CHAPTER XVIII

ALASKA AND THE WAR

A wireless message flashed the news to Alaska that our country had entered the war. The effect was the usual one,--the one to which we in Alaska have become accustomed. It aroused a patriotism which was both ideal and practical. It is said that the man who went farthest to serve his colors was a man from Iditarod. A man with his dog team drove by his dwelling and told him the news. Like Israel Putnam of Revolutionary fame who left his team standing in the field where he was ploughing and went to join the Minute Men, so this man laid aside his work and journeyed a thousand miles on a dog sled to enlist!

Every line of industrial, engineering, mining, agricultural and fishing activity immediately was speeded to the top notch of energy and production. The coal output increased from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand tons. Fish food products jumped from twenty to forty-two million dollars. There was an increase of twenty-two million pounds of canned salmon shipped to the United States over the output of 1917.

The people of Alaska are hardy. They are patriotic. They are energetic and practical. They understand fully what war means. They know that although far removed from the scene of activity they are called upon to help win the war just as much as if they were fighting in the trenches.

They know that the greatest good they can do their country is to feed her fighting men. So they went about it in a business-like manner. The result is that theirs is a practical, _organized_ patriotic cooperation. Many of the pioneer gold seekers are now transformed into farmers. The potato crop for this year is two thousand tons,--only one item, but a significant one.

The Alaskan women, as always, came straight to the front. With that practical knowledge born of residence in such a country as Alaska they eliminated the sentimental and went to work at those things which America asks and expects of her women. Mrs. Thomas J. Donahoe, of Valdez, who is also President of the Federation of Women's Clubs, was appointed Chairman of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, and the Red Cross is represented and practically managed in almost every locality in the territory. When the first Liberty Loan was floated the response of Alaska was instant and generous and the same is true of the succeeding loans.

In connection with the part Alaska is playing in the great struggle I revert once more to the subject of the dogs. Our hearts were touched when we learned that they, too, had been awarded the _Croix de Guerre_ by the French Government, the Cross having been sent to Mrs. Esther Birdsall Darling who owned and sold many of them to France. "Scotty"

Allen took them over and left them there to do their "bit."

It was a French Reserve Officer, a mining engineer, Lieutenant Rene Haas, who first called the attention of the French Government to the services which could be rendered by the dogs. Mrs. Darling, good patriot that she is and ever ready to promote the cause of the Allies, promptly offered the best that the Darling-Allen kennels afforded.

Lieutenant Haas was commissioned to select them. He chose twenty-five of the youngest, swiftest and best bred of these kennels. Then, supported enthusiastically by Captain Moufflet, who also knew the possibilities of the Alaskan dog service, the interest of their superior officers was aroused and Lieutenant Haas was ordered to go to Nome, there to select and purchase a hundred or more suitable for duty in the Vosges. "Scotty" Allen was persuaded to go to France with the dog contingent and the number was augmented by others from Canada and Labrador. When he and Lieutenant Haas sailed they had four hundred and fifty splendid dogs with them,--half a regiment! All were successfully delivered at the front where they have rendered distinguished and valuable service.

He would indeed be dead to emotion who could read the report which came with the _Croix de Guerre_ and which was sent from headquarters on the French frontier to far-away Alaska. We all knew that the dogs would meet emergencies boldly, no matter what the circ.u.mstances, the conditions or the weather. One specific incident which will be a part of Alaska's written history when the war is over serves to emphasize and justify our faith in them.

From a lonely post out on the frontier in the French Alps came to headquarters a most urgent call for help. They were out of ammunition and the situation was most critical. True to their reputation for valor the French were holding the post, fighting against heavy odds, each man saying in his heart the little sentence which has become the slogan of the French army and the prayer of every man, woman and child in France,--"_They shall not pa.s.s!_" To hold the post longer, however, meant that ammunition _must_ be forthcoming at once. A terrific blizzard was in progress. The trails were dangerous, almost obliterated in places. Trucks and horses were of no avail. But there were the dogs,--Alaska's heroes. To them France turned in her emergency. The sleds were quickly loaded. The Malamuts fell to harness instantly on command. Lieutenant Haas was ready for his perilous journey. A crack of the whip, an encouraging shout to the dogs and they were off. For four days and four nights they kept their steady gait. Up and down precipitous mountain-sides, over treacherous trails and across the snow-buried expanse, most of the time under sh.e.l.l fire from the enemy, they went quietly, steadily on. Lieutenant Haas acknowledged that the dogs seemed to realize quite as clearly as he did himself the necessity of haste and a cool head, that they had in their eyes the "do-or-die"

look which he had so often seen in the eyes of his men. And every one who knows anything about them knows how much victory means to a Malamut.

On the morning of the fifth day, just at dawn, they reached the post,--one more instance of a dramatic arrival in the nick of time. The ammunition was now completely exhausted. One needs not a vivid imagination to hear in fancy the ringing cheers which greeted them. A p.r.o.nounced trait of the Alaskan dog is glory in victory, mourning in defeat. This has been observed many times in the races,--the downcast, dejected air of the dogs that fail, the brisk and happy att.i.tude of those that win. So in this instance, the cheers and the Cross were but episodes. The victory was the thing!

The French Government acknowledges that the dogs are quite as valuable as any other branch of the service and those that made this hard and perilous trip are to be painted and hung in the War Museum in Paris.

Mrs. Darling and "Scotty" are and have every reason to be proud of their dogs. In the din of battle and the precariousness of life on the frontier they doubtless miss their owners' kindness and attention. But the sympathies of the latter go with them wherever they go. Lieutenant Haas declares that these dogs have a "college education" and can be trusted to do their work intelligently and fearlessly. When the time comes for the history of the Great World War to be written, may the deeds of the dogs of Nome who played no less courageous and conspicuous a part than did her men be fittingly inscribed therein!

CHAPTER XIX

ALASKAN WRITERS

In addition to her gold and copper, her furs and her fish, Alaska has produced a crop of writers of more or less importance. By far the truest exponent of the life of the country is Robert Service whose _The Spell of the Yukon_ surely breathes the spirit of the land. Service is now an army surgeon in the European war and his latest volume _Rhymes of a Red Cross Man_ has added to the reputation he justly enjoys because of the verse which went before it. This little volume is dedicated to the memory of his brother, Lieutenant Albert Service, killed in action, and the _Foreword_ with which the collection opens is well worth quoting:

"I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes In weary, woeful, waiting times; In doleful hours of battle din Ere yet they brought the wounded in!

Through vigils by the fateful night, In lousy barns by candle light; In dug-outs, sagging and aflood, On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood; By ragged grove, by ruined road, By hearths accurst where Love abode; By broken altars, blackened shrines-- I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes!

"I've solaced me with sc.r.a.ps of song The desolated ways along; Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown And meadows reaped by death alone; By blazing cross and splintered spire, By headless Virgin in the mire; By gardens gashed amid their bloom, By gutted grave, by shattered tomb; Beside the dying and the dead, Where rockets green and rockets red In trembling pools of poising light, With flowers of flame festoon the night.

Ah me! By what dark ways of wrong I've cheered my heart with sc.r.a.ps of song!

"So here's my sheaf of war-won verse, And some is bad, and some is worse.

And if at times I curse a bit, You needn't read that part of it!

For through it all, like horror, runs The red resentment of the guns!

And you yourself would mutter when You took the things that once were men And sped them through that zone of hate To where the dripping surgeons wait!

You'd wonder, too, if, in G.o.d's sight, War ever, _ever_ can be right!"

Service is essentially a poet. His novel, _The Trail of Ninety-eight_, well,--we have forgiven him! It is lurid melodrama and certainly adds nothing to his literary reputation. But none can read _The Spell of the Yukon_ without breathing deeply!

"There's a land where the mountains are nameless And the rivers all run G.o.d knows where!

There are lives that are erring and aimless And deaths that just hang by a hair!

There are hardships that n.o.body reckons, There are valleys unpeopled and still!

There's a land--oh, it beckons and beckons!

I want to go back--and I will!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. HUDSON STUCK, ARCHDEACON OF THE YUKON, PREACHING WITH INDIAN AND ESKIMO INTERPRETERS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF GREEK CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ST. MICHAEL BUILT IN 1837]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FINE OLD NATIONAL HOUSE WITH TOTEM POLES NEAR WRANGELL]

I have already said that the true story of the Klondike stampede has never been written and perhaps never will be. A great deal was put out under the guise of literature, but it was mere journalistic stuff. It will not endure and should not. Jack London was in Klondike. And he was a born story-teller. He should have written something quite worth while of those stirring days with all the wealth of material which lay about him. But the best he did was _The Call of the Wild_ and in it he indulged his love for the romantic to such an extent that you find yourself wondering whether dogs are real dogs and his men real men until in the end you conclude that they are not! His white men are like characters on the stage. And if there are any Indians in Alaska such as he portrayed I have never encountered them. They are absurdly untrue to life. Furthermore, the brutal side of life seems to have had undue attraction for London. It is true that it did exist. But it was not the whole of life in Alaska, by any means, and one sickens of it after continuous reading about it. Rex Beach's stories, _The Spoilers_ and _The Silver Horde_ (by far his best, in my judgment), are good and typical of the life of the period. Yet one can not read them without a feeling that they, too, leave much to be desired.

The wit, the pathos, the comedies, the tragedies, the sordidness, the heroism of those days! Whose pen could delineate the characters of those who wrought them or adequately describe the country as it was,--and is! It would take the combined genius of a Poe, a Kipling and a Bret Harte to do justice to the subject. Richard Harding Davis was preparing to go to Klondike. Had he carried out his intention it might have been different. But one morning he picked up the morning paper and read therein that the _Maine_ had been blown up in Havana harbor. He changed his mind!

I am convinced that the best tales of the land have never been put on paper. These are the stories related at the road-houses, or in the rooms of the Arctic Brotherhood or some similar gathering-place by those who took part in them. And they usually come out quite by accident. The partic.i.p.ant thinks there is nothing wonderful about them.

Some grizzled miner,--Service calls them "the silent men who _do_ things,"--will suddenly begin talking, and sometimes the story he tells will beat any that has ever yet found its way into print. Why has no one ever written a steamboat story? Or a tale of the Arctic Brotherhood? There are material and local color galore for such.

Nearly all Alaskans are familiar with the writings of Samuel Clarke Dunham. He has occasionally burst into verse, and he has a dry humor which is exhilarating. I have already quoted from one of his best known effusions concerning the tundra. Tracking about in the wet Russian moss is often calculated to extract (not painlessly) about ninety per cent of one's enthusiasm! So one day Dunham broke forth in a poem which began thus:

"I've traversed the toe-twisting tundra Where reindeer root round for their feed!" etc.

Would that there were some way of gathering together the fugitive stories and poems, replete with wit and humor, with pathos and tragedy, which are a part of Alaska's unwritten history! Many a time have I been guilty of hanging around a road-house, saloon or "joint" of some kind for no reason on earth except that I knew I should hear a good story or two from some wandering wayfarer who had just come in off the trail. And at such times I have often recalled the familiar song (peculiarly true to life in Alaska) the chorus of which runs:

"Sometimes you're glad, Sometimes you're sad, When you play in the game of life!"

I have heard in these miners' gatherings tales of tragedies almost unbelievable, comedies which would furnish excellent vehicles for the talents of Charlie Chaplin and not a few love stories worthy of a d.i.c.kens, a Hugo or a Tolstoi. But they were no sooner told than forgotten as no one was at hand to record them.

I well recall an evening when I joined a group who sat smoking beside a stove in one of the road-houses. There was conversation, but one usually loquacious individual sat silently and smoked his pipe.

Whenever he had appeared there before he had always been accompanied by an older man. They seemed inseparable companions. I had a feeling that something tragic had happened and that he would relate it before the evening was over. So I decided to "stick around." Presently some one asked him where his partner was. He did not reply immediately, but presently took his pipe from between his teeth and speaking in the vernacular of the country said:

"He won't be here no more."

"You mean----?"

"Yep."

We were all interested immediately but forebore to ask questions.

Presently he went on.

"We were just comin' along the trail. His foot slipped an' down he went into the creva.s.se. I hollered down, an' I heerd him answer. So I climbed down as far as I could, an' I could see him, an' talk to him.