CHAPTER IX FRANCE
Notes taken while Motoring on the Riviera.
Mentone.
In the southern sunshine it is a strain to realise that France is at war, that, in the north, the biggest war the world has ever seen is being fought out desperately day after day. The only unusual sight is the groups of Senegalais, the French Colonial soldiers, and the blackest niggers I have ever seen, walking at leisure on the parade with a curious movement of the arms and of the whole body, which reminds one, at the same time, of a bear in his cage and the balancing efforts of a dancer on the tight-rope. They are waiting expectantly to be sent to the battlefield, and in the meantime enjoying themselves, walking about holding each other's hands, and laughing at everything with a wide, good-natured laugh. Everybody likes them and spoils them. To see the Senegalais walking amongst the palm trees under the tropical sky of Mentone, clad in dark blue with the wide scarlet belt round their waists, is really a pleasure to the eyes.
They look and feel at home. When I see a coloured man or a Chinaman in the Strand I generally feel sorry for the poor beggar; he would be all right in Pernambuco or in Canton, but in London he looks like a violation of the natural order of things. That's why I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the Senegalais of Mentone. Most of them are very fine fellows, well over six feet, and quite a number show wound scars and medals, which prove that they will not be new to fire when they take the field.
In addition to the coloured troops, not many soldiers are seen now in Mentone, as the wounded sent down here are still in the hospitals, and only very few risk the air. But a few may be seen in the sunshine, surrounded by a small crowd of admiring children and of sympathetic grown-ups of both sexes. The temporary hospitals have been arranged in a number of the larger hotels which were formerly owned by Germans, and prove now most useful and comfortable for the French wounded.
Mentone had during the last few years acquired the fame of being one of the most Germanised towns of France. This sort of pacific invasion was encouraged by the German Government in the hope that Italy would stick to Germany in the long-expected struggle, and she could then have a sort of avant-garde of friends in French territory at the beginning of hostilities. Instead, when the war broke out, after a week's hesitation France withdrew practically the whole of her frontier troops and guns, while Italy was doing the same at the other side.
When the Germans were forced to leave, one of the expelled hotel-keepers, after passing the Italian frontier, which is at a few yards' distance from the last houses of Mentone, showing his fist to the crowd still on French territory, shouted: "Au revoir! In two weeks in Paris!" His hotel has been the only German house in Mentone wrecked by the population.