rom the peaceful asylum of the west. This smiling, happy folk,
which I had seen in our manufacturing towns and cities, were now
transformed, atavistic--all save one, a student, who stared wistfully
through his spectacles across the waters. Later, when twilight deepened,
when the moon had changed from silver to gold, the orators gave place to
a singer. He had been a bootblack in America. Now he had become a bard.
His plaintive minor chant evoked, one knew not how, the flavour of that
age-long history of oppression and wrong these were now determined to
avenge. Their conventional costumes were proof that we had harboured
them--almost, indeed, assimilated them. And suddenly they had reverted.
They were going to slaughter the Turks.

On a bright Saturday afternoon we steamed into the wide mouth of the
Gironde, a name stirring vague memories of romance and terror. The
French passengers gazed wistfully at the low-lying strip of sand and
forest, but our uniformed pilgrims crowded the rail and hailed it as the
promised land of self-realization. A richly coloured watering-place slid
into view, as in a moving-picture show. There was, indeed, all the
reality and unreality of the cinematograph about our arrival; presently
the reel would end abruptly, and we should find ourselves pushing our way
out of the emptying theatre into a rainy street. The impression of
unreality in the face of visual evidence persisted into the night when,
after an afternoon at anchor, we glided up the river, our decks and ports
ablaze across the land. Silhouettes of tall poplars loomed against the
blackness; occasionally a lamp revealed the milky blue facade of a house.
This was France! War-torn France--at last vividly brought home to us
when a glare appeared on the sky, growing brighter and brighter until, at
a turn of the river, abruptly we came abreast of vomiting furnaces,
thousands of electric lights strung like beads over the crest of a hill,
and, below these, dim rows of houses, all of a sameness, stretching along
monotonous streets. A munitions town in the night.

One could have tossed a biscuit on the stone wharfs where the workmen,
crouching over their tasks, straightened up at sight of us and cheered.
And one cried out hoarsely, "Vous venez nous sauver, vous Americains"
--"You come to save us"--an exclamation I was to hear again in the days
that followed.

III

All day long, as the 'rapide' hurried us through the smiling wine