METZ

With its back to the woods and hills of Luxembourg, with its face to the
desolation of Northern France, the city of Metz stood at the entry of
Lorraine like the gate to a new world.

The traveller, arriving after long hours of journey through the
battlefields, might sigh with relief, gape with pleasure, then hurry
away down deflagged streets, beneath houses roped with green-leafed
garlands, to eat divinely at Moitrier's restaurant, and join the dancing
in the hall below.

Not a night passed in Metz without the beat of music upon the frosty
air. It burst into the narrow streets from _estaminets_ where the
soldiers danced, from halls, from drawing-rooms of confiscated German
houses where officers of the "Grand Quartier General" danced a triumph.
Or it might be supposed to be a triumph by the Germans who stayed in
their homes after dark. They might suppose that the French officers
danced for happiness, that they danced because they were French, because
they were victorious, because they were young, because they must.

It was not, surely, the wild dancing of the host whose party drags a
little, who calls for more champagne, more fiddles?

In the centre of the city of Metz sat the Marechal Petain, and kept his
eye upon Lorraine. He was not a man who cared for gaiety, but should the
Lorraines be insufficiently amused he gave them balls--insufficiently
fed, he sent for flour and sugar; all the flour and sugar that France