WAR—AND MONTE CARLO

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 228, 30 October 1914, Page 8

WAR—AND MONTE CARLO

EUROPE'S PLAYGROUND OVERSHADOWED. I was to.ld I should need a-special permit to visit the Principality of Monaco. So I went to this little Mairie, and joined a throng of patient Italians, hovering like bees round an elderly policeman. The poor policeman scratched his shaven head (we all shave our heads now to look like soldiers). He was very slow, very painstaking, full of surly good nature (wrote Herbert Vivian from Villefranche to a London journal). A youth presented a paper, and the old man began to copy heavily. "But you are not 59 years of age," he objected in pained surprise. /'No, I am 18. "That is my father's document.'' ■'' Now you have made me waste a sheet. You will have to do the best you can with this. If you are stopped, so much the worse for you. How tall is your father? I must put that down." "But I beg of you, can't you really give me a permit for myself? My father doesn't want to go to Nice." "No, no; you must come again tomorrow and bring your right papers.'' Pen "Portraits. At Nice yon provide a photograph, which receives an official stamp. Here an Italian labourer is not expected to have a photograph, so he is described. I determined to be described. It might be fun. It might even be rude. Anyhow, I should see myself as a French policeman saw me. t What was my height? 'Alas! I could not translate feet into metres off-hand. "Ah! you have different measures in England. Let us sav 'above the medium height.' " I find I have an "uncovered forehead" (does that mean baldness?), a 11 rectilinear nose,'' a small mouth, a round chin, an oval face, and blue eyes. I could not have told all that myself. My tram was held up close to the frontier of the Principality.' "Halt!" cried an officer in grey ducks. "What is it?" the conductor asked sleepily. "You are requisitioned to take 24 soldiers back to Nice. They have to collect cattle.'' " At what time?" "Now." ' ! Luckily there was not far to walk. Anyhow this resolved the doubts of two French soldiers who wanted to go to Beausoleil, but were in great fear of being carried across the frontier of Monaco. That is always out of bounds for them, much more so now in time of war. As it was, I did see one soldier take a short cut across a few yards of the Prince's territory, but no international complications arose from the j violation of neutrality.' j Empty Monte Carlo. ]

I was astonished at the scene on the top of the hill. For sheer, forlorn desolation I have beheld nothing to compare with Monte Carlo in 'time of waiV This buzzing hive,, this centre of wild dissipation, this hackneyed scene of melodrama had acquired all-the silence, and gloom of Pompeii; . Outsicle the Casino I was informed by a placard on the closed shutters that owing to "the events," the building would toot be openefl till further- notice; the reading-room was transferred to the Cafe de Paris; deposits could be recovered at the bank in the Galerie Charles 111. In the big square there were twelve wax figures arrayed on the benches. lam sure they were wax figures, for they never spoke or movetl; they waited and waited—for nothing. A big blackboard waited for war telegrams that never came. There was lunch at a little coffeehouse in the Condamine by the harbour. Here I was seized at once by the nervous atmosphere of the Principality. At the next table was a lady who spoke with what seemed a violent German accent. I watched her suspiciously, for at Nice German-baiting is the great sport of the ho\xr. The soberest citizens rush suddenly amok and collect crowds to chase and belabour a nian who has the wrong hat or the wrong cut of beard. And at Nice we mustrust Monaco. We know that the Prince has sent £20,000 to the Prefect of the Seine for the families of French soldiers; we have read his" Highness's stirring speech to a regiment at Beausoleil; we have seen the red proclamations on Monte Carlo walls ordering off the enemy's subjects "for reasons of public order." But we know he is a friend of the Kaiser, a cousin of the Chief of the German Staff. We suspect him.of tolerating spies. We murmur of annexation. * Suspicion. So I watched my neighbour, and I saw she resented it. The proprietor addressed her sympathetically as Madame la Comtesse. But .that did not soothe her. Between the courses she threw up her hands and screamed that such things were unheard of. "What things'*" I ventured to enquire. Why, this infamous atmosphere of suspicion. (My suspicion, perhaps?) For days and days she had been pushed about at police stations, and haunted the ante-chambers of Consulates,' clamoured for papers that were always deferred. Hoav was she to get out of this accursed country without a permit? Some people make their own troubles, and I pointed out to her that she had only to enter a train and proceed to Italy- No oue need worry about papers down here just now, least of all a worthy Dutchwoman who only desired to depart. All the same, Monaco ris certainly suffering from a reaction against Germans. At first their expulsion was the merest sham. Then the Prince proposed to provide them with a special ship to take them away to Italy. "Ah!" said Nice, "then you admit that you have been sheltering them; arid now you want to send them away in luxury with all the fruits of their espionage." One result is that high officials at the Casino are now in Nice prisons waiting to be tried as spies. An Italian paper said one of them had been shot, but this is contradicted.

One of the learned opponents to warfare in principle, Privy Councillor Professor Ostwald, pf Leipzig, in. his capacity as president of the German Monists' Association, gave out a public declaration, in which he said that-the present war was a war of barbarism, of the herding world ("Herdenthum") upon organisation, and that, though the hionists had worked for the idea of universal peace and would take up that work again after the war, they were willing to defend their country with their lives and their possession. They would do this, he said, as they regard their country as the highest supporter of civiUsaUoui _