The audience was even more interesting than the artists.  Chatting with the ladies in the front row were the General of division and his staff, groups of officers invited from the adjoining Head-quarters, and most of the civil and military administrators of the restored “Departement du Haut Rhin.”  All classes had turned out in honour of the fete, and every one was in a holiday mood.  The people among whom we sat were mostly Alsatian property-owners, many of them industrials of Thann.  Some had been driven from their homes, others had seen their mills destroyed, all had been living for a year on the perilous edge of war, under the menace of reprisals too hideous to picture; yet the humour prevailing was that of any group of merry-makers in a peaceful garrison town.  I have seen nothing, in my wanderings along the front, more indicative of the good-breeding of the French than the spirit of the ladies and gentlemen who sat chatting with the officers on that grassy slope of Alsace.

The display of haute ecole was to be followed by an exhibition of “transportation throughout the ages,” headed by a Gaulish chariot driven by a trooper with a long horsehair moustache and mistletoe wreath, and ending in a motor of which the engine had been taken out and replaced by a large placid white horse.  Unluckily a heavy rain began while this instructive “number” awaited its turn, and we had to leave before Vercingetorix had led his warriors into the ring...

August 16th.

Up and up into the mountains.  We started early, taking our way along a narrow interminable valley that sloped up gradually toward the east.  The road was encumbered with a stream of hooded supply vans drawn by mules, for we were on the way to one of the main positions in the Vosges, and this train of provisions is kept up day and night.  Finally we reached a mountain village under fir-clad slopes, with a cold stream rushing down from the hills.  On one side of the road was a rustic inn, on the other, among the firs, a chalet occupied by the brigade Head-quarters.  Everywhere about us swarmed the little “chasseurs Alpins” in blue Tam o’Shanters and leather gaiters.  For a year we had been reading of these heroes of the hills, and here we were among them, looking into their thin weather-beaten faces and meeting the twinkle of their friendly eyes.  Very friendly they all were, and yet, for Frenchmen, inarticulate and shy.  All over the world, no doubt, the mountain silences breed this kind of reserve, this shrinking from the glibness of the valleys.  Yet one had fancied that French fluency must soar as high as Mont Blanc.