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It was a picturesque scene, cast in the long Clock Room of the Quai d'Orsay, the conventional black of the majority of delegates broken by the horizon-blue uniform of Marshal Foch, the natty red-trimmed khaki of British staff officers, and the white flowing robes and golden headdress of the Arabian Emir Faisal; down the center of the room ran the traditionally diplomatic green baize tables behind which sat the delegates; attachés and press correspondents crowded into the corners or peered around the curtains of adjoining rooms; at the end, in front of the white marble fireplace, sat the dominating personalities of the Allied world.
The backbone of the system was a great fleet of trucks driven by men whose average daily rest was four hours, and upon whose horizon-blue uniforms the stains of snow and sleet, of dust and mud, were indelibly fixed through the winter, spring, summer and fall of 1916, for the glorious engagement continued from February 21st until November 2d, when the Germans were forced into full retreat from the field of honor, the evacuation of Fort Vaux putting a period to Germany's disastrous plan and to von Falkenhayn's military career.
Yet the scene in the hotel's shabby restaurant at the dinner-hour was well worth the fantastic charges, for there gathered there nightly as interesting a company as I have not often seen under one roof: a poet and novelist who has given to Italy the most important literary work since the days of the great classics, and who, by his fiery and impassioned speeches, did more than any single person to force the nation's entrance into the war; an American dental surgeon who abandoned an enormously lucrative practice in Rome to establish at the front a hospital where he has performed feats approaching the magical in rebuilding shrapnel-shattered faces; a Florentine connoisseur, probably the greatest living authority on Italian art, who has been commissioned with the preservation of all the works of art in the war zone; an English countess who is in charge of an X-ray car which operates within range of the Austrian guns; a young Roman noble whom I had last seen, in pink, in the hunting-field; a group of khaki-clad officers from the British mission, cold and aloof of manner despite their being among allies; a party of Russians, their hair clipped to the skull, their green tunics sprinkled with stars and crosses; half a dozen French military attachés in beautifully cut uniforms of horizon-blue; and Italian officers, animated and gesticulative, on whose breasts were medal ribbons showing that they had fought in forgotten wars in forgotten corners of Africa.
It may be of interest at this point to say a few words about some of the special characteristics of the Italian Army. Every modern Army has adopted a distinctive colour for its war-time uniform, chosen with a view to minimising visibility. Thus we wear khaki, the French horizon-blue, the Germans field-grey.
Chouteau Johnson, of New York; Lawrence Rumsey, of Buffalo; Dudley Hill, of Peekskill, N.Y.; and Clyde Balsley, of El Paso; one after another doffed the ambulance driver's khaki for the horizon-blue of the French flying corps. All of them had seen plenty of action, collecting the wounded under fire, but they were all tired of being non-combatant spectators.
"And you keep your eyes straight ahead, young man," advised Aunt Kate, "or you will have this heavy car in the ditch." "Watch out for Henri and Heavy, too," advised Helen. "They do not quite know what they are about and you may run them down. There! See his horizon-blue sleeve steal about her? He's got only one hand left to steer with. Talk about a perfect thirty-six!
His uniform was faded and dusty; not a trace of the horizon-blue was left; only a gray shadow. He had no knapsack on his back, no gun on his shoulder. Wearily and doggedly he plodded his way, without eyes for the veiled beauty of the sleeping country. The quick, firm military step was gone. He trudged like a tramp, choosing always the darker side of the road.
Finally one of them, a little chap in a uniform long since bleached of its horizon-blue colour by the mud of the firing line, whisperingly interrogates a mechanician as to the identity of these strange air folk. "But they are the Americans, my old one," the latter explains with noticeable condescension. Marvelling afresh, the infantrymen demand further details.
She would no longer worry her friends and disturb her own mental poise by ruminating upon her misfortune. When she and the lost woman got out of the ravine, Ruth could hear the girls calling her. And there was Colonel Marchand's horizon-blue uniform in sight as he toiled up the ascent, looking for her. "Don't be frightened, dear," Ruth said to the startled woman. "These are my friends."
It wore the horizon-blue of a French officer, very smart, with those French riding-boots that show the shape of the leg, and a handsome fur-lined pelisse. I would have called him a young man, not more than thirty-five. The face was brown and clean-shaven, the eyes bright and masterful ... Yet he did not deceive me.
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