"Looks just the same to me," said my friend, an American journalist who had been there in 1912. "Of course there are more soldiers. Outside of that, and a lack of taxicabs and motorcars, the town has not changed."
But there was a difference, and a great difference. There was a terrible absence of youth. Not that youth was entirely absent from the tables and the trottoirs; it was visible, putty-faced and unhealthy-looking, afraid to meet the gaze of a man in uniform, the pitiable jeunesse that could not pass the physical examination of the army. Most of the other young men who bent over the tables talking, or leaned back on a divan to smoke cigarettes, were strangers, and I saw many who were unquestionably Roumanians or Greeks. A little apart, at a corner table, a father and mother were dining with a boy in a uniform much too large for him;—I fancied from the cut of his clothes that he belonged to a young squad still under instruction in the garrisons, and that he was enjoying a night off with his family. Screened from the rest by a clothes rack, a larky young lieutenant was discreetly conversing with a "daughter of joy," and an elderly English officer, severely proper and correct, was reading "Punch" and sipping red wine in Britannic isolation. Across the street an immense poster announced, "Conference in aid of the Belgian Red Cross—the German Outrages in Louvain, Malines, and Liège—illustrated."
We finished our dinner, which was good and not costly, and started to walk to our hotel. Hardly had we turned the corner of the Place, when the life of Bordeaux went out like a torch extinguished by the wind. It was still early in the evening, there was a sound of an orchestra somewhere behind, yet ahead of us, lonely and still, with its shops closed and its sidewalks deserted, was one of the greater streets of Bordeaux. Through the drawn curtains of second stories over little groceries and baker-shops shone the yellow light of lamps. What had happened to the Jean, Paul, and Pierre of this dark street since the war began? What tragedies of sorrow and loneliness might these silent windows not conceal? And every French city is much the same; one notices in them all the subtle lack of youth, and the animation of the great squares in contrast to the somber loneliness of streets and quarters which once were alive and gay. At the Place de l'Opéra in Paris, the whirlpool of Parisian life is still turning, but the great streets leading away from the Place de l'Étoile are quiet. Young and old, laborer and shopkeeper, boulevardier and apache are far away holding the tragic lines.
The next morning at the station, I had my first glimpse of that mighty organization which surrounds the militaire. There was a special entrance for soldiers and a special exit for soldiers, and at both of these a long file of blue-clad poilus waited for the countersigning of their furlough slips and military tickets. The mud of the trenches still stained the bottom edges of their overcoats, and their steel helmets were dented and dull. There was something fine about the faces collectively; there was a certain look of tried endurance and perils bravely borne. I heard those on furlough telling the names of their home villages to the officer in charge,—pleasant old names, Saint-Pierre aux Vignes, La Tour du Roi.
A big, obese, middle-aged civilian dressed in a hideous greenish suit, and wearing a pancake cap, sat opposite me in the compartment I had chosen. There was a hard, unfriendly look in his large, fat-encircled eyes, a big mustache curved straight out over his lips, and the short finger nails of his square, puffy fingers were deeply rimmed with dirt. He caught sight of me reading a copy of an English weekly, and after staring at me with an interest not entirely free from a certain hostility, retreated behind the pages of the "Matin," and began picking his teeth. Possibly he belonged to that provincial and prejudiced handful to whom England will always be "Perfidious Albion," or else he took me for an English civilian dodging military service. The French press was following the English recruiting campaign very closely, and the system of volunteer service was not without its critics. "Conscription being considered in England" (On discute la conscription en Angleterre), announced the "Matin" discreetly.
It was high noon; the train had arrived at Angoulême, and was taking aboard a crowd of convalescents. On the station platform, their faces relentlessly illumined by the brilliant light, stood about thirty soldiers; a few were leaning on canes, one was without a right arm, some had still the pallor of the sick, others seemed able-bodied and hearty. Every man wore on the bosom of his coat about half a dozen little aluminum medals dangling from bows of tricolor ribbon. "Pour les blessés, s'il vous plaît," cried a tall young woman in the costume and blue cape of a Red-Cross nurse as she walked along the platform shaking a tin collection box under the windows of the train.
To our compartment came three of the convalescents. One was a sturdy, farmhand sort of fellow, with yellow hair and a yellow mustache—the kind of man who might have been a Norman; he wore khaki puttees, brown corduroy trousers, and a jacket which fitted his heavy, vigorous figure rather snugly. Another was a little soul dressed in the "blue horizon" from head to foot, a homely little soul with an egg-shaped head, brown-green eyes, a retreating chin, and irregular teeth. The last, wearing the old tenue, black jacket and red trousers, was a good-looking fellow with rather handsome brown eyes. Comfortably stretched in a corner, the Norman was deftly cutting slices of bread and meat which he offered to his companions. Catching sight of my English paper, all three stared at me with an interest and friendliness that was in psychological contrast to the attitude of the obese civilian.
"Anglais?" asked the Norman.
The civilian watched for my answer.
"Non—Américain," I replied.