Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 154, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1916 — NOT THE OLD MONTE CARLO [ARTICLE]

NOT THE OLD MONTE CARLO

War Has Had Decided Effect on the Great Gambling Resort of Europe. ' * The noonday train draws slowly into the station. A flood of passengers pours forth, writes a Monte Carlo correspondent of the London Times. Leaving the station, the crowd surges up into the marble steps and skirts the vast edifice which crowns the abrupt hilltop; it is soon swallowed up within the portals of the great building. It is a shabby, dowdy crowd, mostly women. ~ Can this be Monte Carlo? Can this crowd be hurrying so feverishly to the gaming tables? The sunshine is benignly warm, the soft breezes fragrant with the mingled scent of a thousand flowers. Yet the terrace is deserted. Now and then a black figure passes hurriedly and disappears into the casino, without lingering for an instant to enjoy the magic beauty of the seene. I make my way slowly to the casino. The doors of the gaming rooms are thrown open by the familiar frockcoated attendants. In the gloom-filled halls a somberly dressed crowd is clustered about the gaming tables. I go up to the first- roulette table. The players seem to be chiefly housewives and shopkeepers of the lower middle class, recruited apparently from among the natives of the neighboring towns. Officers and men of no matter what rank of all the allied armies, whether in uniform or not, are rigorously excluded. Today 80 per cent of the players are women, unlike the old clientele; plain bourgeois and peasant types of faces abound.

The glitter and brilliance of the multitude who gathered here in former days has disappeared. .The gold coin that shone so lustrously against the green baize of the gambling tables has vanished. The atmosphere of bacchio beauty of this- enchanted landscape, of these hanging gardens which rise tier upon tier alcove the sea, of thisenvironment- of sensuous splendor which made of Monte Carlo a pagan sanctuary unique in the world, has faded away. Can it be otherwise when tha temple of Janus stands open?