Written on Valentine's Day, 1919, just months after the Armistice, this sepia-toned interior view of the legendary Salle Schmidt at the Monte Carlo Casino — roulette wheels at rest on baize-covered tables, crystal chandeliers blazing above Baroque painted ceilings, the great hall eerily empty of gamblers — carries a message from a U.S. soldier who passed through this gilded room on his way home from the Great War. Postmarked by the U.S. Army postal service on February 20, 1919 with a "Base Censor" machine cancel, the card was sent as "Officers Mail" to a gentleman named Jas in Elmira, New York. The writer marvels that he "went through this place" and mentions starting back "through the Alps." It is a rare snapshot of an American doughboy as tourist in the playgrounds of European aristocracy, weeks before demobilization.