ENTRÉE

You can conceive the sense of exaltation with which one would enter the South of France in June, after five months in Egypt. You can conceive better than describe it. So can the writer. In a moment it comes back from this distance, with a reality that elates; but it defies description. The universal sand of Egypt: the timbered heights and the flowered valleys of the Riviera; the stinks of the Egyptian cities: the June fragrance breathing down from the hills of Marseilles; the filth and deformity of the Cairene denizens: the fair women of France and the lovely grace of the little children; the searing heat of the desert: the tempered sunniness of this blossoming land. If you can make these things explicit to yourself, you may know something of the high sense of emancipation with which we left the ship. For we had been looking on Marseilles and sniffing the air from the harbour for two days. And in the last hundred miles of the journey by sea we had skirted the Riviera coast, gazing absorbedly on verdure and perching chÂteau, and nestling, red-topped village and silver sand-strip. Then the cliffs of the harbour mouth—that hide the city—uprose, and we threaded a way beneath them and about the titanic rocks towering in the bay; and a sudden turn to starboard threw all Marseilles into the field of vision in five minutes—red tiles along the water's edge in great congested blotches; thin red patches straggling back in the green up the hills; and in the near, high-reared horizon, grey scarred cliffs overlooking all; and on the main harbour headland Notre Dame de la Garde, dazzling gold in the setting sun, gazing benignly over the city.

We looked and pondered till darkness came on, and in the morning were on deck early to see it all by the eastern sun. But they wouldn't let us land. So we spent two days explicating the detail with glasses.

We moved in suddenly and entrained at once. By the goodness of Heaven we were detailed to proceed by a slow passenger-train, as distinct from a fast troop-train. A troop-train rushes express, and is crowded; ours stopped at every station, and gave room to sleep. At the big towns we stayed as long as four and six hours. For all this we were commiserated by the French: "Ah! trois jours dans la voiture!" But we could have wished it would last three weeks.

Think, patient reader! Three days across France from Marseilles to Rouen in the gentle French midsummer; and time to look about you at every village.

Four impressions will always remain: the desecration by war of this beautiful land; the inescapable evidence that the last fit man in France is in the field; the ravages upon these quiet civilian homes by death in the front line; the incontinently affectionate welcome of Australians by the French girls.

It was, above all, pitiful to know that somewhere to the east Teuton shell was ravaging country such as this. You found yourself saying: Is it such a valley as that in which the trenches are dug? Are German shell (and French shell, too) changing the whole topography of a province such as this?—smudging the sleeping landscape and tearing up the smiling crop. Is it in such a grove that the sacrilege of the guns is perpetrating itself? "Gad!" you would hear, "this country's worth fighting for!"

In Egypt it's another thing. It is less unnatural that the godless sand of the desert should be stained and erupted; but this is different. And the old consolation comes—that has always consecrated the sacrifices of Gallipoli—that the ideals in question are more precious than any land, however fair.

In the fields of the provinces it's women and bent old men who are working—and boys. They wave pathetically as the train rushes on. And in the towns there is not an eligible man to be seen—except in uniform.

Seven in ten women are in mourning at any stage of the journey. One attempted at first to be consoled by the notion that the French temperament would put on mourning for a second and third cousin. But conversation with Frenchmen soon corrected that. Six in ten of these women wear weeds for a son or a brother or father or lover fallen in the two years that are past.

It was a welcome and a half that the girls gave. Apart from all fighting, the deep-lined, barbed-wire Australian visage attracts in a land where the men are smooth-faced. And the notion of men fighting for France from the other end of the earth made no favour too much. Troop-trains had been passing at regular intervals for a month, and they were on the lookout for khaki. They swarmed to the stations with favours of fruit and flowers and embraces. They waved as the train came in; they chatted sweetly and unintelligibly at the platform; and they waved long and friendly as we moved away. The little children came with lilies and roses (little French girls are the loveliest things God ever made), and held up their faces to be kissed. And their big sisters not only did not blench at embraces, but invited them; and would get up and ride five miles pour compagnie.

We stayed three hours at Avignon—at night. An Englishman we encountered on the station was so glad to see men of his own tongue that he took us about the streets and the cafÉs to show us the city proper, and missed his train without a pang. This was about midnight, and Avignon was just fairly awake. Trade in the cafÉs was at its zenith. Amongst other things we saw (for the first time) how tactful, shrewd, and charming a waitress a French provincial girl may be.

Lyons we reached at 2.30 a.m., and had time for a four hours' walk. The inevitable route was over the RhÔne, mist-laden, and up the villa-crowned hill in the midst of the city; and, when the sun had overspread the wakening valley, down into the strawberry markets, and away to the station, threading a way amongst the strawberry waggons, bearing in the fruit in voluptuous piles.

Macon, the next long stop, we remember for the provender we put aboard there. This is mere carnality, but the capons and fruits and pies and pastry of Macon were unforgettable.

This lasted us to Dijon. Dijon we shall always remember as the city where the girls were hungriest for souvenirs. Souvenirs had been demanded (and sometimes given) at any stage of the journey. But at Dijon the houris were infected with a souvenir madness; and since they were the prettiest girls we had yet seen, we departed stripped and deploring we had not brought from Australia each a bushel of badges. For there were bound to be more girls, quite as irresistible.

Then there was Laroche, where more rations had to be got. This was a hungry business—and even a thirsty.

And between Laroche and the great city an unhappy thing occurred. We were due to change at Villeneuve, a Parisian suburb. But at Villeneuve (2 a.m.) no one seemed to be awake; and at 3 we were in Paris, forlorn and regretful (though in a thoroughly half-hearted fashion) of the oversight which had disorganised our movement-order. There was therefore nothing to be done but hastily swallow cafÉ au lait in a matutinally busy eating-house, and hail a taxi in the Place de la Bastille: this after learning that the Rouen train would not leave before 7.30. "Vue GÉnÉrale de Paris—trois heures," was the order, in crude English-French. And the chauffeur put down the dividing glass window behind him, and in his taxi-jargon showed us everything—HÔtel de Ville, Notre-Dame, the Pantheon, l'AcadÉmie de France, Palais du SÉnat, the Invalides, the Champs-ElysÉes, the Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde, l'Église de la Madeleine, round about the Louvre and the Luxembourg, and the rest of them.

This was vulgar Americanism; but nothing else was to be done. And so we got back to the Gare Lyon, and in the half-hour to spare descended and gaped unsophisticated at the Parisian tube railways disgorging their freight of men and women (mostly women) who had found their work.

Then the train began its crawl up to Versailles and its loveliness, nestling in the thick wooded heights, and by many blessed stops and shuntings we came by Juvisy and AchÈres to Rouen, late in the drizzling night, took a cup of steaming coffee at the Croix Rouge Cantine pour Permissionaires, and marched out to camp; and didn't care much where it might be, so long as we had where to lay our head.

Three days in Rouen left one with the knowledge that it is dangerous to transport suddenly a body of Australians, after eighteen months' residence on Anzac and in Egypt, to a land where the wine is cheap and every girl is pretty.