of tongues, the city of nations. It is not French; it is universal.
And never can Marseilles have been so universal as in the early days of August 1914. Usually a port of call only, then it was a terminus. The ships came in, but did not leave: there seemed to be a concensus of opinion amongst skippers that the Goeben was a nasty thing to meet alone on a dark night. And so the overcrowded docks filled up with waiting vessels, while Lascars and Levantine Greeks, Cingalese and Chinamen, jostled one another in the cafés.
The other jostlers were principally Americans of fabulous wealth: at least as they thronged the shipping offices they said so. Also they were very angry, which is where they differed from the Cingalese and Chinamen, who liked Marseilles and prayed to remain for ever. But the Americans desired to return to God's own country—they and their wives and their sons and daughters; moreover, they expressed their desire fluently and frequently. There is something stupendous about an American magnate insisting on his rights on a hot day, when he can't get them. … It cheers a man up when he is waiting and wondering—and England is still silent.
It was just as Draycott had made the unpleasant discovery that no longer did the weekly boat run from Marseilles to Tunis and thence to Malta, and was debating on the rival merits of a journey through Italy, and thence by Syracuse to the island of goats; or a journey through Spain to Gibraltar, and thence
