Progress.
Perhaps you have received the following circular:

"Sir, We have the honor to inform you that we are organizing a car-coach-salon service for November 11, the annual pilgrimage of veterans to the Armistice monument in the forest of Compiègne.
"... Itinerary via Chantilly and Compiègne for a visit to the castle and lunch, with a stop at Rethondes, returning via Senlis.
The cost of transport is 80 francs; with lunch included 95 francs.

A good five-louis piece, the former soldier will say.

Where will progress stop? Already this little circuit of Rethondes in 1924, with a visit to Chantilly, Compiègne and Senlis, marks a serious improvement on this circuit of Nixéville that was proposed to us in 1916, and which mainly tended to force us to take a trip to Verdun often against our will. gré. It is true that at that time the passage was free: not absolutely, however, because many had to pay for it with their skin!

But we must especially admire, in the story that concerns us today, these Trucks of the Sacred Way, which were transformed into Autos-Cars-Salons of... Victory, which does not mean, however, that we won it in an armchair. And this fifteen-franc meal will change the veterans from these disappointing landing provisions that swelled their musettes and weighed so heavily on their shoulders!

Finally, for visits to the castles, we can replace the critic of military operations with an art critic, unless, wishing to have both under the same tourist hat, the administration calls upon Mr. Henri Bidou, eminent polygraph and ingenious and eloquent lecturer

There are people to whom war has taught nothing! On the other hand, peace is, for everyone, full of lessons. It shows us, by multiple examples, that the war helps in its own way to the prosperity of the tourist industry and to the spread of luxury automobiles!

It also seems, judging by the prices asked, that many veterans can, without their business having to suffer, turn into sons of five louis and go up, not to heaven, but in their car-salon...

There you have it, the democratization of luxury!... But perhaps we are also exaggerating!... And, then, let us fear the worst!... Let us fear that an enterprising industrialist will one day organize pleasure trains for all the heroic landscapes that the propaganda services will have recognized as being of public utility.

There may be Victory, but there are surely sixteen hundred thousand dead! There is no need, to glorify the sacrifice, to organize caravans of tourists from small "noubas" to the countryside, asking heaven to be merciful that day!

J. VALMY-BAYSSE.