I understand that this regulation applies even to the doctors and infirmières, and ambulance drivers of all the American units at work in France. I naturally imagine that some temporary provision must be made for them in the interim.
I had to make a formal petition for this famous carnet, and to furnish the military authorities with two photographs--front view,--size and form prescribed.
I looked at the mayor's secretary and asked him how the Old Scratch --I said frankly diable--I was to get photographed when he had forbidden me to leave my commune, and knew as well as I that there was no photographer here.
Quite seriously he wrote me a special permit to go to Couilly where there is a man who can photograph. He wrote on it that it was good for one day, and the purpose of the trip "to be photographed by the order of the mayor in order to get my carnet d'étrangère," and he solemnly presented it to me, without the faintest suspicion that it was humorous.
Between you and me, I did not even use it. I had still one of the photographs made for my passport and other papers. Amélie carried it to Couilly and had it copied. Very few people would recognize me by it. It is the counterfeit presentment of a smiling, fat old lady, but it is absolutely réglementaire in size and form, and so will pass muster. I have seen some pretty queer portraits on civil papers.
We are promised these carnets in the course of "a few weeks," so, until then, you can think of me as, to all intents and purposes, really interned.
It may interest you to know that on the 9th,--just a week ago--a Zeppelin nearly got to Meaux. It was about half past eleven in the evening when the drums beat "lights out," along the hillside. There weren't many to put out, for everyone is in bed at that hour, and we have no street-lights, but an order is an order. The only result of the drum was to call everyone out of bed, in the hope "to see a Zeppelin." We neither heard nor saw anything.
Amélie said with a grin next morning, "Eh, bien, only one thing is needed to complete our experiences--that a bomb should fall shy of its aim--the railroad down there--and wipe Huiry off the map, and write it in history."
I am sorry that you find holes in my letters. It is your own fault. You do not see this war from my point of view yet--alas! But you will. Make a note of that. The thing that you will not understand, living, as you do, in a world going about its daily routine, out of sight, out of hearing of all this horror, is that Germany's wilful destruction is on a preconceived plan--a racial principle. The more races she can reduce and enfeeble the more room there will be for her. Germany wants Belgium--but she wants as few Belgians as possible. So with Poland, and Servia, and northeast France. She wants them to die out as fast as possible. It is a part of the programme of a people calling themselves the elect of the world--the only race, in their opinion, which ought to survive.