By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 21, 1939.
If you wear an Alpine hat or if your hair is cut like a Prussian officer’s, there’s no telling where you will end up
“Did you hear,” asked Jimmie Frise excitedly, “about the two Germans that…”
“Were caught,” I carried on sarcastically, “trying to poison the waterworks and were…”
“Shot,” cried Jimmie, “after they had been made to dig their own graves?”
“Yes,” I informed him, “I heard that one. And I heard the ones about the German with the bottle full of germs, and about the ones that were caught filing the struts of airplanes, and the one about the German that was poisoning candy. I’ve heard all the rumors.”
“Don’t you believe them?” demanded Jim indignantly. “Don’t you believe that there are hundreds of Germans locked up in Canada’s prisons and barracks? Every one of them caught in the act?”
“I suppose,” I retorted, “that it is our patriotic duty to believe rumors.”
“What else is there to believe?” sighed Jim. “When the censorship goes on, the rumors begin.”
“We can still submit to censorship,” I explained, “and not give way to every childish rumor that comes along. I’m willing to bet that every rumor we’ve heard about local people was started either in fun or in spite.”
“I doubt it,” said Jim darkly. “Those Germans.”
“I don’t hold any brief for any German1,” I admitted heartily. “In the last war, I used to read what the statesmen said about us fighting the kaiser and not the German people. And I always used to wonder who the heck that was across No Man’s Land shooting at me and heaving trench mortars over. Now they’re talking about us not fighting the German people but Hitler and his gang. I still think it’s the German people we’re fighting. And we’re fighting them because they’re such dang fools to let themselves be ruled by any old type of gangster that comes along, whether it’s a titled Hohenzollern or a house painter.”
“Now you’re talking,” agreed Jim.
“We’re fighting the German people,” I insisted, “so long as they follow these crackpot leaders who think they can conquer the world. We’ve got to keep fighting them until we teach them that they can’t go and conquer the world, no matter what kind of leader they follow.”
“I’ve known some good guys who came of German blood,” admitted Jim.
“That’s what I’m trying to get at,” I clinched. “Most of these people the rumors are about are the grandsons or great-grandsons of men who left Germany because they couldn’t stand the Germans. They came to this country for the same reasons we did. To escape from oppression or misfortune and to find a new life and new freedom in a new world. Probably these German grandparents left Germany for the same reasons we’re fighting Germany today.”
Growing Like a Snowball
“We had Germans in our battery in the last war,” admitted Jim.
“In my battalion,” I recounted, “we had dozens of men of German descent who were some of the best soldiers we had. I remember one especially. He could even talk German, though his grandmother came out from Germany as a child. One of the last things I ever saw him do was climb up the corner of a pill box at Passchendaele and drop Mills bombs down the air hole on 19 of his blood relations.”
“He was a Canadian all right,” agreed Jim.
“I used to take him out on listening patrols,” I recalled, “and we’d sit outside the German wire listening to them muttering and mumbling in their trench. And he translated.”
“It’s too bad to circulate rumors about people like him,” Jim submitted.
“Most rumors start,” I repeated, “in fun or out of spite. Just for fun, a man tells somebody a ridiculous tale about somebody else they both know. The story is repeated, all in fun. Pretty soon, somebody who doesn’t know the party hears the tale, and away it goes, getting bigger and bigger, like a snowball. All these rumors sooner or later get into the hands of some born story-teller. And he, looking at the rumor, says: ‘What a poor, puny little tale that is.” And he sets to work to make it dramatic, with a punch, with some quality to it. Lo, a rumor is born!”
“I can see that clearly,” said Jim. “In my own time, I’ve improved a story now and then.”
“The spite rumors are worse,” I pointed out. “For example, I know a German who is Canadian to the core. He is an athlete, and he makes his living teaching gymnastics and athletics. There are plenty of second-rate athletes who envy him his job. The war was not a week old before I heard rumors that this man had been caught putting acid on airplane wires up at one of the big airdromes. I helped trace this story back. It took two days. But we traced it right back to a second-rate athlete who thought he had a fair chance of stealing the German’s job, now that war was on.”
“Could Canadians hold jobs in Germany now?” demanded Jim.
“Probably not,” I confessed. “But that is not the point. The point is, this is not Germany. And this German is as Canadian as it is possible to be without being born here. I know lots of Canadians who were born here who are really less Canadian, in their hearts, than plenty of foreigners who have come here because they loved this country.”
“We can’t trust anybody, though, in time of war,” stated Jim. “If we go around with a sappy faith in everybody, we’ll get skunked sure as fate.”
“You can trust human nature, I decreed, “to see to it that no German will get away without some hostility, even to the third and fourth generation. For one of us who won’t believe rumors, there are twenty who will. For one of us who will be rational about foreigners, there are a hundred who will be irrational, who will see mischief in every angle of the foreigner, who will notify police, who will watch and guard. All I suggest is, that a few of us keep alive a little feeble flame of tolerance and common sense, so that it will be ready to stoke up again after the war is over. I’d hate to see the sacred fire die out.”
“But don’t let us get so innocent,” countered Jim, “that we let the country get overrun with Nazis.”
“And when I’m looking for Nazis,” I retorted, “I’m not going to confine my attention to people with German names.”
“Here’s a note from the editor,” said Jim. “He bawls us out for drawing all the soldiers in old-fashioned uniforms. He wants us to draw the troops in the new uniform.”2
“It makes them look like gas-station attendants,” I scoffed.
“They look like skiers,” snorted Jim. “Give me the good old army uniform, every time.”
“Imagine a Highlander done up in baggy pants and a blouse,” I submitted.
“Well, the editor is the editor,” sighed Jim. “And if he wants us to draw the troops in the new-fangled outfit, okay. We’ll have to see what the new uniform looks like.”
To See the New Uniform
“I’ve seen pictures of it,” I stated, “but I haven’t seen any of the boys wearing it.”
“We ought to go out and look around the armories,” suggested Jim.
“We can drop off at Exhibition Park on our way home,” I said.
Which we did. And I took along my little candid camera for some shots of any men we might see in the new uniform, to help Jimmie with his drawings.
But all we saw were squads and platoons of husky lads in the same uniform Jimmie and I wore twenty-five years ago.
“I suppose,” said Jim, “they’re wearing out all the old stuff first. But how about taking some snapshots to show the editor? We can write a nice sarcastic note back to him enclosing photos.”
So I moved about, choosing the best looking squads, and getting the sun behind me, and I shot some long range infinity snaps, and got a few close-ups as the squads marched near us. Jimmie got out his drawing pad and made some sketches, too. Jimmie can always make a soldier look more like a soldier than a soldier really is.
One of the squads that had marched past several times finally halted near us and the boys were standing idly watching us, when a civilian who had been observing us take pictures and draw sketches, hurried over to the sergeant drilling the squad and whispered to him.
I saw the sergeant eyeing us narrowly, and the civilian giving us a very hostile look.
“Jim,” I said, turning aside and trying to hide my camera, “don’t look now, but there’s a rumor starting.”
Jim glanced up and saw the sergeant bending his ear to the agitated civilian. Jim turned his back so as to conceal the drawing pad.
“Let’s go,” I offered.
We started to stroll away.
“Hye, there,” said the sergeant, striding towards us. The civilian trotted eagerly in the sergeant’s wake. “What are you two up to?”
“We’re a couple of newspapermen,” I explained. “We were just making some notes.”
“Look at his hat,” hissed the civilian. He was a baleful individual, with a long suspicious jaw.
“Why, it’s an ordinary alpine model…” I began.
“And look at the other fellow’s hair,” hissed the stranger to the sergeant. “Sticking straight up. Like Hindenburg’s! Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“Have you any permission,” demanded the sergeant, cautiously, “to be on this parade ground making pictures and drawing plans?”
“Look,” said Jim. “Do you call those plans?”
The sergeant studied Jim’s sketches and the stranger looked over his shoulder.
“What do you call them?” demanded the sergeant. “Do you call those pictures of us? Is this an insult to the uniform?”
“Those are just rough sketches,” explained Jim, lamely. “Just ideas I can develop later.”
“If I was to show these to my boys,” said the sergeant, “you’d have something rough, all right.”
“Arrest them,” hissed the civilian. “Put them under guard. With bayonets.”
“I’ve a good mind to,” said the sergeant. “I certainly think the little bird has a German hat. And the hair on the tall guy certainly looks foreign to me.”
Suspicious Characters
It was then a movement in the squad caught my eye. One of the boys in the squad was bent double in agony, and three or four others were having a hard time to stand steady like soldiers. As the young man straightened up. I recognized him as a former office boy on The Star, and when he caught my eye, he waved a hand at me in gleeful derision.
“Here, sergeant,” I cried, “there’s a lad knows who we are. That fourth man in the front rank. Call him over.”
“Perkins,” commanded the sergeant.
And the boy fell out and came awkwardly over, saluting with his rifle because he remembered I used to be a major in all the war stories I used to tell the office boys in bygone years.
“Do you know these men?” demanded the sergeant.
“Why,” interrupted the civilian, when he saw Perkins, “this is the lad who called my attention to these two spies.”
“What’s this?” I cried. And the sergeant and Jimmie cried: “How’s that?”
“Why, only 10 minutes ago, over by that tree,” said the civilian, his long, suspicious jaw getting kind of black with blushes, “when this platoon was resting, this very same young man came over to me and pointed out these two spies and asked me to sneak around and see if they weren’t taking snapshots and making drawings. He said I was to tell the sergeant, if I saw that’s what they were doing.”
“Perkins!” said the sergeant.
“Why,” said the civilian, bitterly, “it was even him who pointed out the German hat the little man is wearing and the way the taller man’s hair sticks up.”
“Perkins,” repeated the sergeant sternly for Perkins was just standing there grinning from ear to ear.
“It was just a little joke,” said Perkins. “I know these two gentlemen very well indeed.”
And he introduced us to the sergeant, and the sergeant was very happy to meet us because his wife reads our stuff every week and his little boy wants to be a cartoonist some day, like Jimmie. In fact, the sergeant has a bunch of drawings the kid has done, and he would like to bring them down some day for Jimmie to have a look at.
Meanwhile, the stranger was slowly oozing away, trying to make his escape without being noticed.
“Hey,” called the sergeant, “just a second, mister. Don’t feel bad about this. Come here a minute.”
“No hard feelings,” said Jim. “It was just a joke on all of us.”
“I’ll attend to Perkins,” declared the sergeant grimly. “If there’s anything I hate in a platoon, it’s a witty guy. However, I’ll let him down easy, because he may be the means of me having a famous cartoonist for a son, some day, hey, Mr. Frise?”
“You bet,” said Jim, stowing his drawing pad with its rough notes, so as to spare the sergeant’s feelings.
“I only want to say to you, sir,” said the sergeant, tapping the suspicious civilian on the chest, “that you did quite right, sir. If you see or hear of anything suspicious, it is your duty to call it to the attention of the nearest authority, in this case, me.”
“As a matter of fact, sir,” replied the stranger firmly, “that is what I am doing, hanging around the parade grounds. I’m too old to be of much use to the country, but I can keep my eye peeled for suspicious characters.”
“That’s the idea, sir,” said the sergeant, waving the gentleman on.
So it all worked out just as it should. And we gave young Perkins, the scalawag, all our cigarettes to divvy up with the squad. And as we departed, I glanced back in time to see the sergeant get a handful of them.
Editor’s Note: