In the little cluster of officers on the upper deck the conversation rarely touched on war deeds, even casually, though one knew that many a thrilling tale was hidden away in their memories. The talk was all of rehabilitation, rebuilding of the civilian lives that the Great Adventure had in so many cases all but wholly wrecked. Among the men below there was more apathy, more silent dreaming, interspersed now and then by those crude witticisms with which their class breaks such mental tension:
“These ’ere blinkin’ Dutch girls always makes me think as ’ow their faces ’ave been mashed by a steam-roller an’ their bloomin’ legs blowed up with a bicycle pump, so ’elp me!”
The remark might easily be rated an exaggeration, but the solid _Jongvrouws_ who clattered their wooden-shod way along the banks could not in all fairness have been called delicate.
I was conscious of a flicker of surprise when the Dutch authorities welcomed me ashore without so much as opening my baggage—particularly as I was still in uniform. The hotel I chose turned out to be German in ownership and personnel. Steeped in the yarns of the past five years, I looked forward to at least the excitement of having spies go through my baggage the moment I left it unguarded. Possibly they did; if so, they were superhumanly clever in repacking the stuff as they found it.
If I had been so foolish as to suppose that I could hurry on at once into Germany I should have been sadly disappointed. The first of the several duties before me was to apply to the police for a Dutch identity card. Without it no one could exist at liberty in nor leave the flat little kingdom. As usually happens in such cases, when one is in a hurry, the next day was Sunday. The chief excitement in Rotterdam on the day of rest was no longer the Zoo, but the American camp, a barbed-wire inclosure out along the wharves about which the Dutchman and his wife and progeny packed a dozen rows deep to gaze at doughboys tossing baseballs or swinging boxing-gloves, with about as much evidence of the amusement as they might show before a Rembrandt or a Van Dyck painting. Naturally so hilarious a Sabbath passes swiftly for a man eager to be elsewhere!
There were, of course, the window displays of the closed shops, of unfailing interest to any one long familiar only with warring lands. No wonder these placid Dutchmen looked so full-cheeked and contented. Though a tradesman may have found some things missing, to the casual eye there were apparently none of the material good things of life that could not be had in superabundance. Butter, eggs, cakes, bonbons, fat bacon, meat of every species, sweets of all kinds, soap as good and as cheap as before the war, cigarettes, cigars, and tobacco enough to have set all France to rioting, all those little dainties which the gormands of the belligerent countries had ceased even to sigh for, were here tantalizingly spread out for block after block, street after street. Restaurants ostentated menu-cards offering anything a hungry man could pay for; milk was to be had every few yards at ten Dutch cents a glass. One had something of the sensation that would come from seeing diamonds and gold nuggets strewn along the way just around the corner from the abode of a band of unsuccessful yeggmen. With the caution bred of nineteen months in France I had filled the interstices of my baggage with chocolate and cigars. It was like carrying gloves to Grenoble. Nothing was more abundantly displayed in the windows of Rotterdam than those two articles.