three unsoldierly looking civilians took that uniform into a strange
country.

[Illustration: A fat man can't wear the modern American Army uniform
without looking like a sack of meal]

Our first evening in Italy was spent in Genoa. And coming direct
from Paris, where men out of uniform were few, the thing that
opened our mouths in wonder was the number of men we saw. There
were worlds and worlds of men in Genoa; men in civilian clothes.
The streets were black with men. Straw hats, two piece suits, gay
neck-ties--things which were as remote from France as from Mars,
figures that recalled the ancient days of one's youth, before the
war; days in New York, for instance, where men in straw hats and
white crash were common. These things we saw with amazement in
Genoa! And then our eyes caught the flashy bands on their arms--bands
that indicated that these men are in the industrial reserves, not
drafted because they are doing industrial war work. But for all of
these industrial reservists there was an overplus of men in Genoa.
It is a seaport and there were "the market girls and fishermen, the
shepherds and the sailors, too," a crowd gathered from the world's
ends, and we sat under the deep arches before a gay cafe, listened to
New York musical hits from the summer's roof gardens, and watched
the show. In that day--only three weeks before the German invasion--the
war was a long way from Genoa. At the next table to us an American
sea-faring man was telling an English naval officer about the
adventures of three sailing ships which had bested two submarines
three days before in the Mediterranean; some Moroccan sailors were
flirting across two tables with some pretty Piedmontese girls,
and inside the cafe, the harp, the flute and the violin were doing