PROMOTION OF BIRD PROTECTION 

 IN FRANCE 



THE enemies of France may kill Frenchmen, but they 

 can not drive them into panic. The French nation has 

 shown that it knows no such thing as the hysteria of fear. 

 The steadiness of Paris during the fiercest trials of the war 

 was marvelous. 



Intelligent men, now very much in the minority, realized 

 what the sweep of Kluck, the Hun rush across the Marne 

 and the terrific assaults on Verdun, all with Paris as the 

 one sinister objective, meant to the people of Paris and to 

 France. The cruel bombardment of Paris with a 60-mile 

 cannon seemed like the last straw ; and finally the Hun 

 spear-head at Chateau-Thierry was only what was to have 

 been expected. 



But throughout all that terrible period, wherein all the 

 able-bodied men of France were in uniform or in the fac- 

 tories, France never lost her equipoise. The elderly men 

 who remained at home to keep the nation's fires burning 

 never faltered or despaired. I wonder whether elderly 

 Americans could for so long a time and under such fiercely 

 trying circumstances keep undiscouraged, keep working at 

 their tasks, and refrain from whining ! 



The regular arrival at our desk of well-printed and finely 

 illustrated copies of "La Nature," of the "Bulletin of the 

 Societe Nationale d'Acclimatation" and the "Bulletin of the 

 French National League for the Protection of Birds," were 

 constant causes for wonder and admiration. That the non- 

 combatant men of Paris, all of them long past the fighting 

 age, could find either time, inclination or money to go on 

 with their scientific work, and keep up their publications 



