Had it really come to pass that after a lifetime of hiding them, my humble beginnings might be a badge of honor in these strange days? As chairwoman, I did my best to reassure and amuse the delegates on a journey that promised to be long, and full of incident! I expected some rivalries between our socialist delegates and the more conservative members, but after mediating a heated late-night quarrel about the merits of Marxism, I was nursing a headache.
Thus, as we passed from the Atlantic into the Irish Sea, I retreated to my cabin and submerged in a hot bath, reading Kubla Khan. I was fully immersed both in bubbles and Xanadu when a hard knock came at the door. “Madame, a U-boat has been spotted! Come on deck with your life preserver. There’s no time to dress.”
No time to dress? Surely the stewardess didn’t mean for me to come out in my birthday suit. Just then, I heard the boom of our cannons. Damn. I imagined leaping out of the tub to find a robe and thrusting my shivering body into a life preserver only to be blown to smithereens.
Well, stuff and nonsense, indeed! If I was going to drown, I’d much rather do it in this warm tub. It was with a strange calmness that I simply turned the page of my book, only to be splashed in the face with both the reality of my situation and a tidal wave of tub water.
The captain, it seemed, had ordered full speed ahead.
My bath and book both ruined, I climbed out of the tub, cursing the kaiser, and threw on a fur coat and my gold-tasseled velvet tam so my corpse could be identified if I were to be found floating facedown in the Irish Sea.
Bedraggled and bad-tempered, I came on deck to find the delegation in a tizzy, all of them struggling to get into life preservers, several trembling as they told me a torpedo had missed the bow of our ship by no more than twelve feet. “That can’t be—”
A deafening sound cut me off like a storm summoned by ancient sea gods. I turned, amazed to see a plume of water. A torpedo had hit a cruiser in our convoy. People screamed and scurried for cover, but I stood at the rail, staring, wondering what other predators lurked beneath us even as our destroyers raced hither and yon, dropping bombs to flush them out. I watched this dread scene until I realized that the whole delegation had gathered around me, some crying—even one of the men. “Mrs. Chanler, you’re not wearing your life preserver.”
Little did he know, I wasn’t even wearing underthings.
They were all frightened and looking to me for guidance. Whatever our political differences, I realized that fear and duty had forged us into one cohesive group. Courage was the only option. But how to inspire it? “The work ahead of us is so big that in the vastness of the war and this ocean, I feel small and insignificant. The length of our days is in the hands of fate. And we must all come to the same night . . .”
I was remembering Victor, still grieving him bitterly, but that sounded like resignation, and I was anything but resigned. What had Willie used to say to encourage his Rough Riders? Probably something bombastic. Thinking of Lafayette, I found better words. “What happens to us as individuals doesn’t matter much in the larger scheme of things. We must win this war. Our cause is just, and righteousness must prevail. If we must perish to see that it does, it will be to our everlasting glory, even if no one remembers our names.”
* * *
—
“Madame Chairwoman, welcome to our island,” said the balding Winston Churchill. “I understand you escaped a torpedo, then got rained on by a shower of German bombs as you came into port. Bad luck, that.”
Bad luck indeed. We were shaken, having slept not at all while bombs dropped around us, leaving us with a choice of risking a watery death belowdecks or a fiery one above. Now, on behalf of our exhausted delegation, I smiled brightly and said, “I’m just happy to come ashore safe and sound.”
Churchill smiled as if we’d met before. In truth, I only knew the gentleman had once been first lord of the Admiralty and was still somewhat in disgrace after failures at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli. Now he had another chance to prove himself as minister of munitions, and I hoped to help him do it. For purposes of enabling us to report back the morale, organization, and efficiency of our allies, he arranged to give us tours of hospitals, shipyards, and ammunition factories—and I was permitted to ride in a tank.
In England, Scotland, and Ireland, we vouched for America’s ability to win this war. We lunched with mayors, presented at clubs, chatted over ladies’ teas, and bickered with British radicals in pubs, one of whom argued, “All this war has done is reveal the rot of the class system. Who cares if the kaiser walks away with half of France?”