Simultaneously with the American squadron, an American freighter and two large English ships, one from South Africa and another from India, had arrived in port. There were also a number of British tramps at anchor for some days. There was much changing of dollars and pounds and ten-shilling notes in agencies and cafés by sailors, officers, and tourists. The guides were as busy as could be showing the new arrivals about. For the chauffeurs of the docks it was a picnic day. All the night places were excited with anticipation of new guests. The boîtes de nuit had sent delegations of cocottes down to the docks to greet the newcomers with cards of invitation.

Some of these cards were decorated souvenirs, and, like many of the cabarets, bore the flags of the great shipping nations and advertised British ale and whisky and American cocktails.⁠ ⁠…

It was twilight and Ray was hurrying along the Rue de la République toward Joliette where he was to meet Banjo, as he had promised. Besides its usual peripatetic exhibition of youths in proletarian blue, cocottes, Arabs, Senegalese, soldiers, and sailors with red pommels on their caps, the street parade included groups of British seamen and white-capped sailors from the destroyers.

In the Place Sadi Carnot, Ray was accosted by a staggering seaman with a card in his hand.

“Is this the⁠—the⁠—Bru⁠—Bru⁠—Bru⁠—Brutish-Amurican Bar?” he asked in a drunken stutter, punching with his finger a card that he held.

Ray looked at it. An advertisement of the British and American Bar with its delightful symbolic trademark⁠—a Union Jack and Stars and Stripes united upon a Tricolor. It also bore a plan of Marseilles, with a long red line like a serpent indicating the route from the quays to the establishment in the Place de la Bourse.

“No,” said Ray, “this is not the British-American Bar, but you keep straight on until you reach the end of this street. Then you are at the Vieux Port and anybody will show you the Bar.”

“Thank yer, mite,” and the seaman staggered onward, repeating, “Bru⁠—Bru⁠—Bru⁠—Bru⁠—Brutish-Amurican Bar.⁠ ⁠…”

On the same street, where the Boulevard des Dames crosses it, Ray had another rencontre, this time a surprising one⁠—three American Negro seamen from an American freighter, one of whom was a waiter he had known on the railroad.

Ray’s old friend insisted that he should turn back with them. They went to the Senegalese Bar. Banjo was there, having returned from Joliette by the short way. Ray introduced the seamen to him, the patron, and a handsome Senegalese boxer.

The acquaintance between Ray and the railroad waiter, now turned ship’s steward, was slight. They had never worked on the same dining-cars, but had met each other casually at the railroad men’s quarters in Philadelphia. Yet they met now and acted like old and dear friends. Meeting like that was so unique, it stirred them strangely.

The seamen stood drinks. They said they would like to go to some place where they could amuse themselves. Banjo suggested a place in the Ditch, but they wanted something of the better sort. All three of them were well dressed. The boxer thought the British-American Bar would be all right. So the whole party decided to go. Banjo was in such an exciting, merrymaking mood that he won the admiration of the boys and was the target of most of the questioning. The atmosphere of the Senegalese Bar had won them immediately. It was run by a Negro and catered to colored men and they agreed that it was the best they had seen in any foreign port. When the proprietor talked English to them they felt proud that he had emigrated to America and made enough money there to return to France and start a business.⁠ ⁠… And Banjo! So gay and dressy on his hand-to-mouth existence without ever worrying about anything. That was marvelous!

“You find it all right over here, eh?” one of the newcomers asked him. “The froggies treat you better than the hoojahs, eh?”

“Well now, that’s a question I wouldn’t know how to answer noneatall,” said Banjo, “for it all depends on which way you take it. There ain’t no Canaan stuff sweeter than this heah wine and honey flowing in this place, but otherwise speaking, the Frenchies them have the same nose like a Jew, and ef you don’t smell a money they can’t use you.”

“Hi! now you’re saying that thing,” Ray laughed.

“All the same, you’ve got more freedom here,” said the seaman; “when you have money you can go any place you got a mind to.”

“Sure can,” said Banjo. “Theah’s moh freedom, all right, if you know how to handle it. But some a them niggers come here, boh, am as funny and dumb jes’ like that thing. They get in every way except the right way. They ketch the wrong end of the stuff. They ketch the pohliceman’s billy, they ketch the jailhouse, and what not ketch? Oh, Lawdy! ask not me!”

“Maybe the good liquor makes them crazy after boozing so long on moonshine corn,” said a seaman.

“And mos’n a them don’t even know how to use it right,” said Banjo. “They come here wanting whisky and gin, and when I tell them to drink French wine, that’s the best stuff to feel good on, they say it’s sour dago red. Can you beat that?”

“Don’t be too hard on them, Banjo,” said Ray. “They got to learn.”

“Learn!” sneered Banjo. “Them kind a babies nevah learn anything. A real traveling guy has got a preambulating nose for the bestest thing in any country whenever it is accommodated to him, but there’s many people running round the world that nevah shoulda been outa them own home town.”

For certain reasons, arrived at from a wide knowledge of the eccentricities of civilization and experience personal and impersonal, Ray felt no eagerness to transfer the party to the British-American Bar on such an evening. He was really rather reluctant, but because he preferred not to deaden in any way the keen anticipation of the evening’s pleasure for his comrades, he said nothing.

The atmosphere of the cabaret, when the boys got there, was heavily charged with contrary foreign influences and they were greeted by an extraordinary salvo of shrill female laughter as they entered. The Senegalese was irritated and said he did not like the atmosphere and the reception. Ray told him he did not think it was mocking laughter. Ray was never on the lookout for hostile hints; his mind was too rich of sane, full living for that. But there was no obtuseness there to prevent him from making immediate note of any such tendency. He had often remarked that white people were never more contemptibly vulgar than when a Negro entered a white place of amusement. If it were not a hostile exhibition of bad manners, as in America, it would be an imbecile theatrical demonstration, as often happened in Europe. It was as if the black visitor could not be seen in any other light but that of a funny actor on the stage.

He had never known black people to act like that when white persons entered a Negro place of pleasure. On such occasions Negroes could assume a simple dignity as remote from white behavior as primitive African sculpture is from the conventionalism of a civilized drawing-room. He had never remarked a vulgar gesture. Primitive peoples could be crude and coarse, but never vulgar. Vulgarity was altogether a scab of civilization.

The boys squeezed together round a table and had some drinks. The Senegalese was right. None of the girls wanted to dance with them. It was purely a matter of good business. Ray understood and he was glad to get away from the place. Cockney was not a musical accent to his ears, nor was there any aesthetic pleasure in the sight of those white caps on hard-boiled, over-shaved heads. But it hurt him that these black boys, coming off the ship after a long hard trip should tumble into this.

Not far from the British-American Bar was another. The head waiter was a boxing enthusiast and was friendly with Ray and the Senegalese. Ray told the boys to wait for him in the square while he went to the bar to talk to the head waiter. It was a more expensive bar than the British-American.

The head waiter was at the bar when Ray entered. He was glad to see Ray and offered him a drink, but he wasn’t pleased to hear what Ray wanted for his comrades. He wished it was any other time, for the boîte de nuit was full of American and British officers spending plenty of money, drinking champagne. He was sure there would be trouble. There had been before when there were colored men in the bar and English and American customers⁠—especially Americans. Once that bar had been ordered closed for six months because of a colored-white incident. He was for the boys, all right, for he was one of them himself, but if they did come in there might be a fight and it would spoil the boss’s business.

Business! Prejudice and business. In Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, America, those were the two united terrors confronting the colored man. He was the butt of the white man’s indecent public prejudices. Prejudices insensate and petty, bloody, vicious, vile, brutal, raffiné, hypocritical, Christian. Prejudices. Prejudices like the stock market⁠—curtailed, diminishing, increasing, changing chameleon-like, according to place and time, like the color of the white man’s soul, controlled by the exigencies of the white man’s business.

Back in the square with his comrades, Ray said he knew of one other place where he had been a few times with the two gentlemen bums, but he felt sure it would be no different from the rest on a night like that.

“Damn the white man’s bars!” he said. “Let’s go back to the Ditch.”

“When I enlisted in the army during the war,” said Banjo, “mah best buddy said I was a fool nigger. He said the white man would nevah ketch him toting his gun unless it was to rid the wul’ of all the crackers, and I done told him back that the hullabaloo was to make the wul’ safe foh democracy and there wouldn’t be no crackers when the war was ‘ovah and ended,’ as was done said by President Wilson, as crackers didn’t belong in democracy. But mah buddy said to me I had a screw loose, for President Wilson wasn’t moh’n a cracker. He was bohn one and he was gwineta live and die one, and that a cracker and a Democrat was one and the same thing. And mah buddy was sure right. For according to my eyesight, and Ise one sure-seeing nigger, the wul’ safe foh democracy is a wul’ safe foh crackerism.”

“I was just waiting for one of those Americans to make a move against us,” said the Senegalese boxer. “I would like to murder one of them. I have my gun.”

“No good that,” said Ray, who, although he was always ready to defend himself in the jungles of civilization, was dead set against stupid violence.

“It’s just about two years,” said the Senegalese, “that some Americans caused a black prince to be thrown out of a cabaret in Montmartre, and Poincaré made a declaration against it. He said Americans cannot treat Negroes in France the way they do in America.”

“That won’t prevent discrimination, though,” said Ray, “so long as the pound is lord and the dollar is king and the white man exalts business above humanity. ‘Business first by all and any means!’ That is the slogan of the white man’s world. In New York we have laws against discrimination. Yet there are barriers of discrimination everywhere against colored people. Sometimes a Negro wins a few dollars in a test case in the courts. But no decent Negroes want to go to court for that. We don’t want to eat in a restaurant nor go to a teashop, a cabaret, or a theater where they do not want us, because we eat and amuse ourselves for the pleasure of the thing. And when white people show that they do not want to entertain us in places that they own, why, we just stay away⁠—all of us who are decent-minded⁠—for we are a fun-loving race and there is no pleasure in forcing ourselves where we are not wanted.

“That’s why the amusement side of the life of the Negro in America is such a highly-developed thing. And in spite of the deep differences between colored and white, it is the most intensely happy group life of Negroes in any part of the civilized world.”

“You’re right,” said one of the visitors. “I have been in many a poht, all right, and I’ve spread joy some, but when it comes to having a right-down good time, there ain’t any a them that’s got anything on Harlem. Well, whar we going?”

“It’s rotten luck,” said Banjo, “for you-all to hit this town when it is lousy with crackers. It ain’t always like this. But the Ditch is all right, though. Everything is down theah. And I nevah crave to leave it for any other show.”

The boys had shuffled off along up the Canebière, talking.

“Sure the Ditch is all right,” said Ray. “I was just thinking how we fellows traveling around like this learn a whole lot a things. A sailor ought to be the most tolerant person in the world, he has seen so much. And I think he is in his rough way, from all I’ve seen of sailors knocking around port towns. Except the white American sailor. He sees everything, but he learns nothing. And I don’t think he’s capable of learning. He carries abroad with him everything that should be left back home. Everything that is mean, hard-boiled, and intolerant in American life.

“Well, if we can’t learn anything from the traveling representatives of American culture, we might learn from other people. I’ll tell you something about these sailors. A few months ago I was visiting Toulon, when this same squadron arrived. Now on the Boulevard de Strasbourg at Toulon there is a tavern where the young officers always dance. Many of the better class of cocottes go there. The common French sailor is not allowed in there. But when the American sailors came they were given the run of the tavern. Why? Because they had plenty of dollars to spend⁠—the pay of an American sailor turned into francs is probably as much as the pay of a French lieutenant. I’m not sure.

“Some hundreds of low cocottes came to Toulon for the American sailors. And they all flocked with them to the tavern. I was interested to know what the young French officers would do. Of course, they couldn’t stand the changed atmosphere of the place. And they just stopped going there! There was a little exclusive dancing-place in an out-of-the-way street, and I saw a few of them dancing there with their girls.

“After all, they were officers with a right to kick. But they didn’t. They just separated themselves from the canaille. They knew what a little extra good business meant to a French commerçant. You know in America, with our high wages and the dollarized standard of living, we have no idea of money value and economy in the ordinary European sense. But that is something else. All I want to say is that I learned something helpful from that incident at Toulon. Something that made me sure of myself and stronger in my own worth.”

“I get you,” one of the seamen said.

“You do?” asked Ray. “There are different ways of growing big and strong, for individuals as well as for races.”

When the boys reached the Place de la Bourse again they were suddenly surrounded by a troop of painted youths who, holding hands, danced around them with queer gestures and queerer screams, like fairy folk in fables.

“Here they are!” laughed Ray. “If there’s a British-American bar over there, there’s none here.”

“A regular turnout foh the deep-sea stiffs,” commented Banjo. “Ain’t nothing missing in this burg.”

“They ought to give them yellow cards, too,” said the Senegalese.

“Pourquoi?” asked Ray.

“Pour la santé publique, comme les filles. Et voyez, ils sont toujours en concurrence avec eux. Ce n’est pas juste.”

Ray laughed. “Justice, like equality, mon vieux, does not exist in the mathematics of life. It’s a man’s world, you might say a white man’s world and⁠ ⁠… ‘a man’s a man for a that.’ ”

Two sailors, arm in arm, their white caps set far back on their heads, came out of the British-American Bar and moved in a slow drunken roll across the square, chanting, as if they were rooting for a team: “We are Americans.⁠ ⁠… We are Americans.⁠ ⁠…”

The African Bar was jammed full when the boys got back there. Smoke hung in gray chunks in the hot, strong-smelling air. Under it the player-piano was spitting out a “Charleston” recently arrived in Marseilles, while Martinique, Madagascans, and Senegalese soldiers, dockers, maquereaux⁠—and, breaking the thick dark mass in spots, a white soldier or docker⁠—were jazzing with one another and with the girls of the Ditch.

A Senegalese, squeezed up against the bar, with his wrist in a sling, called to Banjo as the boys pushed themselves in:

“Hey! you see American sailor?”

“I seen plenty a them, but I don’t pay them no mind,” said Banjo. “Wha’s matter with you’ hand?”

The Senegalese related to the boys how a gang of American sailors had rushed a bistro-dancing in Joliette, where colored and white of the quarter were amusing themselves, and tried to break it up. He had got a sprained wrist, but for revenge he had landed a sailor a butt that skinned his forehead and clean knocked him out.

“How did it finish up?” Ray asked.

“The police came just when the patron got out his revolver.”

“Oh, Lawd!” Banjo began in a Negro prayer-meeting tone. “It’s a hellova life and all Gawd’s chilluns am creatures of the debbil, but, oh, Lawd, lawdy, don’t let a cracker cross mah crossings in this Frenchman’s town.”

The boys pushed into the dance.