The comedy began on the first day of mobilization, and developed into real tragedy as the days slipped by. For although at first there was something a little ludicrous in the plight of the well-to-do, brought down with a crash to the level of the masses and loaded with paper money which was as worthless as Turkish bonds, so that the millionaire was for the time being no richer than the beggar, pity stirred in one at the sight of real suffering and anguish of mind. Outside the commissariats de police in Paris and provincial towns of France, like Dijon and Lyons, and in the ports of Calais, Boulogne and Dieppe, there were great crowds of these tourists lined up in queue and waiting wearily through the hours until their turn should come to be measured with their backs to the wall and to be scrutinized by'police officers, sullen after a prolonged stream of entreaty and expostulation, for the colour of their eyes and hair, the shape of their noses and chins, and the "distinctive marks" of their physical beauty or ugliness. "I guess I'll never come to this Europe again!" said an American lady who had been waiting for five hours in a side street in Paris for this ordeal. "It's a cruel shame to treat American citizens as though they were thieves and rogues. I wonder the President of the United States don't make a protest about it. Are people here so ignorant they don't even know the name of Josiah K. Schultz, of Boston, Massachusetts?" The commissary's clerk inside the building was quite unmoved by the name of Josiah K. Schultz, of Boston, Massachusetts. It held no magic for him, and he seemed to think that the lady-wife of that distinguished man might be a German spy with American papers. He kept her waiting, deliberately, though she had waited for five hours in the street outside. 8