1919 by John Dos Passos

somewheres. . . .”
    The corporal gave him an angry stare. They were going in the door of a nicely furnished office with a thick red and brown carpet on the floor. At a mahogany desk sat an elderly man with white hair and a round roastbeef face and lots of insignia on his uniform. “Is that. . . ?” Joe began, but he saw that the corporal after clicking his heels and saluting had frozen into attention.
    The elderly man raised his head and looked at them with a fatherly blue eye, “Ah . . . quite so . . .” he said. “Bring him up closer, corporal, and let’s have a look at him. . . . Isn’t he in rather a mess, corporal? You’d better give the poor beggar some shoes and stockings. . . .” “Very good, sir,” said the corporal in a spiteful tone, stiffening to attention again. “At ease, corporal, at ease,” said the elderly man, putting on a pair of eyeglasses and looking at some papers on his desk. “This is . . . er . . . Zentner . . . claim American citizenship, eh?” “The name is Williams, sir.” “Ah, quite so . . . Joe Williams, seaman. . . .” He fixed his blue eyes confidentially on Joe. “Is that your name, me boy?”
    â€œYessir.”
    â€œWell, how do you come to be trying to get into England in wartime without passport or other identifying document?”
    Joe told about how he had an American A.B. certificate and had been on the beach at B.A. . . . Buenos Aires. “And why were you . . . er . . . in this condition in the Argentine?” “Well, sir, I’d been on the Mallory Line and my ship sailed without me and I’d been painting the town red a little, sir, and the skipper pulled out ahead of schedule so that left me on the beach.”
    â€œAh . . . a hot time in the old town tonight . . . that sort of thing, eh?” The elderly man laughed; then suddenly he puckered up his brows. “Let me see . . . er . . . what steamer of the Mallory Line were
you travelling on?” “The
Patagonia
, sir, and I wasn’t travellin’ on her, I was a seaman on board of her.”
    The elderly man wrote a long while on a sheet of paper, then he lifted Joe’s cigarbox out of the desk drawer and began looking through the clippings and photographs. He brought out a photograph and turned it out so that Joe could see it. “Quite a pretty girl . . . is that your best beloved, Williams?” Joe blushed scarlet. “That’s my sister.” “I say she looks like a ripping girl . . . don’t you think so, corporal?” “Quite so, sir,” said the corporal distantly. “Now, me boy, if you know anything about the activities of German agents in South America . . . many of them are Americans or impostors masquerading as Americans . . . it’ll be much better for you to make a clean breast of it.”
    â€œHonestly, sir,” said Joe, “I don’t know a thing about it. I was only in B.A. for a few days.” “Have you any parents living?” “My father’s a pretty sick man. . . . But I have my mother and sisters in Georgetown.” “Georgetown . . . Georgetown . . . let me see . . . isn’t that in British Guiana?” “It’s part of Washington, D.C.” “Of course . . . ah, I see you were in the navy. . . .” The elderly man held off the picture of Joe and the two other gobs. Joe’s knees felt so weak he thought he was going to fall down. “No, sir, that was in the naval reserve.”
    The elderly man put everything back in the cigarbox. “You can have these now, my boy. . . . You’d better give him a bit of breakfast and let him have an airing in the yard. He looks a bit weak on his pins,