Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 111, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1919 — ADD “HORRORS OF WARFARE” [ARTICLE]

ADD “HORRORS OF WARFARE”

When the Army Captain and the Hospital Nurse Consult the Dictionary Together. •4 ' - I dropped into a French hospital the other day to see if my men were all right. There is the daintiest little girl in the office. She buzzes around among the books and flies and indices and things. She is very accommodating, too, and when the lieutenant doctor, who has a little English, is not in, she pilots you around the different wards. Did you ever notice an American when he talks to a foreigner and Realizes that it does not take? First he tries shouting at the top of his lungs, and then he tries talking very slowly and distinctly. Not so when a French girl sees that she is missing. She seems to feel that if she keepwon getting closer, and coos It, you somehow just must understand. Now, isn’t that too absurd? You stand very still so as not to frighten her away and look at her out of the corner of your eye, but you don’t put your mind on your business. Of all the ’mologies that might interest you just then, ety has the poorest chance. Of course, when I go to the hospital to see my men, I have to find out in the office where they all are, and of course I know the lieutenant doctor’s dinner hour. I go ip and she looks up and smiles. I say: “Smith.” She says, “Smeeth?” I say, “Out,” and we both smile. I say. “John Smith." She says, “John Smeeth?” I say, “Out,” and we smile again. Then she plunges into a drawer of well-thumbed cards and in a nioineht:.coiiiesr up' with a .bit of pasetboanL “Mumps?” says she. which in French sounds like munigs in English. “Oui, mumps,” say, I, and we fairly-beam. Sometimes we get a hard ’ one like measles, and then we resort to a dictionary. When you try to talk through a dictionary you nevdr get anywhere if you take it turn about. -You-must-both look together. One day we pursued a most elusive word through a very small dictionary. She got an arm around my shoulder before we had captured the third syllable. You see, don’t you, where going to a hospital might become a habit? —Capt. Hill P. Wilson in K. U. Graduate Magazine.