ot a great frequenter of the dining-room; at times one wonders
just what his activities are. Certainly it is not the planning of
meals, for the I.C.C. menu is as fixed and automatic as if it had been
taken from a stone slab in the pyramids. A poor meal neither turns his
hair white nor cuts down his income. Frequently, especially if he is
English and certainly if he has been a ship's steward, the negro
waiters seem to run his establishment without interference. Dinner
hours, for example, are from 11 to 1. But beware the glare of the
waiter at whose table you sit down at 12:50. He slams cold rubbish at
you from the discard and snatches it away again before you have time to
find you can't eat it. You have your choice of enduring this
maltreatment or of unostentatiously slipping him a coin and a hint to
go cook you the best he can himself. For you know that as the closing
hour approaches the cooks will not have their private plans interfered
with by accepting your order. Here again is where the fat German or the
French madame is needed--with an ox-goad.

In other words the tip system invented by Pharaoh and vitiated by
quick-rich Americans rages as fiercely in government hotels on the Zone
as in any "lobster palace" bordering Broadway--worse, for here the
non-tipper has no living being to advocate his cause. All food is
government property. Yet I have sat down opposite a man who gave the
government at the door a work-coupon identical with mine, but who
furthermore dropped into the waiter's hand "35 cents spig"--which is
half as bad as to do it in U.S. currency--and while I was gazing
tearfully at a misshapen lump of vacunal gristle there was set before
him, steaming hot from the government kitchen, a porterhouse steak
which a dollar bill would not have brought him within scenting distance
of in New York. Do not blame the waiter. If he does not slip an
occasional coin to the cook he will invariably draw the gristle, and
even occasional coins do not grow on his waist band. It would be as
absurd to charge it to the cook. He probably has a large family to
support, as he would have under socialism. There runs this story on the
Zone, vouched for by several:

A "Zoner" called an I.C.C. steward and complained that his waiter did
not serve him reasonably:

"Well," sneered the steward, "I guess you didn't come across?"

"Come across! Why, damn you, I suppose you're getting your rake-off
too?"

"I certainly am," replied the stew