36 
LAND & WATER 
August 10, 1916 
{Continued from page 34) 
in France would undoubtedly have been in danger of 
insult and even maltreatment from the crowd, and we 
couJd hardly have resented it ! The suspense was re- 
lieved by the North Sea announcement on the Monday 
evening, and on Tuesday : " Heard late at night that 
England has declared war on Germany. Now at last we 
are wholly in it, and whatever horrors come at least they 
will not be the horrors of shame." 
Curious Days 
These days were very curious ones. I was acting, as 
secretary, telephonist, errand-runner, and anything else 
that turned up in order to help my husband. No Service 
of any kind was to be had, my cook beipg an Italian 
(at that time no one knew whether Italy would fail in 
(or f.ill out) with Germany) had gon6 back to Italy, and 
the special circumstances laid upon me the duty of pro- 
visioning the office for the possible needs of seven or 
eight people throughout a siege. This was by no means 
easy, as the big provision shops, having lost most of their 
assistants, were only open for two or three hours a day, 
and one stood in line from early morning in order to get 
into them at all. When one did, there were many com- 
modities missing, such as sugar, spices of all kinds, 
methylated spirit, etc. Fortunately, I had done a large 
part of this provisioning on Saturday morning. On tlie 
Monday I found potatoes and green bananas ; and on 
Tuesday I " met Mrs. G., who has heard of there being 
condensed milk at the Place des Ternes." These 
domestic cares, so much swollen beyond the ordinary, 
came strangely in the midst of a world-crash. It seemed 
so ridiculous to bother about condensed milk at ail. 
At that time, however, it seemed very necessary. 
So all of us wives walked many miles carrying heavy 
parcels, till every woman in Paris who was not a bonne 
and used to such things was limping about on swollen 
ankles ; but however lame we were, the word " con- 
densed milk " would send us off in a fresh direction, 
hoping and hobbhng with string bags in our eager 
grasp, and haughty taxi-drivers not yet mobilised, 
refusing to take us anywhere further than a hundred 
yards from where we stood ! The day I found methy- 
lated spirit in a small shop at the other end of the Fau- 
bourg St. Honore, I was a proud and envied woman ; 
the ne.xt day I discovered quantities of it, and of con- 
densed milk, and dried fruits and vegetables, and mineral 
waters, and all the other things we were so an.xious 
about, in a tiny shop which appeared by magic in a side- 
street close to the office ! I am sure it was not there 
before, and only appeared to aggravate us after our 
weary peregrinations. 
This little shop was a godsend in another way. The 
money question was very difficult, as no one would give 
change for notes, and if you wanted half a pound of 
butter and had nothing but a 50 franc note, you had 
to pay 50 francs for the butter ! Even English gold 
was depreciated, and in many places one could only get 
23 francs for a sovereign, or even 22.50, instead of 
25.20. My magic grocer, however, who had 
evidently greater confidence in the future, and a keener 
eye for business than some of his fellow-tradesmen, 
exhibited a yearning for English sovereigns at 25 
francs exchange, which one was very glad to accept. 
If he had kept them till now, those that our English 
circle spent with him, he must have realised a pleasant 
little profit, as the exchange has not dropped below 
27.50 for months ! 
The emptiness of Paris was extraordinary. Sunshine, 
pitiless and like molten copper, poured down on closed 
shops, shuttered windows, silent streets. The flags of all 
the Allied nations hung from every balcony, motionless 
in the hot air, and gave a queer and ghostly impression of 
festivity to a city that for the rest might have suffered 
from the pest, so complete was the cessation of ordinary 
hfe in the streets. It was very gallant, all that brilliant 
bunting, and when I arrived, a most reluctant refugee, 
in London, "on the first of September, the noise and rush 
of traffic seemed less strange than the absence of flags. 
In the small shopping streets of Paris the place looked 
so much like a scene in a harlequinade' that if the white 
dog asleep in the very middle of the S(treet had suddenly 
changed into Harlequin, if a clown with sausages had 
come from the uork-butcher's, and Columbine had danced 
from the dairy, one would hardly have been surprised. 
On the main Boulevards maps of tlie frontier were posted 
on some of the shuttered shop-windows, and here small 
groups would gather ; but so empty was the whole place 
that one night I woke up suddenly and ran to the window 
to find out' tTie cause of a loud and unaccustomed noise 
— a footstep. • 
Anybody who has ever tried to sleep in normal 
times in a bedroom giving on the Boulevards at 
their busiest point, will realise the force of this ! Only 
twice a day was. there any animation, and that was when 
a shouting and yelling horde of boys and girls and old men 
rushed down the empty thoroughfare crying the new 
edition of the morning and evening papers. Then 
indeed there were people about, w-ho came running from 
the houses demanding the news, unable to wait till they 
had opened the still damp paper they had bought. And 
there never was any ! 
There never was any ! We had the most absurd 
expectations. My diary says that " the big battle 
brooding in Belgium may relieve the tension " and the 
Huns were already almost in France ! Then we all 
confidently expected Trafalgar to happen again in the 
North Sea w-ithin two or three days. We could not 
understand the lack of news about it, for we were sure 
it must have takeh 'place, or be taking place. Letters 
from England did not relieve our ignorance, for they all 
s^id : " Write quickly, has the Expeditionary Force 
arrived ? " In those days we already had our optimists 
and our pessimists. The former gave the war six weeks, 
the latter, on whom we scowled, said it would not be 
over for three whole months, perhaps four. When 
Kitchener came out with his " three years " he turned 
our hearts to lead. 
On the Road to Mons 
A few days later I saw the Expeditionary Force re- 
ceiving its welcome on the road to Alons — but that is 
another story. In Paris we knew nothing of its where- 
abouts, we knew nothing of anybody's whereabouts, 
except that Liege was still there. And even that was 
not true ! We did not hear of the fall of the gallant 
city for many days. When Sir John French visited 
Paris, even that was meant to be kept secret, but it 
leaked out, and the streets of Paris on his route from 
station to Embassy were not empty that day. 
One day I went out to Versailles, which was as active 
and full as Paris was quiet and empty. Soldiers were 
everjrwhere, in strong contrast to Paris, where one hardly 
saw any. We saw one regiment off to the front, with 
green branches stuck in their rifles, and flowers in their 
caps. Soldiers of long ago, in that innocent world we 
had lived in till then, going out to a clean war against 
a clean enemy, still in their dark blue coats and bright 
red trousers, all very loose and baggy. They are like 
the soldiers of a dream, looking back on them over these 
luiimaginable, unspeakable two years, marching past 
the melancholy palace so gaily, not singing, but shouting 
" A Berlin ! " and decked with flowers and greenery, 
while the sharp detonations of rifle practice rolled down 
from the camp of Satory to mingle with their shouts. 
Paris was full of refugees towards the end of August, 
and a big theatre on the left bank was given up to the 
Belgians. They were in a shocking state of destitution, 
and even the most that could be done could only relieve 
their misery in part. The theatre was in a very poor 
cjuarter, and the kindness of the Parisians to these poor 
creatures was really wonderful. They came in to share 
their scanty food with the refugees, and one day, when 
one of us was there, a woman came in with her baby in her 
arms, and offered her breast to any young baby. . . . 
We began to hear news, but we "did not like it much. 
" They are nearer ! " "We're still retreating ! " And then, 
one day. " If you go out of Paris, you can hear the guns ! " 
and "There's to be an airship over Paris before morn- 
ing." Those were the news we had. 
Paris was splendid. She did not know whether she 
was to be defended or not, but everyone hoped so, even 
though that inevitably meant a Isombardment. But 
then, all through that wonderful, terrible, and heroic 
month, Paris was splendid. They were days of anguish, 
but days of pride. Not for anything in the world would 
I exchange the privilege of having seen the transfigured 
face of France when she heard the Bugle. 
