"Noon at Cap d'Antibes brings every one together for lunch and after that some go back to the rocks, others to their rooms, and still more take the afternoon bus to Cannes. You can shop there and get your films developed and your hair washed, but of course there are far greater attractions. From three until four an American band plays in the pavilion and all the world walks down the promenade to hear—'Smiles,' 'The Long, Long Trail,' and 'Over There.' Just such a band played just such tunes last summer at lunch time on the White House lot in Washington—only there the audience was composed of hundreds and hundreds of women and girls—war workers—with a few men in uniform, while at Cannes it is the other way about. The place simply swarms with American boys on leave or convalescence, officers and men, and besides their familiar khaki there is plenty of horizon blue and the mustard-colored coats of Moroccans, with red fezzes atop. There are French women, of course, and then a handful of Red Cross and 'Y' girls, nurses, and foreign sisters.
"There are a variety of places to go for tea—from the conventional, cosmopolitan rooms of the Carlton or Rumplemeyer's to the 'Y' canteen where one can get good hot chocolate and bread and jam for forty-five centimes. This 'Y,' by the way, is considered their star establishment. There are reading and billiard rooms, movies and dancing; and on Sundays, services are held where one used to play roulette.
"There is also a Y. M. C. A. club for officers, and here there is dancing to be had as well as tea. But at five o'clock the girls for the Cap must run, or they will miss the bus going back. No one wants to do that, and miss, too, the pleasant ride along the coast with the sunset glowing back of the Esperal Mountains and shimmering in a thousand colors across the ripples of the quiet sea; especially when the alternative to missing the bus is an hour's ride on a French 'tram.' So, singing as a rule, the busload swings along the smooth white road with twenty-five or thirty girls, as like as not, in the places where fifteen are supposed to be.
"That same big bus is used several times a week to take parties for the long ride along the Riviera, to Nice, Monte Carlo, and Menton—one of the supremely beautiful drives of the world. There is an hour's stop in Nice, another in Monte Carlo for lunch, and then, after a glimpse of the Italian border, the party turns back. The Hotel Cap d'Antibes, with its many lights, looks very pleasant after the long, cold ride—it is always cold on the Riviera after the sun goes down—and dinner, always good, tastes especially so to the hungry tourists.
"The Cap is too isolated to be gay in the evening; but, after all, most of the women there have come to rest and recuperate, so they are glad of a quiet game of bridge, a book before the open fire, or a short walk in the magic of southern moonlight. The energetic younger ones usually pull back the rugs and dance—a hen party, to be sure; fun just the same, if one judges by the faces of the girls. There is generally singing, too. One nurse while I was there had a very lovely voice (you kept thinking how much pleasure she must have been able to give the men in her ward) and after she had sung the verse of some popular song, every one joined the chorus. And it was at one of these singsongs, in the big white-paneled drawing-room, with the yellow light falling on many faces about the piano, that I had a glimpse of a gray hospital ward and one of those tragic commonplaces that make up the life of a nurse in times of war.
"The singer had been singing a favorite song of the British Tommies with a strong cockney accent:
"'Oi want go 'ome,
Oi want to go 'ome,
Now that Belgium is Belgium again,
Now that France has got Alsace-Lorraine,
Carry me over the sea,
Where the Allymand cannot get me,
Oh my, I'm too young to die,
I want to go 'ome,'
when a girl near me, who had been rather silent, spoke for the first time:
"'That song reminds me of a boy I used to have in my ward. He had a broken back and it was just a question of time, but he didn't know that. He sang that song until I thought I couldn't stand it.'
"The singing was still to be heard as I slipped into my coat a few minutes later and went out of doors. Down on the rocks the water slipped against them softly, overhead were a million stars in the dark sky.