CHAPTER XXI
THE ADVANCE
THE grey and crimson tints of all these phases colour Europe too morbidly. There is no escape. When, on my way back to America, I reached Bordeaux, the gay southern city seemed at first to offer with a smile just that cvasion which every one who sees the war with an intimate understanding must narrowly crave. German prisoners, working in the fields and on the roads in the outskirts, were, to be sure, a reminder; but they appeared to have borrowed something from the warm, bland countryside to which they had been transplanted. Their faces were without anger or regret. They seemed happier than the free men condemned to the trenches.
In Bordeaux itself there were fewer uniforms than one sees to the north and less of the eternal military display in shop windows. There was a much heralded theatrical production that night, and, announced for Sunday, an open air performance of “Samson and Delilah."
But almost immediately the black war shadow
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