ABSTRACT
In Paris, as in New York, many journalists followed the Dadas with interest and curiosity, as did the public. In a piece signed Aste d'Eparbes, on the 1921 Dada visit to Saint-Julien-le-pauvre, Comoeida reports that, despite the rain, the Dadaists were joined on the visit by 'une foule de curieux et de badauds'. In a diary entry for 16 June 1916, writing at around the halfway point of the First World War and four months into the Battle of Verdun, Hugo Ball showed that the Dadaists' motivations for in establishing the Cabaret Voltaire had been deadly serious: The ideals of culture and of art as a programme for a variety show—that is kind of Candide against the times. People act as if nothing had happened. The slaughter increases, and they cling to the prestige of European glory.
