U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [162]
-406-did not have gables on the houses like in Baltic Europe. When they got ashore Charley and Doc went to the
Broadway Central Hotel together. Charley had never
been in a big hotel like that and wanted to find a cheaper flop but Doc insisted that he come along with him and said he had plenty of jack for both of them and that it was no use saving money because things would go bel yup soon. New York was ful of grinding gears and clanging cars and the roar of the "L" and newsboys crying extras. Doc lent Charley a good suit and took him down to the enlistment office of the ambulance corps that was in an important lawyer's office in a big shiny officebuilding down in the financial district. The gentleman who signed the boys up was a New York lawyer and he talked about their being gentleman volunteers and behaving like gen-tlemen and being a credit to the cause of the Al ies and the American flag and civilization that the brave French soldiers had been fighting for so many years in the trenches. When he found out Charley was a mechanic
he signed him up without waiting to write to the principal of the highschool and the pastor of the Lutheran church home in Fargo whose names he had given as references. He told them about getting antityphoid injections and a physical examination and said to cal the next day to find out the sailing date. When they came out of the elevator there was a group of men in the shinymarble lobby with their heads bent over a newspaperi; the U. S. was at war with Germany. That night Charley wrote his mother that he was going to the war and please to send him fifty dol-lars. Then he and Doc went out to look at the town. There were flags on every building. They walked past business block after business block looking for Times Square. Everywhere people were reading newspapers. At Fourteenth they heard a drumbeat and a band and waited at the corner to see what regiment it would be but it was only the Salvation Army. By the time they got to Madison
-407-Square it was the dinner hour and the streets were de-serted. It began to drizzle a little and the flags up Broad-day and Fifth Avenue hung limp from their poles. They went into the Hofbrau to eat. Charley thought it looked too expensive but Doc said it was his party. A man was on a stepladder over the door screwing the bulbs into an electric sign of an American flag. The restaurant was draped with American flags inside and the band played The Star-Spangled Banner every other number, so that they kept having to get to their feet. "What do they think this is, settin' up exercises?" grumbled Doc. There was one group at a round table in the corner that didn't get up when the band played The Star-Spangled Banner, but sat there quietly talking and eating as if noth-ing had happened. People round the restaurant began to stare at them and pass comments.
"I bet they're . . . Huns . . . German spies . . . Pacifists." There was an army officer at a table with a girl who got red in the face whenever he looked at them. Final y a waiter, an elderly German, went up to them and whispered something.
"I'l be damned if I wil ," came the voice from the table in the corner. Then the army officer went over to them and said something about courtesy to our national anthem. He came away redder in the face than ever. He was a little man with bowlegs squeezed into brightly pol-ished puttees. "Dastardly pro-Germans," he sputtered as he sat down. Immediately he had to get up because the band played The Star-Spangled Banner.
"Why don't you cal the police, Cyril?" the girl who was with him said. By this time people from al over the restaurant were ad-vancing on the round table. Doc pul ed Charley's chair around. "Watch this; it's going to be good."
A big man with a Texas drawl yanked one of the men
out of his chair. "You git up or git out."
"You people have no right to interfere with us," began
-408-one of the men at the round table. "You express your approval of the war getting up, we express our disap-proval by . . ." There was a big woman with a red hat with a plume on it at the table who kept saying, "Shut up; don't talk to 'em." By this time the band had stopped. Everybody clapped as hard as he could and yel ed, "Play it again; that's right." The waiters were running round nervously and the proprietor was in the center of the floor mopping his bald head.