The healthy enjoyment and the consistent good behavior of the Americans seemed to impress the French as miraculous. Half a dozen French officers on leave in the famous watering place spent hours in the Y. M. C. A. headquarters, and townspeople brought their families to see the Americans, hear them sing _Over There_, and _Joan of Arc_, and stag dance to the music of Lieutenant Europe’s famous regimental band. Europe, who used to play for idle New York to tango, has a band of colored soldiers who are going to be known all over the continent before the war ends. The men all sing as well as play, and their music is really remarkable. Whenever a colored soldier appeared on the street the French children followed him in a rapt procession. They followed all the Americans, but Europe’s men had them hypnotized. In Aix I saw the beginning of what I believe is going to be a never-ending friendship and understanding between the American people and the French. You have heard, no doubt, about how the French double the prices of everything as soon as an American soldier enters a town. Some French shopkeepers have done this, of course. The American soldier seems to be rolling in wealth, and he rarely even counts his change. The temptation to overcharge a man who throws down a fifty franc note in payment for an apple, carelessly inquiring “Is that enough,” must be pretty strong. But let me tell you that avarice is not the ruling passion of the French, and their dealings with the American soldier are often marked with consideration most extraordinary. Vacations do not come cheaply to the American soldier in France, at least the stay at Aix-les-Bains was not cheap. Every man who went there was supposed to have a minimum of one hundred and fifty francs, or twenty-seven dollars, in his possession. When he registered at the office of the provost marshal he drew a slip of paper with the name of a hotel on it. To that hotel he was obliged to go. The tariff varied from ninety-three to one hundred and twenty-eight francs for the week, and this sum, seventeen dollars and sixty-four cents to twenty-three dollars and four cents, had to be paid in advance. A few of the soldiers failed to get this into their heads before coming, and there was considerable borrowing in the first few days. Lucky were they who had friends from whom to borrow. One tall shy youth from Georgia, I think it was Georgia, came to the Y. M. C. A. with a pathetic tale of tragedy based on the fact that he had arrived in Aix with only eighty francs in his pocket. He had probably never been twenty miles from his home village before he went to France with his regiment, and here he found himself shut out from his hotel in a strange European town, with thirteen dollars and sixty cents less than he needed to support existence.