the good men began to gang up to call for machineguns. 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 because they said one night in the German trenches kidding 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 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 Harvard Club playboy stuff, plans for Greek theatres, rhyming 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, riding 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 tomatocan’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 thousands dead of gangrened wounds cordon sanitaire and everywhere spies.
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, Glasgow, 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 swell; 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.
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 between showers, was always getting soaked again before they could get it in. While it was raining there was nowhere 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 stuttered 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 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.”
“Why they brought us to this hole I can’t imagine and now there’s something the matter with the boat and we can’t leave for two days.”
“That must be the Monterey.”
“Yes. It’s a terrible boat, nothing on board but women. I’m glad to run into a fellow I can talk to. Seems to be nothing but niggers down here.”
“Looks like they had ’em all colors in Trinidad.”
“Say, this rain isn’t going to stop for a hell of a time. Come in and have a drink with me.”
Joe looked at him suspiciously. “All right,” he said finally, “but I might as well tell you right now I can’t treat you back… I’m flat and those goddam Scotchmen won’t advance us any pay.” “You’re a sailor, aren’t you?” asked the man when they got to the bar. “I work on a boat, if that’s what you mean.”
“What’ll you have… They make a fine Planter’s punch here. Ever tried that?” “I’ll drink a beer… I usually drink beer.” The barkeeper was a broadfaced chink with a heartbroken smile like a very old monkey’s. He put the drinks down before them very gently as if afraid of breaking the glasses. The beer was cold and good in its dripping glass. Joe drank it off. “Say, you don’t know any baseball scores, do you? Last time I saw a paper looked like the Senators had a chance for the pennant.”
The man took off his panama hat and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. He had curly black hair. He kept looking at Joe as if he was making up his mind about something. Finally he said, “Say my name’s… Wa-wa-wa-… Warner Jones.” “They call me Yank on the Argyle… In the navy they called me Slim.”
“So you were in the navy, were you? I thought you looked more like a jackie than a merchant seaman, Slim.”
“That so?”
The man who said his name was Jones ordered two more of the same. Joe was worried. But what the hell, they can’t arrest a guy for a deserter on British soil. “Say, did you say you knew anything about the baseball scores? The leagues must be pretty well underway by now.”