Strasburg, Nov. 8.
Wissembourg has become a frontier town again, and the strange atmosphere which exists in a place whose nationality has recently changed hands was brought home te me last week, when we went there for the races.
We motored there from Neustadt through Landau and then beautiful Bergzabern. Just outside the town we passed the German and then the French Customs, but being in a military car we were not stopped. Two kilometres beyond the town we came to the pretty racecourse surrounded by woods. It is almost on the Franco-German battlefield of 1876. From the road we could see the monument to the French dead and on the top of the hill the three tall trees where Domaix, the French General, was killed during the battle. The Germans stormed the hill from the town and though the French had the advantage of position they had by no means the same number of troops.
On arriving at the race-course I saw the first Alsatian costurme—the short open Eton coat with numbers of buttons on either side, the white shirt with the black ribbon tied flat round the bottom of the collar, and the black flat hat. It was rather like the Breton costume, but coat and trousers are always black, and Alsatians are all clean shaven.
saw no Alsatian women's costumes, in fact, except in the two stands, there were few women there and none among the men who stood along the barrier three or four deep. This black crowd was ugly and unfamiliar after the horizon-blue which is naturally the predominant colour in all gatherings in French occupied territory.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.