showed itself. There was uncertainty as to when
the boat would sail; a promise, ever more clearly
defined, of an extended delay; a sense of lurking
danger at the mouth of the Garonne.
And the next morning, when I stepped from my hotel, I heard the throaty music of bugles, and I saw march past thousands of Senegalese, just landed and about to entrain for the front. Beneath red fezzes their black and childish faces shown with the heat. They swung along with a naïve pride. One questioned if they foresaw anything of the facts.
America, with its lights and its careless pleasure-seeking, attained a visionary quality. Was it possible such a place actually existed? At first one was happy at the prospect of that refuge, but the bugles continued, blaring the truth of this war, and one became ashamed, reading in such a state a vital wrong which sooner or later would have to be paid for.
As the gangway from pier to ship in New York had shown itself to be the threshold of war, so, too, it was apparent, would it prove itself the only exit. For on the boat, sitting in the steamer chair next to mine, occupying a seat at the same table, was a young fellow from Brooklyn, decorated with Croix de Guerre the Medaille Militaire.
He moved about only infrequently because of the
