nd for a definite destination. They might
have been in New York or San Francisco. It was a novel sight, indeed,
to observe them striding across the Place Vendome with out so much as
deigning to cast a glance at the column dedicated to the great
emperor who fought that other world-war a century ago; to see our
square-shouldered officers hustling around corners in Ford and Packard
automobiles. And the atmosphere of our communication headquarters was
so essentially one of "getting things done" as to make one forget the
mediaeval narrowness of the Rue Sainte Anne, and the inconvenient French
private-dwelling arrangements of the house. You were transported back
to America. Such, too, was the air of our Red Cross establishment in the
ancient building facing the Palace de la Concorde, where the unfortunate
Louis lost his head.

History had been thrust into the background. I was never more aware of
this than when, shortly after dawn Wednesday, the massive grey pile
of the Palace of Versailles suddenly rose before me. As the motor shot
through the empty Place d'Armes I made a desperate attempt to summon
again a vivid impression, when I had first stood there many years ago,
of an angry Paris mob beating against that grill, of the Swiss guards
dying on the stairway for their Queen. But it was no use. France has
undergone some subtle change, yet I knew I was in France. I knew it when
we left Paris and sped through the dim leafy tunnels of the Bois; when
I beheld a touch of filtered sunlight on the dense blue thatch of the
'marroniers' behind the walls of a vast estate once dedicated to the
sports and pleasures of Kings; when I caught glimpses of silent chateaux
mirrored in still waters.

I was on my way, with one of our naval officers, to visit an American
naval base on the western coast. It was France, but the laughter had
died on her lips. A few women and old men and children were to be seen
in the villages, a bent figure in a field, an occasional cart that drew
aside as we hurried at eighty kilometers an hour along deserted routes
drawn as with a ruler across the land. Sometimes the road dipped into a
canyon of poplars, and the sky between their crests was a tiny strip
of mottled blue and white. The sun crept in and out, the clouds cast
shadows on the hills; here and there the tower of lonely church or
castle broke the line of a distant ridge. Morning-glories nodded over
lodge walls where the ivy was turning crimson, and the li