth notes, that men rushed to volunteer for the fight, and Wilson was swamped with offers of help. 

The most embarrassing plea came from Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who had served on his own terms in the Spanish-American War and wanted to do so again. Already he had rounded up some of his comrades of the “Rough Riders”; and even before the declaration of war he had offered to assemble a division and to put it into the trenches in France after six weeks of training. (10/102 II) 

House writes in his diary: “the fortunes of the Allies have never seemed so low as now.” 

He predicted the U.S. would be judged for a century on how its army performed in France. (10/136 II) 

On Russia, the president would insist, “Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be open whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace…” (10/148 II)

April 6 (again): The U.S. having entered the war George F. Hale, of the National Academy of Scientists, sends a telegram to our allies: “The entrance of the United States into the war unites our men of science with yours.” 

That means, our scientists go to work, perfecting new kinds of poisonous gasses, gas masks to protect against the same, and better kinds of bombs and explosives. In Washington D.C. a firing range was set up near the campus of American University, and live rounds were fired into a range near the Dalecarlia Resevoir, one of the main water sources for the nation’s capital. 

Sometimes known as “the Chemists’ War,” World War I involved cutting edge work in science in many fields. 

The New York Times explains,

 

World War I, which ended with the armistice on Nov. 11, 1918, is infamous for its horrific battlefield conditions, its grinding, bloody clashes — the Battles of the Somme, Verdun, Passchendaele and others — and the resulting human slaughter. Some 8.5 million soldiers were killed and 21 million more were wounded.

 

Less is remembered about the role of science. The war hastened technological progress with optics, radio and primitive sonar. The Germans’ largest siege cannon, the dreaded “Paris Gun,” heaved gigantic shells into the stratosphere that returned to earth to pummel the French capital, 75 miles away. Lithe German submarines prowled under the waves. Aviation, in its infancy at the war’s start, roared into maturity by the end. The inventor Thomas A. Edison lent his scientific prowess to the United States Navy.

 

Many scientists answered the call and served as “dollar-a-year men,” paid a symbolic wage for their efforts. 

By war’s end, more than 2,000 scientists and civilians worked at the American University Experiment Station, nicknamed “Mustard Hill,” for work done on the “blister agent sulfur mustard.” There was farmland nearby, in those days, and the Army leased land for a firing range, also aptly nicknamed, “Death Valley.” 

In 1993, developers near the old range discovered 141 munitions buried in the ground, which spurred a lengthy cleanup.

 

Several years later, the Corps of Engineers reopened its examination of the area, acknowledging that it had prematurely shut down the cleanup. The contamination and debris proved more extensive than originally believed, sparking an uproar from residents and a pledge from the Army for more transparency and community participation.

 

The corps has been a near-constant presence in Spring Valley since then. Hundreds of munitions have been hauled away, most of them from a handful of burial pits. Arsenic has been the most widespread chemical contaminant — the army has carted off thousands of tons of tainted soil and replaced it with clean topsoil. Sulfur mustard, lewisite and other chemical warfare compounds — as well as traces of the constituent chemicals that remain after the warfare agents break down over time — have also been detected and removed.

 

Concerns about the health effects of chemical contamination among Spring Valley’s roughly 25,000 residents have long lingered over the cleanup, especially after a lengthy neighborhood newspaper investigation reported unusual illnesses and health problems among residents.

 

A hundred years after the war ended, chemical traces were still being uncovered, with one homesite so polluted in 2012, that the home had to be razed. New technology was being used to scan the ground for buried metal objects that fit the profile of mortar shells and 75-millimeter artillery rounds.

Forearm of a U.S. volunteer with blistering agents applied.

Soldiers called these “man tests.”

* 

An I.W.W. song of this era discourages young men from enlisting: 

I love my flag, I do, I do,

Which floats upon the breeze,

 I also love my arms and legs,

And neck, and nose and knees.

One little shell might spoil them all

Or give them such a twist,

They would be of no use to me:

       I guess I won’t enlist.

 

I love my country, yes, I do

I hope her folks do well.

Without our arms, and legs and things,

I think we’d look like hell.

Young men with faces half shot off

Are unfit to be kissed,

I’ve read in books it spoils their looks,

       I guess I won’t enlist.

 * 

President Wilson hesitates to take actions that might trample on civil liberties. When cabinet members share rumors of sabotage, by foreign agents, and mention their fears of a German who tended the White House furnace, the president replies, “I’d rather the blamed place should be blown up rather than persecute inoffensive people.” (10/97 II) 

In many circles, however, hysteria rules.

 

* 

In an essay called, “Star-Spangled Men,” H.L. Mencken would later mock the blinding patriotism of many Americans during this period, in particular the attacks on German immigrants, pacifists, and left-wing thinkers. At one point, he proposes “a variety of the Distinguished Service Medals for civilians.” These medals would come in different colors and with different decorative touches, “to mark off varying services to democracy.” 

These might include:

 

The lowest class for the patriot who sacrificed only time, money and a few nights’ sleep; the highest for the great martyr who hung his country’s altar with his dignity, his decency and his sacred honor. For Elmer and his nervous insomnia, a simple rosette, with an iron badge bearing the national motto, “Safety First”; for the university president who prohibited the teaching of the enemy language in his learned grove, heaved the works of Goethe out of the university library, cashiered every professor unwilling to support Woodrow for the first vacancy in the Trinity, took to the stump for the National Security League, and made two hundred speeches in moving picture theaters – for this giant of loyal endeavor letting no 100 per cent. American speak of anything less than the grand cross of the order, with a gold badge in stained glass, a baldrick of the national colors, a violet plug hat with a sunburst on the side, the privilege of the floor of Congress, and a pension of $10,000 a year. After all, the cost would not be excessive; there are not many of them. Such prodigies of patriotism are possible only to rare and gifted men. For the grand cordons of the order, e.g., college professors who spied upon and reported the seditions of their associates, state presidents of the American Protective League, alien property custodians, judges who sentences of conscientious objectors mounted to more than 50,000 years, members of George Creel’s herd of 2000 American historians, the authors of the Sisson documents, etc. – pensions of $10 a day would be enough, with silver badges and no plug hats. For the lower ranks, bronze badges and the legal right to the title of “The Hon,” already every true American’s by courtesy.

 

Mencken adds that the National Security League was, “A band of patriots which made a deafening uproar in the 1914-1918 era. Its fronts were Elihu Root and Alton B. Parker.” 

As for the American Protective League, he labels it

 

an organization of amateur detectives working under the aegis of the Department of Justice. In 1917 its operatives reported that I was an intimate associate an agent of “the German monster, Nietzsky,” and I was solemnly investigated. But I was a cunning fellow in those days and full of malicious humor, So I not only managed to throw off the charge but even to write the report upon myself. I need not say that it gave me a clean bill of health – and I still have a carbon to prove it. As a general rule the American Protective League confined itself to easier victims. Its specially was harassing German waiters.

 

He also explains why medals, even nickel-plated ones, could not be handed out to every American “patriot” who spied on his German neighbors, or spread stories of enemy agents operating wireless equipment in their attics. No,

 

to all who served as jurors or perjurers in cases against members and ex-members of the I.W.W., and to the German American members of the League for German Democracy, and to all the Irish who snitched upon the Irish – if decorations were thrown about with any such lavishness, then there would be no nickel left for our bathrooms. On the civilian side as on the military side the greatest rewards of war go, not to mere dogged industry and fidelity, but to originality – to the unprecedented, the arresting, the bizarre. The New York Tribune liar who invented the story about the German plant for converting the corpses of the slain into soap did more for democracy and the Wilsonian idealism, and hence deserves a more brilliant recognition, than a thousand uninspired hawkers of atrocity stories supplied by Viscount Bryce and his associates. For that great servant of righteousness the grand cordon, with two silver badges and the chair of history at Columbia, would be scarcely enough; for the ordinary hawkers any precious metal would be too much.

 

Whether or not the Y.M.C.A. has decorated its chocolate peddlers and soul-snatchers I do not know; since the chief Y.M.C.A. lamasery in my town of Baltimore became the scene of a homosexual scandal I have ceased to frequent evangelical society. (49/112-114)

* 

Following are excerpts from “A Way You’ll Never Be,” (1933) by Ernest Hemingway. He draws from his own experiences during the war. Nick Adams, an America soldier, serving with the Italians, is pushing his bicycle along a broken highway. He comes across the scene of a recent attack. The dead litter the roadside. 

 

They lay alone or in clumps in the high grass of the field and along the road, their pockets out, and over them were flies and around each body or group of bodies were the scattered papers.

 

In the grass and the grain, beside the road, and in some places scattered over the road, there was much material: a field kitchen, it must have come over when things were going well; many of the calf-skin-covered haversacks, stick bombs, helmets, rifles, sometimes one butt-up, the bayonet stuck in the dirt, they had dug quite a little at the last; stick bombs, helmets, rifles, intrenching tools, ammunition boxes, star-shell pistols, their shells scattered about, medical kits, gas masks, empty gas-mask cans, a squat, tripodded machine gun in a nest of empty shells, full belts protruding from the boxes, the water-cooling can empty and on its side, the breech block gone, the crew in odd positions, and around them, in the grass, more of the typical papers.

 

There were mass prayer books, group postcards showing the machine-gun unit [in happier times, standing together, like teammates posing for a football picture]; now they were humped and swollen in the grass…[There were propaganda postcards and smutty postcards lying all about and] the small photographs of village girls by village photographers, the occasional pictures of children, and the letters, letters, letters. There was always much paper about the dead…

 

These were new dead and no one had bothered with anything but their pockets. Our own dead, or what he thought of, still, as our own dead, were surprisingly few, Nick noticed. Their coats had been opened too and their pockets were out, and they showed, by their positions, the manner and the skill of the attack. The hot weather had swollen them all alike regardless of nationality.

 

The town had evidently been defended, at the last, from the line of the sunken road and there had been few or no Austrians to fall back into it. There were only three bodies in the street and they looked to have been killed running. The houses of the town were broken by the shelling and the street had much rubble of plaster and mortar and there were broken beams, broken tiles, and many holes, some of them yellow-edged from the mustard gas. There were many pieces of shell, and shrapnel balls were scattered in the rubble. There was no one in the town at all.

 

Nick is looking for an old friend, Captain Paravicini, in command of Italian troops nearby. The captain is surprised to see Adams wearing the uniform of an American soldier. Has he been assigned to some American unit, Paravicini wonders?

 

“No. I am supposed to move around and let them see the uniform.”

 

“How odd.”

 

“If they see one American uniform that is supposed to make them believe others are coming.”

 

“But how will they know it is an American uniform?”

 

“You will tell them.”

 

“Oh. Yes, I see. I will send a corporal with you to show you about and you will make a tour of the lines.”

 

“Like a bloody politician,” Nick said.

 

[Nick explains:] “I’m supposed to have my pockets full of cigarettes and postal cards and such things…I should have a musette full of chocolate. These I should distribute with a kind word and a pat on the back. But there weren’t any cigarettes and postcards and no chocolate. So they said to circulate around anyway.”

 

“I’m sure your appearance will be very heartening to the troops.”

 

The two old comrades remember drinking together. Nick feels bad because he couldn’t bring the captain a bottle of brandy. Then he admits he used to get drunk every time his unit was supposed to attack.

 

“I was stinking in every attack,” Nick said.

 

“I can’t do it,” Para said. “I took it [meaning: he was wounded] in the first show, the very first show, and it only made me very upset and then frightfully thirsty.”

 

“You don’t need it.”

 

“You’re much braver in an attack than I am.”

 

“No,” Nick said. “I know how I am and I prefer to get stinking. I’m not ashamed of it.”

 

Adams has suffered a serious head wound recently and he is bothered by many strange dreams; his old friend asks him how he feels. Finally, the captain suggests he get some rest. Nick finds a place in a dugout and lies down on one bunk.

 

…He was very disappointed that he felt this way and more disappointed, even, that it was so obvious to Captain Paravicini. This was not as large a dugout as the one where that platoon of the class of 1899, just out at the front, got hysterics during the bombardment before the attack, and Para had had him walk them two at a time outside to show them nothing would happen, he wearing his own chin strap tight across his mouth to keep his lips quiet. Knowing they could not hold it when they took it. Knowing it was all a bloody balls—if he can’t stop crying, break his nose to give him something else to think about. I’d shoot one but it’s too late now. They’d all be worse. Break his nose. They’ve put it back to five-twenty. We’ve only got four minutes more. Break that other silly bugger’s nose and kick his silly ass out of here. Do you think they’ll go over? If they don’t, shoot two and try to scoop the others out some way. Keep behind them, sergeant. It’s no use to walk ahead and find there’s nothing coming behind you. Bail them out as you go. What a bloody balls. All right. That’s right. Then, looking at the watch, in that quiet tone, that valuable quiet tone, “Savoia.” Making it cold, no time to get it, he couldn’t find his own after the cave-in, one whole end had caved in; it was that started them; making it cold up that slope the only time he hadn’t done it stinking.

 

Nick sleeps for a time; and when he wakes he talks to several Italian soldiers sharing the dugout with him. One asks:

 

“Do you think they will send Americans down here?” asked the adjutant.

 

“Oh, absolutely. Americans twice as large as myself, healthy, with clean hearts, sleep at night, never been wounded, never been blown up, never had their heads caved in, never been scared, don’t drink, faithful to the girls they left behind them, many of them never had crabs, wonderful chaps. You’ll see.”

 

“Are you an Italian?” asked the adjutant.

 

“No, American. Look at the uniform. Spagnolini made it but it’s not quite correct.”

 

“A North or South American?”

 

“North,” said Nick. He felt it coming on now. He would quiet down.

 

“But you speak Italian.”

 

“Why not? Do you mind if I speak Italian? Haven’t I a right to speak Italian?”

 

“You have Italian medals.”

 

“Just the ribbons and the papers. The medals come later. Or you give them to people to keep and the people go away; or they are lost with your baggage.

 

Nick and the Italian adjutant, an enlisted man, not an officer, as an adjutant would be in an American unit, discuss war experiences. Adams continues:

 

“I am demonstrating the American uniform,” Nick said. “Don’t you think it is very significant? It is a little tight in the collar but soon you will see untold millions wearing this uniform swarming like locusts. The grasshopper, you know, what we call the grasshopper in America, is really a locust. The true grasshopper is small and green and comparatively feeble. You must not, however, make a confusion with the seven-year locust or cicada which emits a peculiar sustained sound which at the moment I cannot recall. I try to recall it but I cannot. I can almost hear it and then it is quite gone. You will pardon me if I break off our conversation?”

 

“See if you can find the major,” the adjutant said to one of the two runners. “I can see you have been wounded,” he said to Nick.

 

“In various places,” Nick said. “If you are interested in scars I can show you some very interesting ones but I would rather talk about grasshoppers. What we call grasshoppers that is; and what are, really, locusts. These insects at one time played a very important part in my life. It might interest you and you can look at the uniform while I am talking.”

 

The adjutant made a motion with his hand to the second runner who went out.

 

“Fix your eyes on the uniform. Spagnolini made it, you know. You might as well look, too,” Nick said to the signallers. “I really have no rank. We’re under the American consul. It’s perfectly all right for you to look. You can stare, if you like. I will tell you about the American locust. We always preferred one that we called the medium-brown. They last the best in the water and fish prefer them. The larger ones that fly making a noise somewhat similar to that produced by a rattlesnake rattling his rattlers, a very dry sound, have vivid colored wings, some are bright red, others yellow barred with black, but their wings go to pieces in the water and they make a very blowsy bait, while the medium-brown is a plump, compact, succulent hopper that I can recommend as far as one may well recommend something you gentlemen will probably never encounter.

 

Nick continues to ramble on about grasshoppers as fishing bait. Finally, he breaks off the conversation. The adjutant sends two runners off to find Captain Paravicini. Nick keeps right on talking:

 

I hope I have made myself clear, gentlemen. Are there any questions? If there is anything in the course you do not understand please ask questions. Speak up. None? Then I would like to close on this note. In the words of that great soldier and gentleman, Sir Henry Wilson: Gentlemen, either you must govern or you must be governed. Let me repeat it. Gentlemen, there is one thing I would like to have you remember. One thing I would like you to take with you as you leave this room. Gentlemen, either you must govern—or you must be governed. That is all, gentlemen. Good-day.”

 

He removed his cloth-covered helmet, put it on again and, stooping, went out the low entrance of the dugout. Para, accompanied by the two runners, was coming down the line of the sunken road. It was very hot in the sun and Nick removed the helmet.

 

“There ought to be a system for wetting these things,” he said. “I shall wet this one in the river.” He started up the bank.

 

“Nicolo,” Paravicini called. “Nicolo. Where are you going?”

 

“I don’t really have to go.” Nick came down the slope, holding the helmet in his hands. “They’re a damned nuisance wet or dry. Do you wear yours all the time?”

 

“All the time,” said Para. “It’s making me bald. Come inside.” Inside Para told him to sit down.

 

“You know they’re absolutely no damned good,” Nick said. “I remember when they were a comfort when we first had them, but I’ve seen them full of brains too many times.”

 

“Nicolo,” Para said. “I think you should go back. I think it would be better if you didn’t come up to the line until you had those supplies. There’s nothing here for you to do. If you move around, even with something worth giving away, the men will group and that invites shelling. I won’t have it.”

 

“I know it’s silly,” Nick said. “It wasn’t my idea. I heard the brigade was here so I thought I would see you or some one else I knew. I could have gone to Zenzon or to San Dona. I’d like to go to San Dona to see the bridge again.”

 

“I won’t have you circulating around to no purpose,” Captain Paravicini said.

 

“All right,” said Nick. He felt it coming on again.

 

“You understand?”

 

“Of course,” said Nick. He was trying to hold it in.

 

“Anything of that sort should be done at night.”

 

“Naturally,” said Nick. He knew he could not stop it now.

 

“You see, I am commanding the battalion,” Para said.

 

“And why shouldn’t you be?” Nick said. Here it came. “You can read and write, can’t you?”

 

“Yes,” said Para gently.

 

“The trouble is you have a damned small battalion to command. As soon as it gets to strength again they’ll give you back your company. Why don’t they bury the dead? I’ve seen them now. I don’t care about seeing them again. They can bury them any time as far as I’m concerned and it would be much better for you. You’ll all get bloody sick.”

 

“Where did you leave your bicycle?”

 

“Inside the last house.”

 

“Do you think it will be all right?”

 

“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “I’ll go in a little while.”

 

“Lie down a little while, Nicolo.”

 

“All right.”

 

He shut his eyes, and in place of the man with the beard who looked at him over the sights of the rifle, quite calmly before squeezing off, the white flash and clublike impact, on his knees, hot-sweet choking, coughing it onto the rock while they went past him, he saw a long, yellow house with a low stable and the river much wider than it was and stiller. “Christ,” he said, “I might as well go.”

 

He stood up.

 

“I’m going. Para,” he said. “I’ll ride back now in the afternoon. If any supplies have come I’ll bring them down tonight. If not I’ll come at night when I have something to bring.”

 

“It is still hot to ride,” Captain Paravicini said.

 

“You don’t need to worry,” Nick said. “I’m all right now for quite a while. I had one then but it was easy. They’re getting much better. I can tell when I’m going to have one because I talk so much.”

 

“I’ll send a runner with you.”

 

“I’d rather you didn’t. I know the way.”

 

“You’ll be back soon?”

“Absolutely.”

 

“Let me send—”

 

“No,” said Nick. “As a mark of confidence.”

 

“Well, ciao then.”

 

“Ciao,” said Nick. He started back along the sunken road toward where he had left the bicycle. In the afternoon the road would be shady once he had passed the canal. Beyond that there were trees on both sides that had not been shelled at all. It was on that stretch that, marching, they had once passed the Terza Savoia cavalry regiment riding in the snow with their lances. The horses’ breath made plumes in the cold air. No, that was somewhere else. Where was that?

 

“I’d better get to that damned bicycle,” Nick said to himself. “I don’t want to lose the way to Fornaci.”

 

*

 

Babe Ruth: “I was a bad kid,” he once told reporters. He began play as a catcher, using a right-handed mitt. At 19 the Baltimore Orioles signed him (then a minor league team). As a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, he was 18-8 as a rookie in 1915; the next two seasons he won 23 and 24. He had a candy bar named after him.

 

The old way of playing, typified by Wee Willie Keeler was “hit ’em where they ain’t.” Babe showed others the glories of holding the bat at the end, not choking up.

 

The Baltimore chop was no longer the style. The swing for the fences now had its heyday. (American Heritage 8-1965)