Nice was to us a resort, cosmopolitan like other famous playgrounds of the world, and where one strictly on pleasure bent had the same kind of a time he would have at Aix-les-Bains or Deauville, Wiesbaden or Ostend, Brighton or Atlantic City. You strolled among crowds, you bought things you did not want, you could not get away from music, you danced and went to the theater or opera, and you spent much too much of your time in hotels and restaurants. If you went on excursions, you enjoyed them, of course. But you always hurried back to Nice in order not to miss doing something of exactly the same kind that you could have done any day in the place you came from.
You have to give Nice time, and get out of your rut, before you awaken to its unique characteristics. Then, if you detach yourself from the amusement-seekers, the time-killers, the apathetic, the bored, the _blasé_ and the conscientious tourists, you begin to realize that the metropolis of the Riviera (including its suburbs and Monte Carlo) is a world in itself--an inexhaustible reservoir for exploration and reflection. Because it is the only place in Europe where Americans (North and South) can honestly say that they feel at home, because it was made for and by everybody and caters to everybody, Nice stands the test of cosmopolitanism. Every great capital and every seaport at the cross-roads of world trade is cosmopolitan, but in a narrower sense than Nice. Capitals and seaports have the general character, in the last analysis the atmosphere, of the country they administer and serve. None has the _sans patrie_ stamp of Nice. If Edward Everett Hale had allowed his hero to go to Nice, the man without a country would not have felt alone in the world.
I was on the Suez Canal when the Germans heralded the Verdun offensive. I hurried back to France, and spent a couple of days with my wife at Nice before going on to the front. They were, perhaps, the most critical days of the war, when one watched the _communiqué_ with the same intensity as one tried to read hope into serious bulletins from a loved one's bedside. After leaving Nice, I discovered that the pall of death did hang over France. But in Nice there seemed to be no mass instinct of national danger, no sickening anxiety. On the Avenue de la Gare I noticed hundreds pass by the newspaper bulletins without displaying enough interest to stop and read.