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MOOSE HEART MAGAZINE
spondent m search of “color” could get it more easily or more vividly than by sitting for a few hours “chez Jenkins.”
Jenkins has made it, you see, a regular club of which every member of the order is a member precisely because he is a Mctose. Each member has paid for his share of it by paying his •dues to his hom.e־-lodge; Jenkins has, with a smile and his genius for organization, paid for it out of that dollar-a-head assessment. It belongs to the men entitled thus to go there, and there is not a thing for sale.
Do not suppose, however, that the activities of Jenkins are confined to matters merely social. He has organized, and he operates, a score of other departments.
For ■instance, many a member o'f the Order has fallen in France along the vast, gloomy stretch of the Western Front, and been buried where he fell. Others have died in hospital, and their bodies lie among those of their comrades in one or other of the hundreds of new military cemeteries that •the past war has scattered throughout the land of our sister-republic. One of the things that Jenkins is at work upon is tracing the resting-places o.f these Moose; he is planning for the erection of a shaft in their memory, which will rise, probably, in the near future at Chateau Thierry, And Jenkins runs a newspaper-office, too. From it, with the familiar motto of “Howdy, Pap,” he issues monthly the Paris edition of the Moose Bulletin: editor, contributor, proofreader and general manager, Joseph A. Jenkins—four excellently written and well-made pages of Moose news, with good*illust'rations. Jenkins will have secured a message from the Supreme Dictator to the Moose in the field; he will have collected and written items about the fighting-men of the order; he will have arranged for a column about ■the admirable charity at Mooseheart and have got together, or himself composed, a department of humor; and, what is most interesting to the M.oose-at-arms, he runs in the Bulletin inquiries, or answers inquiries, from one Moose that is looking for another. I have seen oopies of that bulletin, in. the trenches, for Jenkins mails it free to every Moose, and there it passes from hand to han.d and is read and reread until it falls to pieces.
“I read the last copy five times,” wrote one ■soldier. “It was while I was doing outpost work in No Man’s Land., and the only other news I had was carried by the •German shells that were dropping •all arond me.” Down at the Chemin des Dames, a member of the Moose showed me one of Jenkins's letters. It ended:
“If there’s anything we can do for you at any time, don’t forget to let us know, for we are here to carry out your desires.”
Members reach a strange Paris at two o’clock in the morning, after a day and more on the train—Paris, where hotel-rooms are as scarce, in these peace-conference days, .as ice in the trbpics; they go to Jenkins, and hostel-managers—and by keeping popular with them—can always direct them to a bed—and always does. Other members come to Paris on a two or three day leave; their a'rrival is delayed for a day or more by the railroad-congestion from which war-scarred France still suffers, so that their leaves have almost expired by the moment of their arrival: they go to Jenkins, and Jenkins, having .gone to the A. P. M. office and smiled •and explained matters, always returns with an extension of their leave. Last Summer, when the German offensive was at its worst, when traffic was all but at a standstill, and when it seemed as if Paris must really fall, there was .a paper-famine in the A. E. F.; the men could not write to their anxious relatives, because there was no means of getting letter-paper to the front, .and no paper to get there. The welfare-organization couldn’t do it, be-
be burned.
“And rugs,” said his friend. He. ran the toes of his boots into the deep nap of the dark red rug with which Jenkins has covered the parquette-floor of the big drawing-room. “When I was out there in a shell-hole, wondering what dad would do with the hundred dollars he’d get from the MoOse after I was killed, I never thought •I’d set my feet on an honest-io-God rug again!”
Remember what they had for so long been used to in France, this pair of doughboys: the slime of the trenches and a few minutes of crouching over two or three smoking sticks in a dug-out; rest-billets, well within range of the enemy’s ever bellowing• guns—no roof overhead and only the hard dirt floor to sleep upon. Now •and then they had had a chance to go to •one of the huts of some general •welfare-organization, the admirable charity extended to every soldier. Tho-se •huts did a splendid work and deserved all the support from home that they received: but here, thanks to Jenkins, was a Moose club-house— a private club—the sort of a club that you find in New York, or San Francisco—and these two fellows were members of it: members by virtue of being members of the Moose.
Big room opens out of big room. There are pianos there, gramaphones, a billiard-table. Magazines■—not thumbed and tattered and old magazines, but new copies of the latest issues are provided. Jenkins has seen to that and seen that they come by the swiftest steamers and the most direct routs. He had seen that the American newspapers come in the same time and by the same way. He has placed along the walls large, leathern sofas; he has drawn deep, comfortable arm-chairs of the familiar club-style up to those long windows that overlook the wide boulevard up and down which passes all the business and fashion of the world’s mo'st beautiful city. Most important of all, he has kept himself there to welcome with his own voice and his own smile every newcomer.
“This,” said one of the soldier’s with whom I entered, “is like getting back to God’s country.”
I think he expressed the opinion of every man that has gone there.
Among the pictures on the well-papered walls is one that particularly challenge's attention. It is a symbolic picture•, showing a French landscape of the sort known to every American that has fought in France. Along a road are passing column after column of our troops, he’meted, their packs at their hacks, their rifles on their shoulders. There is no mistaking what they are doing: they are_marching to the front, they are going into action. And in the foreground, watching them—almost, it seems, presiding over their destiny—is the figure of a giant Moose with spreading antlers; in the animal’s eyes broods the dream of a vast future•, a knowledge and a proDhesy.
“That’s Joe,” I heard a deugboy say—“in a former incarnation.”
I have said that the picture is symbolic; it is that and more: it is, in a sense, typical. For, under it, brought together by the Man with the Pmile and their talk encouraged by his qualities as a “good-mixer”, soldier and sailor members of the Loyal Order of Moose—never more loyal th־n now—are gathered daily and nightly from every branch of our service, from every corner of our former battlefields. They fill the club-rooms: men in the uniforms of the Americans, Canadians, English and even French. You hear them talk of home and ot their home-lodges, but■ you also hear, falling trippingly from their lips, the names of places that have already passed into history: Verdun, Dixmuae, Chateau Thierry and Saint Mihiel. They saw experiences, these men, for they have been to all these places and •more beside; they have fought there, •and there, at either hand, brother Moose have fallen. No war-corre-
he wanted the best, and he got it. The house is a severely rich one ; it _ is the sort that fashionable Parisians inhabit!: It was,, in fact, once owned by a wealthy Austrian, who left France for France’s good- at the Outbreak of the war, and its first, floor, the big suit'e of apartments that Jenkins engaged for the Moose, had for years been the home of the secretary of the Austrian Imperial Embassy ifi Paris. Jenkins, you see, not only got the best, but knew how to get the best at a bargain.
The first time I was there, I entered with two American doughboys members of tiie Order, who were fresh,— or, rather, stale,—from the trenches. For nearly ten successive weeks ■they had been facing death—facing it largely in the form of bayonet-work against a stubborn enemy and under almost continuous bombardment — their life had been one long series of charges over difficult ground, sudden diggings-in, and then other charges. From this sort of thing, at a moment’s notice, they had been given Paris-leave, hurried into a train in which they sat up for thirty-two hours. Now, but just arrived at •the station, they had come, through a steady downpour of rain, among the streets
The Man With a Smile, of a strange city, to this familiar address.
By a massive doorway, we entered a little court and then turned into a hall and climbed an easy flight of stairs. There was a room at the side in which, among filing-cases and telephones and all the .puraphrenalia of an American business-office, Jenkins’ clerks clattered away at American typewriters, and then those doughboys opened a door and found themselves at home!
They had scraped, laborously, conscientiously, the mud of war from their clumsy, ill-made army boots. In the hall, the Man with the smile had been waiting, had shaken them by the hand, had himself relieved them of their heavy packs—for Jenkins has provided a place where you can store your pack “chez Jenkins” and be sure to find it again when your leave expires. The doughboys were •prepared, by the tales of their comrades who had preceeded them—Jenkins’s reputation being spread throughout the Army now—for the otherwise unexpected ; and yet, now that it was upon them, they were amazedly delighted with it all. They were like nothing so much as children home from boarding-school.
“Pipe this, Bill!”—I can still hear one of them saying it—“A real fire in a real fireplace!” He literally leaped to one of the Mazing hearths and stretched his blue fingers so close to the flame that I thought they would
The Man With the Smile
{Continued from page 10)
speaks only a little French as yet, but he will learn, that man, for he speaks with a smile that makes one understand every word that he says.”
The official handed me a card. It was that of the Vice-Director General of the Loyal Order of Moose, Joseph A. Jenkins.
Jenkins had just■ arrived in France and wanted to look over the field of work to which he had been assigned. Characteristically, he wanted to look over the hardest part first: he wanted to go •to the front; that was the •best way of finding out what the Moose-inservice needed and the best way of finding the best way of getting into touch with them.
“But,” he was told, “this is most irregular. You are a civilian, and civilians can’t be allowed at the front.” Jenkins smiled and persisted.
He went to the front.
He went all along• the front. He went through the American Camp and all along the French and British lines-of-battle. He went under fire for miles and had his share of ugly experiences.
On Vimy •Ridge a torrent of shells forced the captain that was then act-, ing־ as his guide to drag Jenkins into a dug-out—drag him. because he wouldn’t go by mere persuasion—■and the Canadian soldier who presided over that particular dug-out and .made tea for Jenkins was a Moose from Seattle.
General Duncan took Jenkins ■ through •a communication trench to a first line trench near the dreadful Mont Sec. The day had begun as one of low activity, and helmets and gas masks had b.een thought unnecessary, but suddenly the Boche opened up on that sector and the General advised Jenkins to hurry.
“You can’t come in here,” said the lieutenant stationed at the ■opening •to the first line trench.
“Why not?”demanded the General. “General Duncan’s orders,” said the lieutenant.
“But I,” said the General, “am General Duncan.”
He had shaved off his mo'ustache since the lieutenant had last seen him, and the grime of battle did the rest. Explanations followed, and the explanations, conducted by Jenkins, revealed the fact that the lieutenant was a Moose.
Jenkins found that there were over twenty thousand ■members of the Order in the Army overseas—twenty thousand and more men that he would have to get into personal touch with and ■whose extra military needs he would have to look after. Something of a job, that.
But Jenkins did it.
“Didn’t its mere size ■stagger you?” somebody asked him.
“Well,” he answered, “I didn’t come over here to loaf, you see.”_
“It would have sent me right up in the air!”
“I was up in the air only once,” said Jenkins; “it was when I flew in a French plane over Paris.”
So Jenkins became a feature of the A. E. F. and established his office and the Moose club rooms at 5 Boulevard Malesherbes. It was his work, and he did it. His work: it was then, and it now remains the only effort of its sort put forth in France by an American fraternal organization.
* * *
On your walk up the famous Grands Boulevards, you pa;ss the great church of the■ Madeleine and, just as you have left its mighty pillars on your right, your eye is caught by a gleaming sign in English among all the signs in French:
“M O O S E.”
The letters are strung all a-long the second story. Jenkins said that there was no use having a club house unless the members could easily find it— hence the sign.
And he did not go house-hunting m a half-hearted, pinch-penny manner: