With the Serbs in Macedonia

A CALAMITOUS CITY 27
Its contrasts were too violent. To give an
impression of Salonica as it was then, one must
splash the paint about anyhow. The scum of
the earth jostled the Flower of Chivalry on the
pavement. Staff officers were three a penny.
Half the French Army and all the British ate
ices or drank long drinks at Floca's. Everybody
went to Floca's, chief of the cafes of the
Place de la Liberte, the centre of the town,
just as every one dined at the rebuilt Hotel
Splendide, now sadly in need of yet another
rebuilding. This, of course, was before the days
of the French Cercle Militaire, one of the few
places important to us that escaped
the fire.
The Cercle Militaire is a military restaurant,
built and staffed by French soldiers, very neat
in design and very clean and cheap and good.
Everybody agreed that it was the best thing
the French had done in the Balkans. There
any officer could get a good
dinner at a low
price, instead of a bad dinner at a disgracefully
inflated one. And we all took our hats off to
our gallant thrifty Ally for thinking of such
a thing.
Sitting at one of Floca's little outside tables,
'*
sense "
Salonica, as the lady
one could
novelists have it,
*'
glimpsing " the blue, blue
sea and the quaintly coloured caiques that
brought wine and wood from the Greek Islands ;