U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [242]
out the righteous voice of the Happy Warrior in the roar of exploding lyddite. this was. Wilson wouldn't let T.R. lead a division, this was
no amateur's war (perhaps the regulars remembered
the round robin at Santiago). Al he could do was
write magazine articles against the Huns, send his sons; Quentin was kil ed.
-147-It wasn't the bul y amateur's world any more.
Nobody knew that on armistice day, Theodore Roose-velt, happy amateur warrior with the grinning teeth, the shaking forefinger, naturalist, explorer, magazine-writer, Sundayschool teacher, cowpuncher, moralist, politician, righteous orator with a short memory, fond of denouncing liars (the Ananias Club) and having
pil owfights with his children, was taken to the Roose-velt hospital gravely il with inflammatory rheumatism. Things weren't bul y any more;
T.R. had grit;
he bore the pain, the obscurity, the sense of being forgotten as he had borne the gril ing portages when he was exploring the River of Doubt, the heat, the fetid jungle mud, the infected abscess in his leg,
and died quietly in his sleep
at Sagamore Hil
on January 6, 1919
and left on the shoulders of his sons
the white man's burden.
THE CAMERA EYE (33)
11,000 registered harlots said the Red Cross Pub-licity Man infest the streets of Marseil es the Ford stal ed three times in the Rue de Rivoli
in Fontainebleau we had our café au lait in bed the For-est was so achingly red yel ow novemberbrown under the tiny lavender rain beyond the road climbed through dovecolored hil s the air smelt of apples
Nevers (Dumas nom de dieu) Athos Pcrthos and
-148-d'Artagnan had ordered a bisque at the inn we wound down slowly into red Macon that smelt of winelees and the vintage fais ce que voudras saute Bourgignon. in the Rhone val ey the first strawcolored sunlight streaked the white road with shadows of skeleton poplars at
every stop we drank wine strong as beefsteaks rich as the palace of François Premier bouquet of the last sleet-lashed roses we didn't cross the river to Lyon where JeanJacques suffered from greensickness as a young-ster the landscapes of Provence were al out of the Gal-lic Wars the towns were dictionaries of latin roots Orange Tarascon Arles where Van Gogh cut off his ears the
convoy became less of a conducted tour we stopped to play craps in the estaminets boys we're going south to drink the red wine the popes loved best to eat fat meals in oliveoil. and garlic bound south cêpes pro-vençale the north wind was shril ing over the plains of the Camargue hustling us into Marseil es where the eleven thousand were dandling themselves in the fogged mirrors of the promenoir at the Apol o oysters and vin de Cassis petite fil e tel ement brune tête de lune qui amait les veentair sports in the end they were al slot machines undressed as Phocean figurines posted with their legs apart around the scummy edges of the oldest port
the Riviera was a letdown but there was a candycol-ored church with a pointed steeple on every hil beyond
-149-San Remo Porto Maurizio blue seltzerbottles stand-ing in the cinzanocolored sunlight beside a glass of VER-MOUTH TORINO Savona was set for the Merchant of Venice painted by Veronese Ponte Decimo in Ponte Decimo ambulances were parked in a moonlit square of bleak stone, workingpeople's houses hoarfrost covered everything in the little bar the Successful Story Writer taught us to drink cognac and maraschino half and half havanuzzerone
it turned out he was not writing what he felt he
wanted to be writing What can you tel them at home about the war? it turned out he was not wanting what he wrote he wanted to be feeling cognac and mara-schino was no