THE LIVING PRESENT

BY

GERTRUDE ATHERTON

NEW YORKFREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANYPUBLISHERS

[Illustration: THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉPresident Le Bien--Être du Blessé]

TO

"ETERNAL FRANCE"

CONTENTS

BOOK I

FRENCH WOMEN IN WAR TIME

CHAPTER

 I MADAME BALLI AND THE "COMFORT PACKAGE"

 II THE SILENT ARMY

 III THE MUNITION MAKERS

 IV MADEMOISELLE JAVAL AND THE ÉCLOPÉS

 V THE WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY

 VI MADAME PIERRE GOUJON

 VII MADAME PIERRE GOUJON (_Continued_)

VIII VALENTINE THOMPSON

 IX MADAME WADDINGTON

 X THE COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE

 XI THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ

 XII MADAME CAMILLE LYON

XIII BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK: THE DUCHESSE D'UZÈS; THE DUCHESSE DE ROHAN; COUNTESS GREFFULHE; MADAME PAQUIN; MADAME PAUL DUPUY

 XIV ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS

 XV THE MARRAINES

 XVI PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE

BOOK II

FEMINISM IN PEACE AND WAR

CHAPTER

 I THE THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE

 II THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE

 III THE REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY"

 IV ONE SOLUTION OF A GREAT PROBLEM

 V FOUR OF THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED: MARIA DE BARRIL; ALICE BERTA JOSEPHINE KAUSER; BELLE DA COSTA GREENE; HONORÉ WILLSIE

 ADDENDUM

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Marquise d'Andigné, President Le Bien--Être du Blessé

Madame Balli, President Réconfort du Soldat

Delivering the Milk in Rheims

Making the Shells

Société L'Eclairage Electrique, Usine de Lyon

Where the Artists Dine for Fifty Centimes

A Railway Depot Cantine

Delivering the Post

BOOK I

FRENCHWOMEN IN WAR TIME

If this little book reads more like a memoir than a systematic studyof conditions, my excuse is that I remained too long in France and wastoo much with the people whose work most interested me, to be capable, for a long while, at any rate, of writing a detached statisticalaccount of their remarkable work. 

In the first place, although it was my friend Owen Johnson whosuggested this visit to France and personal investigation of the workof her women, I went with a certain enthusiasm, and the longer Iremained the more enthusiastic I became. My idea in going was not togratify my curiosity but to do what I could for the cause of France aswell as for my own country by studying specifically the war-time workof its women and to make them better known to the women of America. 

The average American woman who never has traveled in Europe, or onlyas a flitting tourist, is firm in the belief that all Frenchwomen arepermanently occupied with fashions or intrigue. If it is impossible toeradicate this impression, at least the new impression I hope tocreate by a recital at first hand of what a number of Frenchwomen (whoare merely carefully selected types) are doing for their country inits present ordeal, should be all the deeper. 

American women were not in the least astonished at the daily accountswhich reached them through the medium of press and magazine of themagnificent war services of the British women. That was no more thanwas to have been expected. Were they not, then, Anglo-Saxons, of ourown blood, still closer to the fountain-source of a nation that has, with whatever reluctance, risen to every crisis in her fate with agrim, stolid, capable tenacity that means the inevitable defeat of anynation so incredibly stupid as to defy her?

If word had come over that the British women were quite indifferent tothe war, were idle and frivolous and insensible to the clarion voiceof their indomitable country's needs, that, if you like, would havemade a sensation. But knowing the race as they did--and it is the onlyrace of which the genuine American does know anything--he, or she, accepted the leaping bill of Britain's indebtedness to her brave andeasily expert women without comment, although, no doubt, with a glowof vicarious pride. 

But quite otherwise with the women of France. In the first place therewas little interest. They were, after all, foreigners. Your honestdyed-in-the-wool American has about the same contemptuous tolerancefor foreigners that foreigners have for him. They are not Americans(even after they immigrate and become naturalized), they do not speakthe same language in the same way, and all accents, save perhaps abrogue, are offensive to an ear tuned to nasal rhythms and to the richdivergencies from the normal standards of their own tongue thatdistinguish different sections of this vast United States of America. 

But the American mind is, after all, an open mind. Such generalitiesas, "The Frenchwomen are quite wonderful, " "are doing marvelous thingsfor their country during this war, " that floated across the expensivecable now and again, made little or no impression on any but those whoalready knew their France and could be surprised at no resource orenergy she might display; but Owen Johnson and several other men withwhom he talked, including that ardent friend of France, WhitneyWarren, felt positive that if some American woman writer with apublic, and who was capable through long practice in story writing, ofselecting and composing facts in conformance with the economic anddramatic laws of fiction, would go over and study the work of theFrenchwomen at first hand, and, discarding generalities, presentspecific instances of their work and their attitude, the result couldnot fail to give the intelligent American woman a different opinion ofher French sister and enlist her sympathy. 

I had been ill or I should have gone to England soon after theoutbreak of the war and worked with my friends, for I have alwayslooked upon England as my second home, and I have as many friendsthere as here. If it had not been for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Warren, nodoubt I should have gone to England within the next two or threemonths. But their representations aroused my enthusiasm and Idetermined to go to France first, at all events. 

My original intention was to remain in France for a month, gatheringmy material as quickly as possible, and then cross to England. Itseemed to me that if I wrote a book that might be of some service toFrance I should do the same thing for a country to which I was notonly far more deeply attached but far more deeply indebted. 

I remained three months and a third in France--from May 9th, 1916, toAugust 19th--and I did not go to England for two reasons. I found thatit was more of an ordeal to get to London from Paris than to return toNew York and sail again; and I heard that Mrs. Ward was writing a bookabout the women of England. For me to write another would be what issomewhat gracelessly called a work of supererogation. 

I remained in France so long because I was never so vitally interestedin my life. I could not tear myself away, although I found itimpossible to put my material into shape there. Not only was I on thego all day long, seeing this and that oeuvre, having personalinterviews with heads of important organizations, taken about by thekind and interested friends my own interest made for me, but whennight came I was too tired to do more than enter all the information Ihad accumulated during the day in a notebook, and then go to bed. Ihave seldom taken notes, but I was determined that whatever else mybook might be it should at least be accurate, and I also collected allthe literature (leaflets, pamphlets, etc. ) of the various oeuvres (asall these war relief organizations are called) and packed them intocarefully superscribed large brown envelopes with a meticulousnessthat is, alas, quite foreign to my native disposition. 

When, by the way, I opened my trunk to pack it and saw those dozen ormore large square brown envelopes I was appalled. They looked soimportant, so sinister, they seemed to mutter of State secrets, warmaps, spy data. I knew that trunks were often searched at Bordeaux, and I knew that if mine were those envelopes never would leave France. I should be fortunate to sail away myself. 

But I must have my notes. To remember all that I had from day to daygathered was an impossibility. I have too good a memory not todistrust it when it comes to a mass of rapidly accumulatedinformation; combined with imagination and enthusiasm it is sure toplay tricks. 

But I had an inspiration. The Ministry of War had been exceedinglykind to me. Convinced that I was a "Friend of France, " they hadpermitted me to go three times into the War Zone, the last timesending me in a military automobile and providing an escort. I hadbeen over to the War Office very often and had made friends of severalof the politest men on earth. 

I went out and bought the largest envelope to be found in Paris. Intothis I packed all those other big brown envelopes and drove over tothe Ministère de la Guerre. I explained my predicament. Would theyseal it with the formidable seal of the War Office and write_Propagande_ across it? Of course if they wished I would leave mygarnerings for a systematic search. They merely laughed at thisunusual evidence on my part of humble patience and submission. TheFrench are the acutest people in the world. By this time thesepreternaturally keen men in the War Office knew me better than I knewmyself. If I had, however unconsciously and in my deepest recesses, harbored a treacherous impulse toward the country I so professed toadmire and to desire to serve, or if my ego had been capable of suddentricks and perversions, they would long since have had theselamentable deformities, my spiritual hare-lip, ticketed and docketedwith the rest of my dossier. 

As it was they complied with my request at once, gave me theirblessing, and escorted me to the head of the stair--no elevators inthis great Ministère de la Guerre and the Service de Santé is at thetop of the building. I went away quite happy, more devoted to theircause than ever, and easy in my mind about Bordeaux--where, by theway, my trunks were not opened. 

Therefore, that remarkable experience in France is altogether still sovivid to me that to write about it reportorially, with the personalequation left out, would be quite as impossible as it is for me torefrain from execrating the Germans. When I add that during that visitI grew to love the French people (whom, in spite of many visits toFrance, I merely had admired coolly and impersonally) as much as Iabominate the enemies of the human race, I feel that the last word hasbeen said, and that my apology for writing what may read like amemoir, a chronicle of personal reminiscences, will be understood andforgiven. 

 G. A. 

=THE LIVING PRESENT=

I

MADAME BALLI AND THE "COMFORT PACKAGE"

One of the most striking results of the Great War has been thequickening in thousands of European women of qualities so long dormantthat they practically were unsuspected. As I shall tell in a moregeneral article, the Frenchwomen of the middle and lower bourgeoisieand of the farms stepped automatically into the shoes of the mencalled to the colors in August, 1914, and it was, in their case, merely the wearing of two pairs of shoes instead of one, and both ofequal fit. The women of those clearly defined classes are theirhusbands' partners and co-workers, and although physically they mayfind it more wearing to do the work of two than of one, it entails noparticular strain on their mental faculties or change in their habitsof life. Moreover, France since the dawn of her history has been amilitary nation, and generation after generation her women have beencalled upon to play their important rôle in war, although never on sovast a scale as now. 

Contrary to the prevailing estimate of the French--an estimate formedmainly from sensational novels and plays, or during brief visits tothe shops and boulevards of Paris--the French are a stolid, stoical, practical race, abnormally acute, without illusions, and whose famousebullience is all in the top stratum. There is even a certainmelancholy at the root of their temperament, for, gay and pleasureloving as they are on the surface, they are a very ancient and a verywise people. Impatient and impulsive, they are capable of a patienceand tenacity, a deep deliberation and caution, which, combined with anunparalleled mental alertness, brilliancy without recklessness, bravery without bravado, spiritual exaltation without sentimentality(which is merely perverted animalism), a curious sensitiveness of mindand body due to over-breeding, and a white flame of patriotism assteady and dazzling as an arc-light, has given them a glorioushistory, and makes them, by universal consent, preëminent among thewarring nations to-day. 

They are intensely conservative and their mental suppleness is quiteas remarkable. Economy is one of the motive powers of their existence, the solid pillars upon which their wealth and power are built; and yetParis has been not only the home and the patron of the arts forcenturies, but the arbiter of fashion for women, a byword forextravagance, and a forcing-house for a thousand varieties ofpleasure. No race is so paradoxical, but then France is the geniusamong nations. Antiquity, and many invasions of her soil have givenher an inviolable solidity, and the temperamental gaiety and keenintelligence which pervades all classes have kept her eternally young. She is as far from decadence as the crudest community in the UnitedStates of America. 

To the student of French history and character nothing the French havedone in this war is surprising; nevertheless it seemed to me that Ihad a fresh revelation every day during my sojourn in France in thesummer of 1916. Every woman of every class (with a few notableexceptions seen for the most part in the Ritz Hotel) was working atsomething or other: either in self-support, to relieve distress, or tosupplement the efforts and expenditures of the Government (two billionfrancs a month); and it seemed that I never should see the last ofthose relief organizations of infinite variety known as "oeuvres. "

Some of this work is positively creative, much is original, and all ispractical and indispensable. As the most interesting of it centers inand radiates from certain personalities whom I had the good fortune tomeet and to know as well as their days and mine would permit, it hasseemed to me that the surest way of vivifying any account of the workitself is to make its pivot the central figure of the story. So I willbegin with Madame Balli. 

II

To be strictly accurate, Madame Balli was born in Smyrna, of Greekblood; but Paris can show no purer type of Parisian, and she has neverwillingly passed a day out of France. During her childhood her brother(who must have been many years older than herself) was sent to Parisas Minister from Greece, filling the post for thirty years; and hismother followed with her family. Madame Balli not only was brought upin France, but has spent only five hours of her life in Greece; afterher marriage she expressed a wish to see the land of her ancestors, and her husband--who was an Anglo-Greek--amiably took her to a hotelwhile the steamer on which they were journeying to Constantinople wasdetained in the harbor of Athens. 

Up to the outbreak of the war she was a woman of the world, a woman offashion to her finger-tips, a reigning beauty always dressed with acostly and exquisite simplicity. Some idea of the personal lovelinesswhich, united to her intelligence and charm, made her one of theconspicuous figures of the capital, may be inferred from the fact thather British husband, an art connoisseur and notable collector, wascurrently reported deliberately to have picked out the most beautifulgirl in Europe to adorn his various mansions. 

Madame Balli has black eyes and hair, a white skin, a classic profile, and a smile of singular sweetness and charm. Until the war came shewas far too absorbed in the delights of the world--the Paris world, which has more votaries than all the capitals of all the world--thechanging fashions and her social popularity, to have heard so much asa murmur of the serious tides of her nature. Although no one disputedher intelligence--a social asset in France, odd as that may appear toAmericans--she was generally put down as a mere _femme du monde_, self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, dependent--what our more stridentfeminists call parasitic. It is doubtful if she belonged to charitableorganizations, although, generous by nature, it is safe to say thatshe gave freely. 

[Illustration: MADAME BALLI President Réconfort du Soldat]

In that terrible September week of 1914 when the Germans were drivinglike a hurricane on Paris and its inhabitants were fleeing in drovesto the South, Madame Balli's husband was in England; hersister-in-law, an infirmière major (nurse major) of the First Divisionof the Red Cross, had been ordered to the front the day war broke out;a brother-in-law had his hands full; and Madame Balli was practicallyalone in Paris. Terrified of the struggling hordes about the railwaystations even more than of the advancing Germans, deprived of hermotor cars, which had been commandeered by the Government, she did notknow which way to turn or even how to get into communication with herone possible protector. 

But her brother-in-law suddenly bethought himself of this too lovelycreature who would be exposed to the final horrors of recrudescentbarbarism if the Germans entered Paris; he determined to put publicdemands aside for the moment and take her to Dinard, whence she could, if necessary, cross to England. 

He called her on the telephone and told her to be ready at a certainhour that afternoon, and with as little luggage as possible, as theymust travel by automobile. "And mark you, " he added, "no dogs!" MadameBalli had seven little Pekinese to which she was devoted (her onlychild was at school in England). She protested bitterly at leaving herpets behind, but her brother was inexorable, and when he called forher it was with the understanding that all seven were yelping in therear, at the mercy of the concièrge. 

There were seven passengers in the automobile, however, of which theanxious driver, feeling his way through the crowded streets andapprehensive that his car might be impressed at any moment, had not asuspicion. They were in hat boxes, hastily perforated portmanteaux, upthe coat sleeves of Madame Balli and her maid, and they did not beginto yelp until so far on the road to the north that it was not worthwhile to throw them out. 

III

At Dinard, where wounded soldiers were brought in on every train, Madame Balli was turned over to friends, and in a day or two, beingbored and lonely, she concluded to go with these friends to thehospitals and take cigarettes and smiles into the barren wards. Fromthat day until I left Paris on the seventeenth of August, 1916, MadameBalli had labored unceasingly; she is known to the Government as oneof its most valuable and resourceful aids; and she works until two inthe morning, during the quieter hours, with her correspondence andbooks (the police descend at frequent and irregular intervals toexamine the books of all oeuvres, and one mistake means being haled tocourt), and she had not up to that time taken a day's rest. I haveseen her so tired she could hardly go on, and she said once quitepathetically, "I am not even well-groomed any more. " I frequentlystraightened her dress in the back, for her maids work almost as hardas she does. When her husband died, a year after the war broke out, and she found herself no longer a rich woman, her maids offered tostay with her on reduced wages and work for her oeuvres, being sodeeply attached to her that they would have remained for no wages atall if she had really been poor. I used to beg her to go to Vichy fora fortnight, but she would not hear of it. Certain things dependedupon her alone, and she must remain at her post unless she broke downutterly. [A]

 [A] She is still hard at work, June, 1917. 

One of her friends said to me: "Hélène must really be a tremendouslystrong woman. Before the war we all thought her a semi-invalid whopulled herself together at night for the opera, or dinners, or balls. But we didn't know her then, and sometimes we feel as if we knew herstill less now. "

It was Madame Balli who invented the "comfort package" which otherorganizations have since developed into the "comfort bag, " and foundedthe oeuvre known as "Réconfort du Soldat. " Her committee consists ofMrs. Frederick H. Allen of New York, who has a home in Paris and isidentified with many war charities; Mrs. Edward Tuck, who has lived inand given munificently to France for thirty years; Madame Paul Dupuy, who was Helen Brown of New York and has her own oeuvre for supplyingwar-surgeons with rubber, oil-cloth, invalid chairs, etc. ; theMarquise de Noialles, President of a large oeuvre somewhat similar toMadame Dupuy's; the Comtesse de Fels, Madame Brun, and Mr. Holman-Black, an American who has lived the greater part of his lifein France. Mrs. Willard sends her supplies from New York by everysteamer. 

Madame Balli also has a long list of contributors to this and herother oeuvres, who sometimes pay their promised dues and sometimes donot, so that she is obliged to call on her committee (who have ahundred other demands) or pay the deficit out of her own pocket. Acertain number of American contributors send her things regularlythrough Mrs. Allen or Mrs. Willard, and occasionally some generousoutsider gives her a donation. I was told that the Greek Colony inParis had been most generous; and while I was there she published inone of the newspapers an appeal for a hundred pillows for a hospitalin which she was interested, and received in the course of the nextthree days over four hundred. 

IV

I went with her one day to one of the éclopé stations and to the Dépôtdes Isolés, outside of Paris, to help her distribute comfortpackages--which, by the way, covered the top of the automobile andwere piled so high inside that we disposed ourselves with somedifficulty. These packages, all neatly tied, and of varying sizes, were in the nature of surprise bags of an extremely practical order. Tobacco, pipes, cigarettes, chocolate, toothbrushes, soap, pocket-knives, combs, safety-pins, handkerchiefs, needles-and-thread, buttons, pocket mirrors, post-cards, pencils, are a few of thearticles I recall. The members of the Committee meet at her housetwice a week to do up the bundles, and her servants, also, do a greatdeal of the practical work. 

It was a long drive through Paris and to the dépôts beyond. A yearbefore we should have been held up at the point of the bayonet everyfew yards, but in 1916 we rolled on unhindered. Paris is no longer inthe War Zone, although as we passed the fortifications we saw menstanding beside the upward pointing guns, and I was told that thisvigilance does not relax day or night. 

Later, I shall have much to say about the éclopés, but it is enoughto explain here that "éclopé, " in the new adaptation of the word, stands for a man who is not wounded, or ill enough for a militaryhospital, but for whom a brief rest in comfortable quarters isimperative. The stations provided for them, principally through theinstrumentality of another remarkable Frenchwoman, Mlle. Javal, nownumber about one hundred and thirty, and are either behind the linesor in the neighborhood of Paris or other large cities. The one wevisited, Le Bourget, is among the largest and most important, and theCommandant, M. De L'Horme, is as interested as a father in hischildren. The yard when we arrived was full of soldiers, some about tomarch out and entrain for the front, others still loafing, and M. DeL'Horme seemed to know each by name. 

The comfort packages are always given to the men returning to theirregiments on that particular day. They are piled high on a long tableat one side of the barrack yard, and behind it on the day of my visitstood Madame Balli, Mrs. Allen, Mr. Holman-Black and myself, and wehanded out packages with a "Bonne chance" as the men filed by. Somewere sullen and unresponsive, but many more looked as pleased aschildren and no doubt were as excited over their "grabs, " which theywere not to open until in the train. They would face death on themorrow, but for the moment at least they were personal and titillated. 

Close by was a small munition factory, and a large loft had beenturned into a rest-room for such of the éclopés as it was thoughtadvisable to put to bed for a few days under medical supervision. Toeach of these we gave several of the black cigarettes dear to thetobacco-proof heart of the Frenchman, a piece of soap, three picturepost-cards, and chocolate. I think they were as glad of the visits asof the presents, for most of them were too far from home to receiveany personal attention from family or friends. The beds lookedcomfortable and all the windows were open. 

From there we went to the Dépôt des Isolés, an immense enclosure wheremen from shattered regiments are sent for a day or two until they canbe returned to the front to fill gaps in other regiments. Nowhere, noteven in the War Zone, did war show to me a grimmer face than here. Asthese men are in good health and tarry barely forty-eight hours, little is done for their comfort. Soldiers in good condition are notencouraged to expect comforts in war time, and no doubt the disciplineis good for them--although, heaven knows, the French as a race knowlittle about comfort at any time. 

There were cots in some of the barracks, but there were also largespaces covered with straw, and here men had flung themselves down asthey entered, without unstrapping the heavy loads they carried ontheir backs. They were sleeping soundly. Every bed was occupied by asprawling figure in his stained, faded, muddy uniform. I saw onesuperb and turbaned Algerian sitting upright in an attitude of extremedignity, and as oblivious to war and angels of mercy as a dead man inthe trenches. 

Two English girls, the Miss Gracies, had opened a cantine at thisdépôt. Women have these cantines in all the éclopé and isolé stationswhere permission of the War Office can be obtained, and not only givefreely of hot coffee and cocoa, bread, cakes and lemonade, to thoseweary men as they come in, but also have made their little sheds lookgaily hospitable with flags and pictures. The Miss Gracies had eveninduced some one to build an open air theater in the great barrackyard where the men could amuse themselves and one another if they feltinclined. A more practical gift by Mrs. Allen was a bath house inwhich were six showers and soap and towels. 

It was a dirty yard we stood in this time, handing out gifts, and whenI saw Mrs. Allen buying a whole wheelbarrow-load of golden-lookingdoughnuts, brought by a woman of the village close by, I wondered withsome apprehension if she were meaning to reward us for our excessivevirtue. But they were an impromptu treat for the soldiers standing inthe yard--some already lined up to march--and the way they disappeareddown those brown throats made me feel blasée and over-civilized. 

I did not hand out during this little fête, my place being taken byMrs. Thayer of Boston, so I was better able to appreciate the picture. All the women were pretty, and I wondered if Madame Balli had chosenthem as much for their esthetic appeal to the exacting French mind asfor their willingness to help. It was a strange sight, that line ofcharming women with kind bright eyes, and, although simply dressed, stamped with the world they moved in, while standing and lying aboutwere the tired and dirty poilus--even those that stood were slouchingas if resting their backs while they could--with their uniforms ofhorizon blue faded to an ugly gray, streaked and patched. They had notseen a decent woman for months, possibly not a woman at all, and itwas no wonder they followed every movement of these smilingbenefactresses with wondering, adoring, or cynical eyes. 

But, I repeat, to me it was an ill-favored scene, and the fact that itwas a warm and peaceful day, with a radiant blue sky above, merelyadded to the irony. Although later I visited the War Zone three timesand saw towns crowded with soldiers off duty, or as empty as old grayshells, nothing induced in me the same vicious stab of hatred for waras this scene. There is only one thing more abominable than war andthat is the pacificist doctrine of non-resistance when duty and honorcall. Every country, no doubt, has its putrescent spots caused bypremature senility, but no country so far has shown itself as whollycrumbling in an age where the world is still young. 

V

A few days later I went with Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black to themilitary hospital, Chaptal, devoted to the men whose faces had beenmutilated. The first room was an immense apartment with an open spacebeyond the beds filled to-day with men who crowded about Madame Balli, as much to get that personal word and smile from her, which the Frenchsoldier so pathetically places above all gifts, as to have the firstchoice of a pipe or knife. 

After I had distributed the usual little presents of cigarettes, chocolate, soap, and post-cards among the few still in bed, I sat onthe outside of Madame Balli's mob and talked to one of theinfirmières. She was a Frenchwoman married to an Irishman who wasserving in the British navy, and her sons were in the trenches. Shemade a remark to me that I was destined to hear very often:

"Oh, yes, we work hard, and we are only too glad to do what we can forFrance; but, my God! what would become of us if we remained idle andlet our minds dwell upon our men at the Front? We should go mad. As itis, we are so tired at night that we sleep, and the moment we awakenwe are on duty again. I can assure you the harder we have to work themore grateful we are. "

She looked very young and pretty in her infirmière uniform of whitelinen with a veil of the same stiff material and the red cross on herbreast, and it was odd to hear that sons of hers were in the trenches. 

After that nearly all the men in the different wards we visited werein bed, and each room was worse than the last, until it was almost arelief to come to the one where the men had just been operated on andwere so bandaged that any features they may have had left wereindistinguishable. 

For the uncovered faces were horrible. I was ill all night, not onlyfrom the memory of the sickening sights with which I had remainedseveral hours in a certain intimacy--for I went to assist Madame Balliand took the little gifts to every bedside--but from rage against thedevilish powers that unloosed this horror upon the world. One of thegrim ironies of this war is that the Hohenzollerns and the junkers areso constituted mentally that they never will be haunted with awfulvisions like those that visited the more plastic conscience of CharlesIX after St. Bartholomew; but at least it will be some compensation topicture them rending the air with lamentations over their own downfalland hurling curses at their childish folly. 

It is the bursting of shrapnel that causes the face mutilations, and although the first room we visited at Chaptal was a witnessto the marvelous restorative work the surgeons are able toaccomplish--sometimes--many weeks and even months must elapse whilethe face is not only red and swollen, but twisted, the mouth almostparallel with the nose--and often there is no nose--a whole cheekmissing, an eye gone, or both; sometimes the whole mouth and chin havebeen blown away; and I saw one face that had nothing on its flatsurface but a pipe inserted where the nose had been. Another was soterrible that I did not dare to take a second look, and I have only avague and mercifully fading impression of a hideousness never beforeseen in this world. 

On the other hand I saw a man propped up in bed, with one entire sideof his face bandaged, his mouth twisted almost into his right ear, anda mere remnant of nose, reading a newspaper with his remaining eye andapparently quite happy. 

The infirmière told me that sometimes the poor fellows would cry--theyare almost all very young--and lament that no girl would have themnow; but she always consoled them by the assurance that men would beso scarce after the war that girls would take anything they could get. 

In one of the wards a young soldier was sitting on the edge of hiscot, receiving his family, two women of middle age and a girl of aboutseventeen. His face was bandaged down to the bridge of his nose, butthe lower part was uninjured. He may or may not have been permanentlyblind. The two older women--his mother and aunt, no doubt--lookedstolid, as women of that class always do, but the girl sat staringstraight before her with an expression of bitter resentment I shallnever forget. She looked as if she were giving up every youthfulillusion, and realized that Life is the enemy of man, and moreparticularly of woman. Possibly her own lover was in the trenches. Orperhaps this mutilated boy beside her was the first lover of heryouth. One feels far too impersonal for curiosity in these hospitalsand it did not occur to me to ask. 

Madame Balli had also brought several boxes of delicacies for theprivate kitchen of the infirmières, where fine dishes may be concoctedfor appetites still too weak to be tempted by ordinary hospital fare:soup extract, jellies, compotes, cocoa, preserves, etc. Mr. Holman-Black came staggering after us with one of these boxes, Iremember, down the long corridor that led to the private quarters ofthe nurses. One walks miles in these hospitals. 

A number of American men in Paris are working untiringly for Paris, notably those in our War Relief Clearing House--H. O. Beatty, RandolphMordecai, James R. Barbour, M. P. Peixotto, Ralph Preston, WhitneyWarren, Hugh R. Griffen, James Hazen Hyde, Walter Abbott, Charles R. Scott, J. J. Hoff, Rev. Dr. S. N. Watson, George Munroe, CharlesCarroll, J. Ridgeley Carter, H. Herman Harges--but I never receivedfrom any the same sense of consecration, of absolute selflessness as Idid from Mr. Holman-Black. He and his brother have a beautiful littlehôtel, and for many years before the war were among the most brilliantcontributors to the musical life of the great capital; but there hasbeen no entertaining in those charming rooms since August, 1914. Mr. Holman-Black is parrain (godfather) to three hundred and twentysoldiers at the Front, not only providing them with winter and summerunderclothing, bedding, sleeping-suits, socks, and all the lighterarticles they have the privilege of asking for, but also writing fromfifteen to twenty letters to his filleuls daily. He, too, has nottaken a day's vacation since the outbreak of the war, nor read a book. He wears the uniform of a Red Cross officer, and is associated withseveral of Madame Balli's oeuvres. 

VI

A few days later Madame Balli took me to another hospital--HôpitalMilitaire Villemin--where she gives a concert once a week. Practicallyall the men that gathered in the large room to hear the music, orcrowded before the windows, were well and would leave shortly for thefront, but a few were brought in on stretchers and lay just below theplatform. This hospital seemed less dreary to me than most of those Ihad visited, and the yard was full of fine trees. It was also anextremely cheerful afternoon, for not only was the sun shining, butthe four artists Madame Balli had brought gave of their best and theirefforts to amuse were greeted with shouts of laughter. 

Lyse Berty--the most distinguished vaudeville artist in France and whois certainly funnier than any woman on earth--had got herself up inhorizon blue, and was the hit of the afternoon. The men forgot war andthe horrors of war and surrendered to her art and her selections withan abandon which betrayed their superior intelligence, for she is avery plain woman. Miss O'Brien, an Irish girl who has spent her lifein Paris and looks like the pictures in some old Book ofBeauty--immense blue eyes, tiny regular features, small oval face, chestnut hair, pink-and-white skin, and a tall "willowy" figure--wassecond in their critical esteem, because she did not relieve theirmonotonous life with fun, but sang, instead, sweet or stirring songsin a really beautiful voice. The other two, young entertainers of thevaudeville stage, were not so accomplished but were applaudedpolitely, and as they possessed a liberal share of the grace and charmof the Frenchwoman and were exquisitely dressed, no doubt men stillrecall them on dreary nights in trenches. 

I sat on the platform and watched at close range the faces of thesesoldiers of France. They were all from the people, of course, butthere was not a face that was not alive with quick intelligence, andit struck me anew--as it always did when I had an opportunity to see alarge number of Frenchmen together at close range--how little one faceresembled the other. The French are a race of individuals. There is notype. It occurred to me that if during my lifetime the reins of allthe Governments, my own included, were seized by the people, I shouldmove over and trust my destinies to the proletariat of France. Theirlively minds and quick sympathies would make their rule tolerable atleast. As I have said before, the race has genius. 

After we had distributed the usual gifts, I concluded to drive home inthe car of the youngest of the vaudeville artists, as taxis in thatregion were nonexistent, and Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black wouldbe detained for another hour. Mademoiselle Berty was with us, and inthe midst of the rapid conversation--which never slackened!--she madesome allusion to the son of this little artist, and I exclaimedinvoluntarily:

"You married? I never should have imagined it. "

Why on earth I ever made such a banal remark to a Frenchvaudevilliste, whose clothes, jewels, and automobile represented anincome as incompatible with fixed salaries as with war time, I cannotimagine. Automatic Americanism, no doubt. 

Mlle. Berty lost no time correcting me. "Oh, Hortense is not married, "she merely remarked. "But she has a splendid son--twelve years old. "

Being the only embarrassed member of the party, I hastened to assurethe girl that I had thought she was about eighteen and was astonishedto hear that she had a child of any age. But twelve! She turned to mewith a gentle and deprecatory smile. 

"I loved very young, " she explained. 

VII

Chaptal and Villemin are only two of Madame Balli's hospitals. Ibelieve she visits others, carrying gifts to both the men and thekitchens, but the only other of her works that I came into personalcontact with was an oeuvre she had organized to teach convalescentsoldiers, mutilated or otherwise, how to make bead necklaces. Theseare really beautiful and are another of her own inventions. 

Up in the front bedroom of her charming home in the Avenue HenriMartin is a table covered with boxes filled with glass beads of everycolor. Here Madame Balli, with a group of friends, sits during all herspare hours and begins the necklaces which the soldiers come for andtake back to the hospital to finish. I sat in the background andwatched the men come in--many of them with the _Croix de Guerre, _ the_Croix de la Legion d'Honneur, _ or the _Medaille Militaire_ pinned ontheir faded jackets. I listened to brief definite instructions ofMadame Balli, who may have the sweetest smile in the world, but whoknows what she wants people to do and invariably makes them do it. Isaw no evidence of stupidity or slackness in these young soldiers;they might have been doing bead-work all their lives, they combinedthe different colors and sizes so deftly and with such true artisticfeeling. 

Madame Balli has sold hundreds of these necklaces. She has a case atthe Ritz Hotel, and she has constant orders from friends and theirfriends, and even from dressmakers; for these trinkets are as nearlyworks of art as anything so light may be. The men receive a certainpercentage of the profits and will have an ample purse when they leavethe hospital. Another portion goes to buy delicacies for their lessfortunate comrades--and this idea appeals to them immensely--the restgoes to buy more beads at the glittering shops on the Rue du Rivoli. The necklaces bring from five to eight or ten dollars. The soldiers inmany of the hospitals are doing flat beadwork, which is ingenious andpretty; but nothing compares with these necklaces of Madame Balli, andsome of the best dressed American women in Paris are wearing them. 

VIII

On the twentieth of July (1916) _Le Figaro_ devoted an article toMadame Balli's Réconfort du Soldat, and stated that it wasdistributing about six hundred packages a week to soldiers inhospitals and éclopé dépôts, and that during the month of Januaryalone nine thousand six hundred packages were distributed both behindthe lines and among the soldiers at the Front. This may go on foryears or it may come to an abrupt end; but, like all the Frenchwomento whom I talked, and who when they plunged into work expected a shortwar, she is determined to do her part as long as the soldiers dotheirs, even if the war marches with the term of her natural life. Shenot only has given a great amount of practical help, but has done hershare in keeping up the morale of the men, who, buoyant by nature asthey are, and passionately devoted to their country, must have manydiscouraged moments in their hospitals and dépôts. 

Once or twice when swamped with work--she is also a marraine(godmother) and writes regularly to her filleuls--Madame Balli hassent the weekly gifts by friends; but the protest was so decided, themen declaring that her personal sympathy meant more to them thancigarettes and soap, that she was forced to adjust her affairs in sucha manner that no visit to a hospital at least should be missed. 

It is doubtful if any of these men who survive and live to tell talesof the Great War in their old age will ever omit to recall thegracious presence and lovely face of Madame Balli, who came so oftento make them forget the sad monotony of their lives, even the pain intheir mutilated limbs, the agony behind their disfigured faces, duringthose long months they spent in the hospitals of Paris. And althoughher beauty has always been a pleasure to the eye, perhaps it is nowfor the first time paying its great debt to Nature. 

II

THE SILENT ARMY

I

Madame Paquin, the famous French dressmaker, told me casually anincident that epitomizes the mental inheritance of the women of amilitary nation once more plunged abruptly into war. 

Her home is in Neuilly, one of the beautiful suburbs of Paris, and foryears when awake early in the morning it had been her habit to listenfor the heavy creaking of the great wagons that passed her house ontheir way from the gardens and orchards of the open country to themarkets of Paris. Sometimes she would arise and look at them, thoseimmense heavy trucks loaded high above their walls with the lusciousproduce of the fertile soil of France. On the seats were always threeor four sturdy men: the farmer, and the sons who would help him unloadat the "Halles. "

All these men, of course, were reservists. Mobilization took place onSunday. On Monday morning Madame Paquin, like many others in thatanxious city, was tossing restlessly on her bed when she heard thefamiliar creaking of the market wagons which for so many years haddone their share in feeding the hungry and fastidious people of Paris. Knowing that every able-bodied man had disappeared from his usualhaunts within a few hours after the Mobilization Order was posted, shesprang out of bed and looked through her blinds. 

There in the dull gray mist of the early morning she saw the familiarprocession. There were the big trucks drawn by the heavily built carthorses and piled high with the abundant but precisely picked andpacked produce of the market gardens. Paris was to be fed as usual. People must eat, war or no war. In spite of the summons which hadexcited the brains and depressed the hearts of a continent thosetrucks were playing their part in human destiny, not even claiming theright to be five minutes late. The only difference was that the seatson this gloomy August morning of 1914 were occupied by large stolidpeasant women, the wives and sisters and sweethearts of the men calledto the colors. They had mobilized themselves as automatically as theGovernment had ordered out its army when the German war god defloweredour lady of peace. 

These women may have carried heavy hearts under their bright coifs andcotton blouses, but their weather-beaten faces betrayed nothing butthe stoical determination to get their supplies to the Halles at theusual hour. And they have gone by every morning since. Coifs andblouses have turned black, but the hard brown faces betray nothing, and they are never late. 

II

Up in the Champagne district, although many of the vineyards were invalleys between the two contending armies, the women undertook to carefor the vines when the time came, risking their lives rather thansacrifice the next year's vintage. Captain Sweeney of the ForeignLegion told me that when the French soldiers were not firing theyamused themselves watching these women pruning and trimming asfatalistically as if guns were not thundering east and west of them, shells singing overhead. For the most part they were safe enough, andnerves had apparently been left out of them; but once in a while theGermans would amuse themselves raking the valley with the guns. Thenthe women would simply throw themselves flat and remainmotionless--sometimes for hours--until "Les Boches" concluded to wasteno more ammunition. 

In Rheims the women have never closed their shops. They have coveredtheir windows with sandbags, and by the light of lamp or candle do athriving business while the big guns thunder. The soldiers, bothBritish and French, like their trinkets and post-cards, to say nothingof more practical objects, and, admiring their inveterate pluck, notonly patronize them liberally but sit in their coverts and gossip orflirt with the pretty girls for whom shells bursting in the street aretoo old a story for terror. 

[Illustration: DELIVERING THE MILK IN RHEIMS]

III

Many of the women of the industrial classes who have been accustomedall their hard dry lives to live on the daily wage of father orhusband have refused to work since the war began, preferring toscrape along on the Government allocation (allowance) ofone-franc-twenty-five a day for the wives of soldiers, plus fiftycentimes for each child (seventy-five in Paris). These notableexceptions will be dealt with later. France, like all nations, contains every variety of human nature, and, with its absence ofillusions and its habit of looking facts almost cynically in the face, would be the last to claim perfection or even to conceal itsinfirmities. But the right side of its shield is very bright indeed, and the hands of many millions of women, delicate and toil-hardened, have labored to make it shine once more in history. 

The Mayoress of a small town near Paris told me of three instancesthat came within her personal observation, and expressed no surpriseat one or the other. She probably would not have thought them worthmentioning if she had not been asked expressly to meet me and give mecertain information. One was of a woman whose husband had been awage-earner, and, with six or eight children, had been able to savenothing. The allocation was not declared at once and this woman lostno time bewailing her fate or looking about for charitable groups ofladies to feed her with soup. She simply continued to run herhusband's estaminet (wine-shop), and, as the patronage wasnecessarily diminished, was one of the first to apply when munitionfactories invited women to fill the vacant places of men. She chose towork at night that she might keep the estaminet open by day for themen too old to fight and for the rapidly increasing number of"réformés": those who had lost a leg or arm or were otherwiseincapacited for service. 

A sister, who lived in Paris, immediately applied for one of thethousand vacant posts in bakeries, cut bread and buttered it and madetoast for a tea-room in the afternoon, and found another job to sweepout stores. This woman had a son still under age but in training atthe Front. He had been in the habit of paying her periodical visits, until this woman, already toiling beyond her strength to support herother children, sat down one day and wrote to the boy's commandingofficer asking him to permit no more leaves of absence, as the ordealwas too much for both of them. 

The third story was of a woman whom the Mayoress had oftenentertained in her homes, both official and private. When thiswoman, who had lived a life of such ease as the mother of elevenchildren may, was forced to take over the conduct of her husband'sbusiness (he was killed immediately) she discovered that he had beenliving on his capital, and when his estate was settled her onlyinheritance was a small wine-shop in Paris. She packed her trunks, spent what little money she had left on twelve railway tickets forthe capital, and settled her brood in the small quarters behind theestaminet--fortunately the lessee, who was unmarried, had also beenswept off to the Front. 

The next morning she reopened the doors and stood smiling behind thecounter. The place was well stocked. It was a long while before shewas obliged to spend any of her intake on aught but food and lights. So charming a hostess did she prove that her little shop was neverempty and quickly became famous. She had been assured of a decentliving long since. 

IV

When I arrived in Paris in May (1916) a little girl had just beendecorated by the President of the Republic. Her father, the villagebaker, had made one of those lightning changes from citizen to soldierand her mother had died a few weeks before. She was an only child. Thebakery had supplied not only the village but the neighboring inn, which had been a favorite lunching place for automobilists. Travelingfor pleasure stopped abruptly, but as the road that passed the inn wasone of the direct routes to the Front, it still had many hasty callsupon its hospitality. 

Now, bread-making in France is a science, the work of the expert, notof the casual housewife. The accomplished cook of the inn knew no moreabout mixing and baking bread than he did of washing clothes; andthere was but this one bakery, hitherto sufficient, for the baker andhis wife had been strong and industrious. The inn was in despair. Thevillage was in despair. A Frenchman will go without meat, but lifewithout bread is unthinkable. 

No one thought of the child. 

It is possible that in her double grief she did not think ofherself--for twenty-four hours. But the second day after mobilizationher shop window was piled high with loaves as usual. The inn wassupplied. The village was supplied. This little girl worked steadilyand unaided at her task, until her father, a year later, returnedminus a leg to give her assistance of a sort. 

The business of the bakery was nearly doubled during that time. Automobiles containing officers, huge camions with soldiers packedlike coffee-beans, foot-weary marching regiments, with no time to stopfor a meal, halted a moment and bought the stock on hand. But withonly a few hours' sleep the girl toiled on valiantly and no applicantfor bread was turned empty-handed from the now famous bakery. 

How she kept up her childish strength and courage without a moment'schange in her routine and on insufficient sleep can only be explainedby the twin facts that she came of hardy peasant stock, and, like allFrench children, no matter how individual, was too thoroughly imbuedwith the discipline of "The Family" to shirk for a moment theparticular task that war had brought her. This iron discipline of TheFamily, one of the most salient characteristics of the French, islargely responsible for the matter-of-fact way in which every soldierof France, reservist or regular, and whatever his politicalconvictions, has risen to this ordeal. And in him as been inculcatedfrom birth patience and perseverance as well as loyalty to his belovedflag. 

The wives of hotel and shop keepers as well as the women of the farmshave by far the best of it in time of war. The former are always theirhusband's partners, controlling the money, consulted at ever step. When the tocsin rings and the men disappear they simply go on. Theirtask may be doubled and they may be forced to employ girls instead ofmen, but there is no mental readjusting. 

The women of the farms have always worked as hard as the men. Theirdoubled tasks involve a greater drain on their physical energies thanthe petite bourgeoise suffers, especially in those districtsdevastated by the first German invasion--the valley of the Marne. Butthey are very hardy, and they too hang on, for stoicism is thefundamental characteristic of the French. 

This stoicism as well as the unrivaled mental suppleness wasillustrated early in the war by the highly typical case of a laundresswhose business was in one of the best districts of Paris. 

In France no washing is done in the house. This, no doubt, is one ofthe reasons why one's laundry bills, even on a brief visit, are amongthe major items, for _les blanchisseuses_ are a power in the land. When I was leaving Paris the directrice of the École Feminine inPassy, which had been my home for three months, suggested delicatelythat I leave a tip for the laundress, for, said this practical person, herself a sufferer from many forms of imposition, "she has beenextremely complaisante in coming every week for Madame's wash. " Iremarked that the laundress might reasonably feel some gratitude to mefor adding weekly to her curtailed income; but my smiling directriceshook her head. The favor, it appeared, was all on the other side. So, although I had tipped the many girls of my unique boarding-place withpleasure I parted with the sum designated for my patronizing laundresswith no grace whatever. 

But to return to the heroine of the story told me by Mrs. ArmstrongWhitney, one of the many American women living in Paris who areworking for France. 

This laundress had a very large business, in partnership with herhusband. Nobody was expected to bring the family washing to her door, nor even to send a servant. The linen was called for and delivered, for this prosperous firm owned several large trucks and eight or tenstrong horses. 

War was declared. This woman's husband and all male employees weremobilized. Her horses were commandeered. So were her trucks. Many ofher wealthier patrons were already in the country and remained there, both for economy's sake and to encourage and help the poor of theirvillages and farms. The less fortunate made shift to do their washingat home. Nevertheless there were patrons who still needed herservices at least once a fortnight. 

This good woman may have had her moments of despair. If so, the worldnever knew it. She began at once to adjust herself to the newconditions and examine her resources. She importuned the Governmentuntil, to be rid of her, they returned two of her horses. She rented acart and employed girls suddenly thrown out of work, to take the placeof the vanished men. The business limped on but it never ceased for amoment; and as the months passed it assumed a firmer gait. Peoplereturned from the country, finding that they could be more useful inParis as members of one or other of a thousand oeuvres; and they wereof the class that must have clean linen if the skies fall. Also, manyAmericans who had fled ignominiously to England returned and plungedinto work. And Americans, with their characteristic extravagance inlingerie, are held in high esteem by _les blanchisseuses_. 

Further assaults upon the amiable Government resulted in the return ofmore horses and one or two trucks. To-day, while the business by nomeans swaggers, this woman, thanks to her indomitable courage andenergy, combined with the economical habit and the financial genius ofthe French, has ridden safely over the rocks into as snug a littleharbor as may be found in any country at war. 

III

THE MUNITION MAKERS

I

Aside from the industrial class the women who suffered most at theoutbreak of the war were those that worked in the shops. Paris is acity of little shops. The average American tourist knows them not, forher hectic experiences in the old days were confined to the GaleriesLafayette, the Louvre, the Bon Marché, and the Trois Quartièrs. Butduring the greater part of 1915 street after street exhibited thedreary picture of shuttered windows, where once every sort ofdelicate, solid, ingenious, costly, or catch-penny ware was displayed. Some of these were closed because the owner had no wife, many becausethe factories that supplied them were closed, or the workmen no longercould be paid. To-day one sees few of these wide iron shutters exceptat night, but the immediate consequence of the sudden change of thenation's life was that thousands of girls and women were thrown out ofwork: clerks, cashiers, dressmakers' assistants, artificial flowermakers, florists, confectioners, workers in the fancy shops, makers offine lingerie, extra servants and waitresses in the unfashionable butnumerous restaurants. And then there were the women of the operachorus, and those connected with the theater; and not only theactresses' and the actors' families, but the wives of scene shifterssent off to the trenches, and of all the other humble folk employedabout theaters, great and small. 

The poor of France do not invest their money in savings' banks. Theybuy bonds. On the Monday after mobilization the banks of Franceannounced that they would buy no bonds. These poor bewildered womenwould have starved if the women of the more fortunate classes had notimmediately begun to organize relief stations and ouvroirs. 

Madame Lepauze, better known to the reading public of France as DanielLesauer, who is also the wife of the curator of the Petit Palais, wasthe first to open a restaurant for soup, and this was besieged frommorning until night even before the refugees from Belgium and theinvaded districts of France began to pour in. Her home is in the PetitPalais, and in the public gardens behind was Le Pavillion, one of theprettiest and most popular restaurants of Paris. She made no bonesabout asking the proprietor to place the restaurant and all thatremained of his staff at her disposal, and hastily organizing acommittee, began at once to ladle out soup. Many other dépôts wereorganized almost simultaneously (and not only in Paris but in theprovincial towns), and when women were too old or too feeble to comefor their daily ration it was left at their doors by carts containingimmense boilers of that nourishing soup only the French know how tomake. 

Madame Lepauze estimates that her station alone fed a million womenand children. Moreover, she and all the other women engaged in thispatriotic duty had soon depleted their wardrobes after the refugeesbegan streaming down from the north; it was generally said that not alady in Paris had more than one useful dress left and that was on herback. 

Many of these charitable women fled to the South during thatbreathless period when German occupation seemed inevitable, butothers, like Madame Pierre Goujon, of whom I shall have much to saylater, and the Countess Greffuhle (a member of the valiant Chimayfamily of Belgium), stuck to their posts and went about publicly inorder to give courage to the millions whose poverty forced them toremain. 

II

The next step in aiding this army of helpless women was to openouvroirs, or workrooms. Madame Paquin never closed this great branchof her dressmaking establishment, and, in common with hundreds ofother ouvroirs that sprang up all over France, paid the women a wageon which they could exist (besides giving them one meal) in return forat least half a day's work on necessary articles for the men in thetrenches: underclothing, sleeping bags, felt slippers, night garments;sheets and pillow-cases for the hospitals. As the vast majority ofthe peasant farmers and petite bourgeoisie had been used to sleepingin airtight rooms they suffered bitterly during that first long winterand spring in the open. If it had not been for these bee-hive ouvroirsand their enormous output there would have been far more deaths frompneumonia and bronchitis, and far more cases of tuberculosis thanthere were. 

A good many of these ouvroirs are still in existence, but many havebeen closed; for as the shops reopened the women not only went back totheir former situations but by degrees either applied for or wereinvited to fill those left vacant by men of fighting age. 

III

And then there were the munition factories! The manager of one ofthese _Usines de Guerre_ in Paris told me that he made the experimentof employing women with the deepest misgiving. Those seeking positionswere just the sort of women he would have rejected if the sturdy womenof the farms had applied and given him any choice. They were girls oryoung married women who had spent all the working years of their livesstooping over sewing-machines; sunken chested workers in artificialflowers; confectioners; florists; waitresses; clerks. One and alllooked on the verge of a decline with not an ounce of reserve vitalityfor work that taxed the endurance of men. But as they protested thatthey not only wished to support themselves instead of living oncharity, but were passionately desirous of doing their bit while theirmen were enduring the dangers and privations of active warfare, and ashis men were being withdrawn daily for service at the Front, he madeup his mind to employ them and refill their places as rapidly as theycollapsed. 

He took me over his great establishment and showed me the result. Itwas one of the astonishing examples not only of the grim courage ofwomen under pressure but of that nine-lived endowment of the female inwhich the male never can bring himself to believe save only whenconfronted by practical demonstration. 

In the correspondence and card-indexing room there was a little armyof young and middle-aged women whose superior education enabled themto do a long day's work with the minimum output of physical energy, and these for the most part came from solid middle-class familieswhose income had been merely cut by the war, not extinguished. It wasas I walked along the galleries and down the narrow passages betweenthe noisy machinery of the rest of that large factory that I asked thesuperintendent again and again if these women were of the same classas the original applicants. The answer in every case was the same. 

The women had high chests and brawny arms. They tossed thirty-andforty-pound shells from one to the other as they once may have tosseda cluster of artificial flowers. Their skins were clean and oftenruddy. Their eyes were bright. They showed no signs whatever ofoverwork. They were almost without exception the original applicants. 

[Illustration: MAKING THE SHELLS]

I asked the superintendent if there were no danger of heart strain. Hesaid there had been no sign of it so far. Three times a week they wereinspected by women doctors appointed by the Government, and any littledisorder was attended to at once. But not one had been ill a day. Those that had suffered from chronic dyspepsia, colds, and tuberculartendency were now as strong as if they had lived their lives on farms. It was all a question of plenty of fresh air, and work thatstrengthened the muscles of their bodies, developed their chests andgave them stout nerves and long nights of sleep. 

As I looked at those bare heavily muscled arms I wondered if any manbelonging to them would ever dare say his soul was his own again. Butas their heads are always charmingly dressed (an odd effectsurmounting greasy overalls) and as they invariably powder beforefiling out at the end of the day's work, it is probable that acomfortable reliance may still be placed upon the ineradicablecoquetry of the French woman. And the scarcer the men in the futurethe more numerous, no doubt, will be the layers of powder. 

I asked one pretty girl if she really liked the heavy, dirty, malodorous work, and she replied that making boutonnières forgentlemen in a florist-shop was paradise by contrast, but she was onlytoo happy to be doing as much for France in her way as her brotherwas in his. She added that when the war was over she should take offher blue linen apron streaked with machine grease once for all, notremain from choice as many would. But meanwhile it was not so bad! Shemade ten francs a day. Some of the women received as high as fifteen. Moreover, they bossed the few men whose brawn was absolutelyindispensable and must be retained in the _usine_ at all costs. 

These men took their orders meekly. Perhaps they were amused. TheFrench are an ironic race. Perhaps they bided their time. But theynever dreamed of disobeying those Amazons whose foot the Kaiser of allthe Boches had placed on their necks. 

IV

One of the greatest of these _Usines de Guerre_ is at Lyons, in thebuildings of the Exposition held shortly before the outbreak of thewar. I went to this important Southern city (a beautiful city, which Ishall always associate with the scent of locust[B]-blossoms) at thesuggestion of James Hazen Hyde. He gave me a letter to the famousMayor, M. Herriot, who was a member of the last Briand Cabinet. 

 [B] It is called acacia in Europe. 

M. Herriot was also a Senator, and as he was leaving for Paris a fewhours after I presented my letter he turned me over to a friend of hiswife, Madame Castell, a native of Lyons, the daughter of one silkmerchant and the widow of another. This charming young woman, who hadspent her married life in New York, by the way, took me everywhere, and although we traversed many vast distances in the Mayor'sautomobile, it seemed to me that I walked as many miles in hospitals, factories, ateliers (workrooms for teaching the mutilated new trades), and above all in the _Usine de Guerre_. 

Here not only were thousands of women employed but a greater varietyof classes. The women of the town, unable to follow the army and tooplucky to live on charity, had been among the first to ask for work. The directeur beat his forehead when I asked him how they behaved whennot actually at the machines, but at least they had proved as faithfuland skillful as their more respectable sisters. 

Lyons was far more crowded and lively than Paris, which is so quietthat it calls to mind the lake that filled the crater of Mont Peléebefore the eruption of 1902. But this fine city of the South--situatedalmost as beautifully as Paris on both sides of a river--is not only ajunction, it not only has industries of all sorts besides the greatestsilk factories in the world, but every train these days brings downwounded for its many hospitals, and the next train brings the familyand friends of these men, who, when able to afford it, establishthemselves in the city for the period of convalescence. Therestaurants and cafés were always crowded and this handsome city onthe Rhône was almost gay. 

There were practically no unemployed. The old women of the poor wentdaily to an empty court-room where they sat in the little amphitheatersewing or knitting. In countless other ouvroirs they were cutting andmaking uniforms with the same facility that men had long sinceacquired, or running sleeping bags through sewing-machines at the rateof thousands a day. M. Herriot "mobilized" Lyons early in the war, andits contribution to the needs of the Front has been enormous. 

The réformés (men too badly mutilated to be of further use at thefront) are being taught many new trades in the ateliers: toy-making, wooden shoes with leather tops for the trenches, cigarette packages, baskets, typewriting, stenography, weaving, repairing. In one of themany ateliers I visited with Madame Castell I saw a man who had onlyone arm, and the left at that, and only a thumb and little fingerremaining of the ten he had taken into war, learning to write anew. When I was shown one of his exercises I was astounded. He wrote farbetter than I have ever done, and I can recall few handwritings soprecise and elegant. One may imagine what a man accomplishes who stillhas a good hand and arm. It was both interesting and pathetic to seethese men guiding their work with their remaining hand andmanipulating the machinery with the stump of the other arm. Those whocome out from the battlefields with health intact will be no charge tothe state, no matter what their mutilations. 

[Illustration: SOCIÉTÉ L'ECLAIRAGE ELECTRIQUE, USINE DE LYON]

One poor fellow came in to the École Joffre while I was there. He wasaccompanied by three friends of the Mayor's, who hoped that some oneof the new occupations might suit his case. He was large and strongand ruddy and he had no hands. Human ingenuity had not yet evolved farenough for him. He was crying quietly as he turned away. But his caseis by no means hopeless, for when his stumps are no longer sensitivehe will be fitted with a mechanical apparatus that will take the placeof the hands he has given to France. 

Madame Castell's work is supplying hospitals with anything, exceptfood, they may demand, and in this she has been regularly helped bythe Needlework Guild of Pennsylvania. 

Madame Harriot's ouvroir occupies the magnificent festal salon of theHôtel de Ville, with its massive chandeliers and its memories of athousand dinners and balls of state from the days of Louis XIV down tothe greatest of its mayors. She supplies French prisoners in Germanywith the now famous comfort packages. Some of them she and hercommittee put up themselves; others are brought in by members of thefamily or the friends of the unfortunate men in Germany. The pièce derésistance had always been a round loaf of bread, but on the day Ifirst visited the salon consternation was reigning. Word had come fromGermany that no more bread nor any sort of food stuff should be sentin the packages, and hundreds were being unpacked. Crisp loaves ofbread that would have brought comfort to many a poor soul were lyingall over the place. 

The secret of the order was that civilian Germans were begging breadof the French prisoners, and this, of course, was bad for the tenderlynursed German morale. 

IV

MADEMOISELLE JAVAL AND THE ÉCLOPÉS

I

Mlle. Javal, unlike Madame Balli, was not a member of the fashionablesociety of Paris, a _femme du monde_, or a reigning beauty. But incertain respects their cases were not dissimilar. Born into one of theinnumerable sets-within-sets of the upper bourgeoisie, living oninherited wealth, seeing as little as possible of the world beyond herimmediate circle of relatives and friends, as curiously indifferent toit as only a haughty French bourgeoisie can be, growing up in a largeand comfortable home--according to French ideas of comfort--governingit, when the duty descended to her shoulders, with all the native andpractised economy of the French woman, but until her mother's illnesswithout a care, and even then without an extra contact, Mlle. Javal'slife slipped along for many years exactly as the lives of a millionother girls in that entrenched secluded class slipped along before thetocsin, ringing throughout the land on August 2, 1914, announced thatonce more the men of France must fight to defend the liberty of allclasses alike. 

Between wars the great central mass of the population in France knownas the bourgeoisie--who may be roughly defined as those that belongneither to the noblesse at one end nor to the industrials and peasantproprietors at the other, but have capital, however minute, investedin _rentes_ or business, and who, beginning with the grandebourgeoisie, the haughty possessors of great inherited fortunes, continuing through the financial and commercial magnates, down to thepetite bourgeoisie who keep flourishing little shops, hotels, etc. --live to get the most out of life in their narrow, traditional, curiously intensive way. They detest travel, although at least once intheir lives they visit Switzerland and Italy; possibly, but with nosuch alarming frequency as to suggest an invasion, England. 

The most aspiring read the literature of the day, see the new plays(leaving the _jeune fille_ at home), take an intelligent interest inthe politics of their own country, visit the annual salons, and ifreally advanced discuss with all the national animation such violenteruptions upon the surface of the delicately poised art life, whichowes its very being to France, as impressionism, cubism, etc. Exceptamong the very rich, where, as elsewhere, temptations are many andpressing, they have few scandals to discuss, but much gossip, andthere is the ever recurrent flutter over births, marriages, deaths. They have no snobbery in the climber's sense. When a bourgeois, however humble in origin, graduates as an "intellectual" he isreceived with enthusiasm (if his table manners will pass muster) bythe noblesse; but it is far more difficult for a nobleman to enter thehouse of a bourgeois. It is seldom that he wants to, but sometimesthere are sound financial reasons for forming this almost illegitimateconnection, and then his motives are penetrated by the keen Frenchmind--a mind born without illusions--and interest alone dictates theissue. The only climbers in our sense are the wives of politicianssuddenly risen to eminence, and even then the social ambitions ofthese ladies are generally confined to arriving in the exclusivecircles of the haute bourgeoisie. 

The bourgeoisie are as proud of their class as the noblesse of theirs, and its top stratum regards itself as the real aristocracy of theRepublique Française, the families bearing ancient titles asanachronistic; although oddly enough they and the ancient noblesse arequite harmonious in their opinion of the Napoleonic aristocracy! Oneof the leaders in the grande bourgeoisie wrote me at a critical momentin the affairs of Greece: "It looks as if Briand would succeed inplacing the lovely Princess George of Greece on the throne, andassuredly it is better for France to have a Bonaparte there than noone at all!"

It is only when war comes and the men and women of the noblesse riseto the call of their country as automatically as a reservist answersthe tocsin or the printed order of mobilization, that the bourgeoisieis forced to concede that there is a tremendous power still residentin the prestige, organizing ability, social influence, tirelessenergy, and self-sacrifice of the disdained aristocracy. 

During the war oeuvres have been formed on so vast a scale that onesees on many committee lists the names of noblesse and bourgeois sideby side. But it is a defensive alliance, bred of the stupendousnecessities of war, and wherever possible each prefers to work withoutthe assistance of the other. The French Army is the most democratic inthe world. French society has no conception of the word, and neithernoblesse nor bourgeoisie has the faintest intention of taking it up asa study. There is no active antagonism between the two classes--save, to be sure, when individual members show their irreconcilablepeculiarities at committee meetings--merely a profound indifference. 

II

Mlle. Javal, although living the usual restricted life before the war, and far removed from that section of her class that had begun toastonish Paris by an unprecedented surrender to the extravagancies inpublic which seemed to obsess the world before Europe abruptlyreturned to its normal historic condition of warfare, was as highlyeducated, as conversant with the affairs of the day, political, intellectual, and artistic, as any young woman in Europe. But the warfound her in a semi-invalid condition and heartbroken over the deathof her mother, whom she had nursed devotedly through a long illness;her girlhood intimacies broken up not only by the marriage of herfriends, but also by her own long seclusion; and--being quiteFrench--feeling too aged, at a little over thirty, ever to interestany man again, aside from her fortune. In short she regarded her lifeas finished, but she kept house dutifully for her brother--her onlyclose relation--and surrendered herself to melancholy reflections. 

Then came the war. At first she took merely the languid interestdemanded by her intelligence, being too absorbed in her own lowcondition to experience more than a passing thrill of patrioticfervor. But she still read the newspapers, and, moreover, women inthose first anxious days were meeting and talking far more frequentlythan was common to a class that preferred their own house and gardento anything their friends, or the boulevards, or even the parks ofParis, could offer them. Mlle. Javal found herself seeing more andmore of that vast circle of inherited friends as well as familyconnections which no well-born bourgeoise can escape, and graduallybecame infected with the excitement of the hour; despite the fact thatshe believed her poor worn-out body never would take a long walkagain. 

Then, one day, the thought suddenly illuminated her awakening mind:"How fortunate I am! I have no one to lose in this terrible war!" (Herbrother was too delicate for service. ) "These tears I see every dayafter news has come that a father, a brother, a husband, a son, hasfallen on the battlefield or died of horrible agony in hospital, Ishall never shed. Almost alone of the many I know, and the millions ofwomen in France, I am mercifully exempt from an agony that has no end. If I were married, and were older and had sons, I should be sufferingunendurably now. I am fortunate indeed and feel an ingrate that I haveever repined. "

Then naturally enough followed the thought that it behooved her to dosomething for her country, not only as a manifest of thanksgiving butalso because it was her duty as a young woman of wealth and leisure. 

Oddly enough considering the delicate health in which she firmlybelieved, she tried to be a nurse. There were many amateurs in thehospitals in those days when France was as short of nurses as ofeverything else except men, and she was accepted. 

But nursing then involved standing all day on one's feet and sometimesall night as well, and her pampered body was far from strong enoughfor such a tax in spite of her now glowing spirit. While she wascasting about for some work in which she might really play a usefuland beneficent rôle a friend invited her to drive out to the environsof Paris and visit the wretched éclopés, to whom several charitableladies occasionally took little gifts of cigarettes and chocolate. 

Then, at last, Mlle. Javal found herself; and from a haltingapprehensive seeker, still weary in mind and limb, she became almostabruptly one of the most original and executive women inFrance--incidentally one of the healthiest. When I met her, sometwenty months later, she had red cheeks and was the only one of allthose women of all classes slaving for France who told me she neverfelt tired; in fact felt stronger every day. 

III

The éclopés, in the new adaptation of the word, are men who are notill enough for the military hospitals and not well enough to fight. They may have slight wounds, or temporary affections of the sight orhearing, the effect of heavy colds; or rheumatism, debilitating sorethroat, or furiously aching teeth; or they may be suffering tooseverely from shock to be of any use in the trenches. 

There are between six and seven thousand hospitals in France to-day(possibly more: the French never will give you any exact militaryfigures; but certainly not less); but their beds are for the severelywounded or for those suffering from dysentery, fevers, pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis. In those first days of war before France, caught unprepared in so many ways, had found herself and settled downto the business of war; in that trying interval while she was illequipped to care for men brought in hourly to the base hospitals, shattered by new and hideous wounds; there was no place for the merelyailing. Men with organic affections, suddenly developed under theterrific strain, were dismissed as Réformés Numéro II--unmutilated inthe service of their country; in other words, dismissed from the armyand, for nearly two years, without pension. But the large number ofthose temporarily out of condition were sent back of the lines, or toa sort of camp outside of Paris, to rest until they were in acondition to fight again. 

If it had not been for Mlle. Javal it is possible that more men thanone cares to estimate would never have fought again. The éclopés atthat time were the most abject victims of the war. They remainedtogether under military discipline, either behind the lines or on theoutskirts of Paris, herded in barns, empty factories, thousandssleeping without shelter of any sort. Straw for the most part composedtheir beds, food was coarse and scanty; they were so wretched anduncomfortable, so exposed to the elements, and without care of anysort, that their slight ailments developed not infrequently intoserious and sometimes fatal cases of bronchitis, pneumonia, and eventuberculosis. 

This was a state of affairs well known to General Joffre and nonecaused him more distress and anxiety. But--this was between August andNovember, 1914, it must be remembered, when France was anything butthe magnificent machine she is to-day--it was quite impossible for theauthorities to devote a cell of their harassed brains to thetemporarily inept. Every executive mind in power was absorbed inpinning the enemy down, since he could not be driven out, feeding thevast numbers of men at the Front, reorganizing the munitionfactories, planning for the vast supplies of ammunition suddenlydemanded, equipping the hospitals--when the war broke out there wereno installations in the hospitals near the Front exceptbeds--obtaining the necessary amount of surgical supplies, taking careof the refugees that poured into the larger cities by every train notonly from Belgium but from the French towns invaded or bombarded--tomention but a few of the problems that beset France suddenly forced torally and fight for her life, and, owing to the Socialist majority inthe Chamber of Deputies, criminally unprepared. 

There were plenty of able minds in France that knew what was coming;months before the war broke out (a year, one of the infirmière majorstold me; but, as I have said, it is difficult to pin a French officialdown to exact statements) the Service de Santé (Health Department ofthe Ministry of War) asked the Countess d'Haussonville, President ofthe Red Cross, to train as many nurses as quickly as possible, forthere was not an extra nurse in a military hospital of France--in manythere was none at all. But these patriotic and far-sighted men werepowerless. The three years' service bill was the utmost result oftheir endeavors, and for six months after the war began they had not agun larger than the famous Seventy-fives but those captured at theBattle of the Marne. 

As for the poor éclopés, there never was a clearer example of theweaker going to the wall and the devil taking the hindmost. They hadbeen turned out to grass mildly afflicted, but in a short time theywere progressing rapidly toward the grave or that detestable statusknown as Réformés Numéro II. And every man counts in France. Quiteapart from humanity it was a terribly serious question for the GrandQuartier Général, where Joffre and his staff had their minds on therack. 

IV

The Curé of St. Honoré d'Eylau was the first to discover the éclopés, and not only sent stores to certain of the dépôts where they wereherded, but persuaded several ladies of Paris to visit and take themlittle presents. But practically every energetic and patriotic womanin France was already mobilized in the service of her country. As Ihave explained elsewhere, they had opened ouvroirs, where workinggirls suddenly deprived of the means of livelihood could fend offstarvation by making underclothing and other necessaries for the menat the Front. Upon these devoted women, assisted by nearly all theAmerican women resident in Paris, fell to a great extent the care ofthe refugees; and many were giving out rations three times a day, notonly to refugees but to the poor of Paris, suddenly deprived of theirwage earners. It was some time before the Government got round topaying the daily allowance of one-franc-twenty-five to the wives andseventy-five centimes (fifty outside of Paris) for each child, knownas the allocation. Moreover, in those dread days when the Germanswere driving straight for Paris, many fled with the Government toBordeaux (not a few Americans ignominiously scampered off to England)and did not return for three weeks or more; during which time thosebrave enough to remain did ten times as much work as should beexpected even of the nine-lived female. 

They knew at this critical time as well as later when they werebreathing normally again that the poor éclopés beyond the barrier werewithout shelter in the autumn rains and altogether in desperateplight; but it was only now and again that a few found time to paythem a hasty visit and cheer them with those little gifts so dear tothe imaginative heart of the French soldier. Sooner or later, ofcourse, the Government would have taken them in hand and organizedthem as meticulously as they have organized every conceivable angle ofthis great struggle; but meanwhile thousands would have died orshambled home to litter the villages as hopeless invalids. Perhapshundreds of thousands is a safer computation, and these hundreds ofthousands Mlle. Javal saved for France. 

V

Today there are over one hundred and thirty Éclopé Dépôts in France;two or three are near Paris, the rest in the towns and villages of theWar Zone. The long baraques are well built, rain-proof anddraught-proof, but with many windows which are open when possible, and furnished with comfortable beds. In each dépôt there is a hospitalbaraque for those that need that sort of rest or care, a diet kitchen, and a fine large kitchen for those that can eat anything and haveappetites of daily increasing vigor. 

These dépôts are laid out like little towns, the streets of the largeones named after famous generals and battles. Down one side is a rowof low buildings in which the officers, doctors and nurses sleep; achemist shop; a well-fitted bathroom; storerooms for supplies; andconsulting offices. There is also, almost invariably, a cantine set upby young women--English, American, French--where the men are suppliedat any time with cocoa, coffee, milk, lemonade, cakes; and the littlebuilding itself is gaily decorated to please the color-loving Frencheye. 

Mlle. Javal took me out to the environs of Paris to visit one of thelargest of these dépôts, and there the men in hospital were nursed bySisters of Charity. There was a set of well-filled bookshelves and astage in the great refectory, where the men could sit on rainy days, read, write letters, sing, smoke, recite, and get up little plays. Isaw a group of very contented looking poilus in the yard playing cardsand smoking under a large tree. 

The surroundings were hideous--a railroad yard if I am notmistaken--but the little "town" itself was very pleasing to the eye, and certainly a haven of refuge for soldiers whose bodies and mindsneeded only repose, care, and kind words to send them back to theFront sounder by far than they had been in their unsanitary daysbefore the war. 

Here they are forced to sleep with their windows open, to bathe, eatgood food, instead of mortifying the body for the sake of filling thefamily stocking; and they are doctored intelligently, their teethfilled, their tonsils and adenoids taken out, their chronicindigestion cured. Those who survive the war will never forget thelesson and will do missionary work when they are at home once more. 

All that was dormant in Mlle. Javal's fine brain seemed to awake underthe horrifying stimulus of that first visit to the wretches herdedlike animals outside of Paris, where every man thought he was draftedfor death and did not care whether he was or not; where, in short, morale, so precious an asset to any nation in time of war, waspractically nil. 

The first step was to get a powerful committee together. Mlle. Javal, although wealthy, could not carry through this gigantic task alone. The moratorium had stopped the payment of rents, factories wereclosed, tenants mobilized. Besides, she had already given right andleft, as everybody else had done who had anything to give. It wasgrowing increasingly difficult to raise money. 

But nothing could daunt Mlle. Javal. She managed to get together withthe least possible delay a committee of three hundred, and sheobtained subscriptions in money from one thousand five hundred firms, besides donations of food and clothing from eight hundred others, headed by the King of Spain. 

Her subscription list was opened by President Poincaré with a gift ofone thousand francs; the American War Relief Clearing House gave herfour thousand three hundred francs, Madame Viviani contributed fourthousand francs; the Comédie Française one thousand, and Raphael Weillof San Francisco seven thousand seven hundred and fifty; AlexanderPhillips of New York three thousand; and capitalists, banks, bankclerks, civil servants, colonials, school children, contributed sumsgreat and small. 

Concerts were given, bazaars hastily but successfully organized, collections taken up. There was no end to Mlle. Javal's resource, andthe result was an almost immediate capital of several hundred thousandfrancs. When public interest was fairly roused, les pauvres éclopésbecame one of the abiding concerns of the French people, and they haveresponded as generously as they did to the needs of the morepicturesque refugee or the starving within their gates. 

This great organization, known as "L'Assistance aux Dépôts d'Éclopés, Petits Blessés et Petites Malades, et aux Cantonments de Repos, " wasformally inaugurated on November 14, 1914, with Madame Jules Ferry asPresident, and Madame Viviani as Vice-President. Mlle. Javal showsmodestly on the official list as Secrétaire Genérale. 

The Government agreed to put up the baraques, and did so with theleast possible delay. Mlle. Javal and her Committee furnish the beds(there were seven hundred in one of the dépôts she showed me), supportthe dietary kitchen and the hospital baraques, and supply thebathrooms, libraries, and all the little luxuries. The Governmentsupports the central kitchen (_grand régime_), the doctors, and, whennecessary, the surgeons. 

VI

Mlle. Javal took me twice through the immense establishment on theChamps Élysées, where she has not only her offices but workrooms andstorerooms. In one room a number of ladies--in almost all of theseoeuvres women give their services, remaining all day or a part ofevery day--were doing nothing but rolling cigarettes. I looked at themwith a good deal of interest. They belonged to that class of Frenchlife I have tried to describe, in which the family is the allimportant unit; where children rarely play with other children, sometimes never; where the mother is a sovereign who is content toremain within the boundaries of her own small domain for months at atime, particularly if she lives not in an apartment, but in an hôtelwith a garden behind it. Thousands of these exemplary women of thebourgeoisie--hundreds of thousands--care little or nothing for"society. " They call at stated intervals, upon which ceremoniousoccasion they drink coffee and eat pastry; give their young peopledances when the exact conventional moment has arrived for putting themon the market, and turn out in force at the great periodicities oflife, but otherwise to live and die in the bosom of The Family is themeasure of their ambition. 

I shall have a good deal to say later of the possible results of thevast upheaval of home life caused by this war; but of these womensitting for hours on end in a back room of Mlle. Javal's centralestablishment in Paris it is only necessary to state that they lookedas intent upon making cigarettes in a professional manner, beyondcavil by the canny poilu, as if they were counting the family linen orsuperintending one of the stupendous facts of existence, a daughter'strousseau. Only the one to whom I was introduced raised her eyes, andI should not have been expected to distract her attention for a momenthad not she told Mlle. Javal that she had read my books (in theTauchnitz edition) and would like to meet me when I called. 

It seemed to me that everything conceivable was in those largestorerooms. I had grown used to seeing piles of sleeping-suits, sleeping-bags, trench slippers, warm underclothes, sabots, all that iscomprised in the word _vêtement_; but here were also immense boxes ofbooks and magazines, donated by different firms and editors, about tobe shipped to the dépôts; games of every sort; charming photogravures, sketches, prints, pictures, that would make the baraques gay andbeloved--all to be interspersed, however, with mottoes from famouswriters calculated to elevate not only the morale but the morals ofthe idle. 

Then there were cases of handkerchiefs, of pens and paper, pencils, songs with and without music, knives, pipes, post-cards, razors, parasiticides, chocolate, vaseline, perfumes (many of these articlesare donations from manufacturers), soap in vast quantities; booksserious and diverting; pamphlets purposed to keep patriotism at feverpitch, or to give the often ignorant peasant soldier a clear idea ofthe designs of the enemy. 

In small compartments at one end of the largest of the rooms wereexhibited the complete installations of the baraques, the portablebeds, kitchen and dining-room utensils and dishes, all extraordinarilyneat and compact. In another room was a staff engaged incorrespondence with officers, doctors and surgeons at the Front, poilus, or the hundred and one sources that contribute to the greatoeuvre. Girls, young widows, young and middle-aged married women whosehusbands and sons were fighting, all give their days freely and workfar harder and more conscientiously than most women do for hire. 

All of these presents, when they arrive at the dépôts, are given outpersonally by the officers, and this as much as the genuine democracyof the men in command has served to break down the suspicious or surlyspirit of the French peasant on his first service, to win over thebumptious industrial, and even to subdue the militant anarchist andpredatory Apache. This was Mlle. Javal's idea, and has solved aproblem for many an anxious officer. 

She said to me with a shrug: "My brother and I are now run by ourservants. I have quite lost control. Our home is like a bachelorapartment. After the war is over I must turn them all out and get anew staff. "

And this is but one of the minor problems for men and women the GreatWar has bred. 

VII

Magic lanterns and cinemas are also among the presents sent to theéclopé dépôts in the War Zone; some of which, by the way, arecharmingly situated. I visited one just outside of a town which by amiracle had escaped the attention of the enemy during the retreatafter the Battle of the Marne. The buildings of the dépôt have beenbuilt in the open fields but heavily ambushed by fine old trees. Nearby is a river picturesquely winding and darkly shaded. Here I saw anumber of éclopés fishing as calmly as if the roar of the guns thatcame down the wind from Verdun were but the precursor of an eveningstorm. 

In the large refectory men were writing home; reading not only booksbut the daily and weekly newspapers with which the dépôts aregenerously supplied by the editors of France. Others were exercisingin a gymnasium or playing games with that childish absorption thatseems to be as natural to a soldier at the Front when off duty as thedesire for a bath or a limbering of the muscles when he leaves thetrenches. 

Another of Mlle. Javal's ideas was to send to the War Zone automobilescompletely equipped with a dental apparatus in charge of a competentdentist. These automobiles travel from dépôt to dépôt and even givetheir services to hospitals where there are no dental installations. 

Other automobiles have a surgeon and the equipment for immediatefacial operations; and there are migratory pedicures, masseurs, andbarbers. So heavy has been the subscription, so persistent andintelligent the work of all connected with this great oeuvre, soincreasingly fertile the amazing brain of Mlle. Javal, thatpractically nothing is now wanted to make these Dépôts d'Éclopésperfect instruments for saving men for the army by the hundredthousand. I once heard the estimate of the army's indebtedness placedas high as a million and a half. 

The work of M. Frederic Masson must not be ignored, and Madame Balliassisted him for a short time, until compelled to concentrate on herother work; but it is not comparable in scope to that of Mlle. Javal. Hers is unprecedented, one of the greatest achievements of Francebehind the lines, and of any woman at any time. 

V

THE WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY

I

Madame Vérone, one of the leading lawyers and feminists of Paris, toldme that without the help of the women France could not have remainedin the field six months. This is no doubt true. Probably it has beentrue of every war that France has ever waged. Nor has French historyever been reluctant to admit its many debts to the sex it admires, without idealization perhaps, but certainly in more ways than one. Asfar back as the reign of Louis XI memoirs pay their tribute to thevalue of the French woman both in peace and in war. This war has beenone of the greatest incentives to women in all the belligerentcountries that has so far occurred in the history of the world, andthe outcome is a problem that the men of France, at least, are alreadyrevolving in their vigilant brains. 

On the other hand the inept have just managed to exist. Madame Véronetook me one day to a restaurant on Montmartre. It had been one of thelargest cabarets of that famous quarter, and at five or six tablesrunning its entire length I saw seven hundred men and women eating asubstantial déjeuner of veal swimming in spinach, dry purée ofpotatoes, salad, apples, cheese, and coffee. For this they paid tencents (fifty centimes) each, the considerable deficit being made up bythe ladies who had founded the oeuvre and run it since the beginningof the war. 

[Illustration: WHERE THE ARTISTS DINE FOR FIFTY CENTIMES]

Nearly all of these people escaping charity by so narrow a margin hadbeen second-rate actors and scene shifters, or artists--of bothsexes--the men being either too old or otherwise ineligible for thearmy. This was their only square meal during twenty-four hours. Theymade at home such coffee as they could afford, and went without dinnermore often than not. The daughter of this very necessary charity, ahandsome strongly built girl, told me that she had waited on her tablewithout a day's rest for eighteen months. 

I am frank to say that I could not eat the veal and spinach, andconfined myself to the potatoes and bread. But no doubt real hunger isa radical cure for fastidiousness. 

Later in the day Madame Vérone took me to the once famous Abbaye, nowa workroom for the dressers of dolls, a revived industry which hasgiven employment to hundreds of women. Some of the wildest revels ofParis had taken place in the restaurant now incongruously lined withrows of dolls dressed in every national costume of Allied Europe. Theysat sedately against the walls, Montenegrins, Serbians, Russians, Italians, Sicilians, Roumanians, Poilus, Alsatians, Tommies, [C] astrange medley, correctly but cheaply dressed. At little tables, muterecords of disreputable nights, sat women stitching, and outside thestreets of Montmartre were as silent as the grave. 

 [C] No doubt there are now little Uncle Sams. 

II

A few days later I was introduced to a case of panurgy that would havebeen almost extreme in any but a Frenchwoman. 

Madame Camille Lyon took me to call on Madame Pertat, one of the mostsuccessful doctors in Paris. I found both her history and herpersonality highly interesting, and her experience no doubt will be asevere shock to many Americans who flatter themselves that we alone ofall women possess the priceless gift of driving initiative. 

Madame Pertat was born in a provincial town, of a good family, andreceived the usual education with all the little accomplishments thatwere thought necessary for a young girl of the comfortablebourgeoisie. She confessed to me naively that she had coquetted a gooddeal. As her brother was a doctor and brought his friends to the houseit was natural that she should marry into the same profession; and asshe continued to meet many doctors and was a young woman of muchmental curiosity and a keen intelligence it was also natural that sheshould grow more and more deeply interested in the science of medicineand take part in the learned discussions at her table. 

One day her husband, after a warm argument with her on the newtreatment of an old disease, asked her why she did not study medicine. She had ample leisure, no children, and, he added gallantly, a mind todo it justice. 

The suggestion horrified her, as it would have horrified her largefamily connection and circle of friends in that provincial town wherestandards are as slowly undermined as the cliffs of France by theaction of the sea. 

Shortly afterward they moved to Paris, where her husband, being a manof first-rate ability and many friends, soon built up a lucrativepractice. 

Being childless, full of life, and fond of variety, they spent farmore money than was common to their class, saving practically nothing. They had a handsome apartment with the usual number of servants;Madame Pertat's life was made up of a round of dressmakers, bridge, calls during the daytime, and companioning her husband at night to anyone of the more brilliant restaurants where there was dancing. Sometimes they dined early and went to the opera or the play. 

Suddenly the really serious mind of this woman revolted. She told methat she said to her husband: "This is abominable. I cannot stand thislife. I shall study medicine, which, after all, is the only thing thatreally interests me. "

She immediately entered upon the ten years' course, which includedfour years as an interne. France has now so far progressed that shetalks of including the degree of baccalaureate in the regular schoolcourse of women, lest they should wish to study for a professionlater; but at that time Madame Pertat's course in medicine was longdrawn out, owing to the necessity of reading for this degree. 

She was also obliged to interrupt her triumphal progress in order tobring her first and only child into the world; but finally graduatedwith the highest honors, being one of the few women of France who havereceived the diploma to practice. 

To practice, however, was the least of her intentions, now that shehad a child to occupy her mind and time. Then, abruptly, peace endedand war came. Men disappeared from their usual haunts like mist. Itwas as if the towns turned over and emptied their men on to theancient battlefields, where, generation after generation, war rages onthe same historic spots but re-naming its battles for the benefit ofchronicler and student. 

M. Le Docteur Pertat was mobilized with the rest. Madame's bankaccount was very slim. Then once more she proved that she was a womanof energy and decision. Without any formalities she stepped into herhusband's practice as a matter of course. On the second day of the warshe ordered out his runabout and called on every patient on hisimmediate list, except those that would expect attention in his officeduring the usual hours of consultation. 

Her success was immediate. She lost none of her husband's patients andgained many more, for every doctor of military age had been calledout. Of course her record in the hospitals was well known, not only tothe profession but to many of Dr. Pertat's patients. Her income, inspite of the war, is larger than it ever was before. 

She told me that when the war was over she should resign in herhusband's favor as far as her general practice was concerned, butshould have a private practice of her own, specializing in skindiseases and facial blemishes. She could never be idle again, and ifit had not been for the brooding shadow of war and her constantanxiety for her husband, she should look back upon those two years ofhard medical practice and usefulness as the most satisfactory of herlife. 

She is still a young woman, with vivid yellow hair elaboratelydressed, and it was evident that she had none of the classicprofessional woman's scorn of raiment. Her apartment is full of oldcarved furniture and objets d'art, for she had always been acollector. Her most conspicuous treasure is a rare and valuableRussian censer of chased silver. This was on the Germans' list ofvaluables when they were sure of entering Paris in September, 1914. Through their spies they knew the location of every work of art in themost artistic city in the world. 

Madame Pertat is one of the twenty-five women doctors in Paris. Allare flourishing. When the doctors return for leave of absenceetiquette forbids them to visit their old patients while theirbrothers are still at the Front; and the same rule applies to doctorswho are stationed in Paris but are in Government service. The womenare having a magnificent inning, and whether they will be asmagnanimous as Madame Pertat and take a back seat when the men returnremains to be seen. The point is, however, that they are but anotherexample of the advantage of technical training combined with courageand energy. 

III

On the other hand, I heard of many women who, thrown suddenly out ofwork, or upon their own resources, developed their littleaccomplishments and earned a bare living. One daughter of an avocat, who had just managed to keep and educate his large family and waspromptly mobilized, left the Beaux Arts where she had studied forseveral years, and after some floundering turned her knowledge ofdesigning to the practical art of dress. She goes from house to housedesigning and cutting out gowns for women no longer able to afforddressmakers but still anxious to please. She hopes in time to beemployed in one of the great dressmakers' establishments, havingrenounced all thought of being an artist in a more grandiose sense. Meanwhile she keeps the family from starving while her mother andsisters do the housework. Her brothers are in the military collegesand will be called out in due course if the war continues long enoughto absorb all the youth of France. 

Mlle. E. , the woman who told me her story, was suffering from theeffects of the war herself. I climbed five flights to talk to her, andfound her in a pleasant little apartment looking out over the roofsand trees of Passy. Formerly she had taken a certain number ofAmerican girls to board and finish off in the politest tongue inEurope. The few American girls in Paris to-day (barring theanachronisms that paint and plume for the Ritz Hotel) are working withthe American Ambulance, the American Fund for French Wounded, or LeBien-Être du Blessé, and she sits in her high flat alone. 

But she too has adapted herself, and kept her little home. Sheilluminates for a Bible house, and paints exquisite Christmas andEaster cards. Of course she had saved something, for she was thefrugal type and restaurants and the cabaret could have no call forher. 

But alas! said she, there were the taxes, and ever more taxes. And whocould say how long the war would last? I cheerfully suggested that wemight have entered upon one of those war cycles so familiar in historyand that the world might not know peace again for thirty years. Although the French are very optimistic about the duration of this war(and, no doubt prompted by hope, I am myself) she agreed with me, andreiterated that one must not relax effort for a moment. 

Of course she has her filleul (godson) at the Front, a poor poilu whohas no family; and when he goes out the captain finds her another. Sheknits him socks and vests, and sends him such little luxuries as heasks for, always tobacco, and often chocolate. 

The French bourgeoisie--or French women of any class for thatmatter--do not take kindly to clubs. For this reason theirorganizations limped somewhat in the earlier days and only theirnatural financial genius, combined with the national practice ofeconomy, enabled them to develop that orderly team work so natural tothe Englishwoman. Mlle. E. Told me with a wry face that she detestedthe new clubs formed for knitting and sewing and rolling bandages. "Itis only old maids like myself, " she added, "who go regularly. Aftermarriage French women hate to leave their homes. Of course they godaily to the ouvroirs, where they have their imperative duties, butthey don't like it. I shall belong to no club when the war is over andmy American girls have returned to Paris. "

VI

MADAME PIERRE GOUJON

I

Madame Pierre Goujon is another young Frenchwoman who led not only alife of ease and careless happiness up to the Great War, but also, andfrom childhood, an uncommonly interesting one, owing to the kind fatethat made her the daughter of the famous Joseph Reinach. 

M. Reinach, it is hardly worth while to state even for the benefit ofAmerican readers, is one of the foremost "Intellectuals" of France. Born to great wealth, he determined in his early youth to live a lifeof active usefulness, and began his career as private secretary toGambetta. His life of that remarkable Gascon is the standard work. Hewas conspicuously instrumental in securing justice for Dreyfus, championing him in a fashion that would have wrecked the public careerof a man less endowed with courage and personality: twin gifts thathave carried him through the stormy seas of public life in France. 

His history of the Dreyfus case in seven volumes is accepted as anauthoritative however partisan report of one of the momentous crisesin the French Republic. He also has written on alcoholism andelection reforms, and he has been for many years a Member of theChamber of Deputies, standing for democracy and humanitarianism. 

On a memorable night in Paris, in June, 1916, it was my good fortuneto sit next to Monsieur Reinach at a dinner given by Mr. WhitneyWarren to the American newspaper men in Paris, an equal number ofFrench journalists, and several "Intellectuals" more or less connectedwith the press. The scene was the private banquet room of the Hotel deCrillon, a fine old palace on the Place de la Concorde; and in thatornate red and gold room where we dined so cheerfully, grim despotshad crowded not so many years before to watch from its long windowsthe executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. 

I was the only woman, a whim of Mr. Warren's, and possibly that is thereason I found this dinner in the historic chamber above a dark andquiet Paris the most interesting I ever attended! Perhaps it wasbecause I sat at the head of the room between Monsieur Reinach andMonsieur Hanotaux; perhaps merely because of the evening's climax. 

Of course we talked of nothing but the war (one is bored to death inParis if any other subject comes up). Only one speech was made, animpassioned torrent of gratitude by Monsieur Hanotaux directed at ourdistinguished host, an equally impassioned "Friend of France. " Iforget just when it was that a rumor began to run around the room andelectrify the atmosphere that a great naval engagement had takenplace in the North Sea; but it was just after coffee was served that aboy from the office of _Le Figaro_ entered with a proof-sheet forMonsieur Reinach to correct--he contributes a daily column signed"Polybe. " Whether the messenger brought a note from the editor ormerely whispered his information, again I do not know, but it wasimmediately after that Monsieur Reinach told us that news had comethrough Switzerland of a great sea fight in which the Germans had losteight battleships. 

"And as the news comes from Germany, " he remarked dryly, "and as theGermans admit having lost eight ships we may safely assume that theyhave lost sixteen. " And so it proved. 

The following day in Paris was the gloomiest I have ever experiencedin any city, and was no doubt one of the gloomiest in history. Not aword had come from England. Germany had claimed uncontradicted anoverwhelming victory, with the pride of Britain either at the bottomof the North Sea or hiding like Churchill's rats in any hole thatwould shelter them from further vengeance. People, both French andAmerican, who had so long been waiting for the Somme drive to commencethat they had almost relinquished hope went about shaking their headsand muttering: "Won't the British even fight on the sea?"

I felt suicidal. Presupposing the continued omnipotence of the BritishNavy, the Battle of the Marne had settled the fate of Germany, but ifthat Navy had proved another illusion the bottom had fallen out of theworld. Not only would Europe be done for, but the United States ofAmerica might as well prepare to black the boots of Germany. 

When this war is over it is to be hoped that all the censors will betaken out and hanged. In view of the magnificent account of itselfwhich Kitchener's Army has given since that miserable day, to saynothing of the fashion in which the British Navy lived up to its besttraditions in that Battle of Jutland, it seems nothing short ofcriminal that the English censor should have permitted the world tohold Great Britain in contempt for twenty-four hours and sink poorFrance in the slough of despond. However, he is used to abuse, andpresumably does not mind it. 

On the following day he condescended to release the truth. We allbreathed again, and I kept one of my interesting engagements withMadame Pierre Goujon. 

II

This beautiful young woman's husband was killed during the first monthof the war. Her brother was reported missing at about the same time, and although his wife has refused to go into mourning there is littlehope that he will ever be seen alive again or that his body will befound. There was no room for doubt in the case of Pierre Goujon. 

Perhaps if the young officer had died in the natural course of eventshis widow would have been overwhelmed by her loss, although it isdifficult to imagine Madame Goujon a useless member of society at anytime. Her brilliant black eyes and her eager nervous little faceconnote a mind as alert as Monsieur Reinach's. As it was, she closedher own home--she has no children--returned to the great hôtel of herfather in the Parc Monceau, and plunged into work. 

It is doubtful if at any period of the world's history men have failedto accept (or demand) the services of women in time of war, and thisis particularly true of France, where women have always counted asunits more than in any European state. Whether men have heretoforeaccepted these invaluable services with gratitude or as amatter-of-course is by the way. Never before in the world's historyhave fighting nations availed themselves of woman's co-operation in aswholesale a fashion as now; and perhaps it is the women who feel thegratitude. 

Of course the first duty of every Frenchwoman in those distracted daysof August, 1914, was, as I have mentioned before, to feed the poorwomen so suddenly thrown out of work or left penniless with largefamilies of children. Then came the refugees pouring down from Belgiumand the invaded districts of France; and these had to be clothed aswell as fed. 

In common with other ladies of Paris, both French and American, MadameGoujon established ouvroirs after the retreat of the Germans, in orderto give useful occupation to as many of the destitute women aspossible. But when these were in running order she joined theBaroness Lejeune (born a Princess Murat and therefore of Napoleon'sblood) in forming an organization both permanent and on the grandscale. 

The Baroness Lejeune also had lost her husband early in the war. Hehad been detached from his regiment and sent to the Belgian front toact as bodyguard to the Prince of Wales. Receiving by a specialmessenger a letter from his wife, to whom he had been married but afew months, he separated himself from the group surrounding theEnglish Prince and walked off some distance alone to read it. Here abomb from a taube intended for the Prince hit and killed himinstantly. 

Being widows themselves it was natural they should concentrate theirminds on some organization that would be of service to other widows, poor women without the alleviations of wealth and social eminence, many of them a prey to black despair. Calling in other young widows oftheir own circle to help (the number was already appalling), they wentabout their task in a business-like way, opening offices in the RueVizelly, which were subsequently moved to 20 Rue Madrid. 

When I saw these headquarters in May, 1916, the oeuvre was a year oldand in running order. In one room were the high chests of narrowdrawers one sees in offices and public libraries. These were for cardindexes and each drawer contained the dossiers of widows who hadapplied for assistance or had been discovered suffering in lonelypride by a member of the committee. Each dossier included a methodicalaccount of the age and condition of the applicant, of the number ofher children, and the proof that her husband was either dead or"missing. " Also, her own statement of the manner in which she might, if assisted, support herself. 

Branches of this great work--Association d'Aide aux Veuves Militairesde la Grande Guerre--have been established in every department ofFrance; there is even one in Lille. The Central Committee takes careof Paris and environs, the number of widows cared for by them at thattime being two thousand. No doubt the number has doubled since. 

In each of the rooms I visited a young widow sat before a table, and Iwondered then, as I wondered many times, if all the young Frenchwidows really were beautiful or only created the complete illusion inthat close black-hung toque with its band of white crêpe just abovethe eyebrows and another from ear to ear beneath the chin. When theeyes are dark, the eyebrows heavily marked, no hair visible, and theprofile regular, the effect is one of poignant almost sensationalbeauty. Madame Goujon looks like a young abbess. 

I do not wish to be cynical but it occurred to me that few of theseyoung widows failed to be consoled when they stood before theirmirrors arrayed for public view, however empty their hearts. Before Ihad left Paris I had concluded that it was the mothers who were to bepitied in this accursed war. Life is long and the future holds manymysteries for handsome young widows. Nevertheless the higher happinessis sometimes found in living with a sacred memory and I have an ideathat one or two of these young widows I met will be faithful to theirdead. 

Smooth as this oeuvre appeared on the surface it had not been easy toestablish and every day brought its frictions and obstacles. TheFrench temperament is perhaps the most difficult in the world to dealwith, even by the French themselves. Our boasted individuality ismerely in the primal stage compared with the finished production inFrance. Even the children are far more complex and intractable thanours. They have definite opinions on the subject of life, character, and the disposition of themselves at the age of six. 

Madame Goujon told me that every widow in need of help, no matter howtormented or however worthy, had to be approached with far more tactthan possible donors, and her idiosyncrasies studied and acceptedbefore anything could be done with her, much less for her. 

Moreover there was the great problem of the women who would not work. These were either of the industrial class, or of that petitebourgeoisie whose husbands, called to the colors, had been smallclerks and had made just enough to keep their usually childless wivesin a certain smug comfort. 

These women, whose economical parents had married them into their ownclass, or possibly boosted them one step higher, with the aid of theindispensable dot, never had done any work to speak of, and many ofthem manifested the strongest possible aversion from working, evenunder the spur of necessity. They had one-franc-twenty-five a day fromthe Government and much casual help during the first year of the war, when money was still abundant, from charitable members of the noblesseor the haute bourgeoisie. As their dot had been carefully invested in_rentes_ (bonds) if it continued to yield any income at all this waspromptly swallowed up by taxes. 

As for the women of the industrial class, they not only receivedone-franc-twenty-five a day but, if living in Paris, seventy-fivecentimes for each child--fifty if living in the provinces; andfamilies in the lower classes of France are among the largest in theworld. Five, ten, fifteen children; I heard these figures mentioneddaily, and, on one or two occasions, nineteen. Mrs. Morton Mitchell ofSan Francisco, who lives in Paris in the Avenue du Bois de Bologne, discovered after the war broke out that the street-sweeper to whom shehad often given largesse left behind him when called to the Frontsomething like seventeen dependents. Indeed, they lost no timeacquainting her with the fact; they called on her in a body, and shehas maintained them ever since. 

While it was by no means possible in the case of the more moderatefamilies to keep them in real comfort on the allocation, the women, many of them, had a pronounced distaste for work outside of theirlittle homes, as they had their liberty for the first time in theirdrab and overworked lives and proposed to enjoy it. No man to dolethem out just enough to keep a roof over their heads and for bread andstew, while he spent the rest on tobacco, at the wine-shops, or fordues to the Socialist or Syndicalist Club. Every centime that came innow was theirs to administer as they pleased. 

The Mayoress of a small town near Paris told me that she had heardthese women say more than once they didn't care how long the warlasted; owing to the prevalence of the alcoholism octopus which hasfastened itself on France of late years the men often beat their wivesas brutally as the low-class Englishmen, and this vice added to themiserliness of their race made their sojourn in the trenches a welcomerelief. Of course these were the exceptions, for the Frenchman in themain is devoted to his family, but there were enough of them to emergeinto a sudden prominence after the outbreak of the war when charitablewomen were leaving no stone unturned to relieve possible distress. 

There is a story of one man with thirteen children who was called tothe colors on August second, and whose wife received allocationamounting to more than her husband's former earnings. It was some timeafter the war began that the rule was made exempting from serviceevery man with more than six children. When it did go into effect thefathers of large flocks hastened home, anticipating a joyful reunion. But the wife of this man, at least, received him with dismay andordered him to enlist--within the hour. 

"Don't you realize, " she demanded, "that we never were so well offbefore? We can save for the first time in our lives and I can get agood job that would not be given me if you were here. Go where youbelong. Every man's place is in the trenches. "

There is not much romance about a marriage of that class, nor is theremuch romance left in the harried brain of any mother of thirteen. 

III

Exasperating as those women were who preferred to live with theirchildren on the insufficient allocation, it is impossible not to feela certain sympathy for them. In all their lives they had known nothingbut grinding work; liberty is the most precious thing in the world andwhen tasted for the first time after years of sordid oppression itgoes to the head. Moreover, the Frenchwoman has the most extraordinaryfaculty for "managing. " The poorest in Paris would draw their skirtsaway from the slatterns and their dirty offspring in our own tenementdistricts. 

One day I went with Madame Paul Dupuy over to what she assured me wasone of the poorest districts of Paris. Our visit had nothing to dowith the war. She belonged to a charitable organization which foryears had paid weekly visits to the different parishes of the capitaland weighed a certain number of babies. The mothers that brought theirhowling offspring (who abominated the whole performance) were givenmoney according to their needs--vouched for by the priest of thedistrict--and if the babies showed a falling off in weight they weresent to one of the doctors retained by the society. 

The little stone house (situated, by the way, in an old garden of ahunting-lodge which is said to have been the _rendezvous de chasse_ ofMadame du Barry), where Madame Dupuy worked, with an apron coveringher gown and her sleeves rolled up, was like an ice-box, and the nakedbabies when laid on the scales shrieked like demons. One male child, Iremember, sat up perfectly straight and bellowed his protest with aninsistent fury and a snorting disdain at all attempts to placate himthat betokened the true son of France and a lusty long-distancerecruit for the army. All the children, in fact, although theirmothers were unmistakably poor, looked remarkably plump and healthy. 

After a time, having no desire to contract peritonitis, I left thelittle house and went out and sat in the car. There I watched fornearly an hour the life of what we would call a slum. The hour wasabout four in the afternoon, when even the poor have a little leisure. The street was filled with women sauntering up and down, gossiping, and followed by their young. These women and children may have had onno underclothes: their secrets were not revealed to me; but theirouter garments were decent. The children had a scrubbed look and theirhair was confined in tight pigtails. The women looked stout andcomfortable. 

They may be as clean to-day but I doubt if they are as stout and asplacid of expression. The winter was long and bitter and coal and foodscarce, scarcer, and more scarce. 

IV

The two classes of women with whom Madame Goujon and her friends havemost difficulty are in the minority and merely serve as the shadows inthe great canvas crowded with heroic figures of French women of allclasses who are working to the limit of their strength for theircountry or their families. They may be difficult to manage and theymay insist upon working at what suits their taste, but they do workand work hard; which after all is the point. Madame Goujon took methrough several of the ouvroirs which her society had founded to teachthe poor widows--whose pension is far inferior to the often briefallocation--a number of new occupations under competent teachers. 

Certainly these young benefactors had exercised all their ingenuity. Some of the women, of course, had been fit for nothing but manuallabor, and these they had placed as scrub-women in hospitals or asservants in hôtels or families. But in the case of the moreintelligent or deft of finger no pains were being spared to fit themto take a good position, or, as the French would say, "situation, " inthe future life of the Republic. 

In a series of rooms lent to the society by one of the greatdressmakers, I saw keen-looking women of all ages learning to retouchphotographs, to wind bobbins by electricity, to dress hair and fashionwigs, to engrave music scores, articulate artificial limbs, makeartificial flowers, braces for wounded arms and legs, and artificialteeth! Others are taught nursing, bookkeeping, stenography, dentistry. 

One of Madame Goujon's most picturesque revivals is the dressing ofdolls. Before the Franco-Prussian war this great industry belonged toFrance. Germany took it away from France while she was prostrate, monopolizing the doll trade of the world, and the industry almostceased at its ancient focus. Madame Goujon was one of the first to seethe opportunity for revival in France, and with Valentine Thompson andMadame Vérone, to mention but two of her rivals, was soon employinghundreds of women. A large room on the ground floor of M. Reinach'shotel is given over as a storeroom for dolls, all irreproachablydressed and indisputably French. 

It will take a year or two of practice and the co-operation of maletalent after the war to bring the French doll up to the high standardattained by the Germans throughout forty years of plodding efficiency. The prettiest dolls I saw were those arrayed in the different nationalcostumes of Europe, particularly those that still retain the styles ofmusical comedy. After those rank the Red Cross nurses, particularlythose that wear the blue veil over the white. And I never saw in reallife such superb, such imperturbable brides. 

V

Another work in which Madame Goujon is interested and which certainlyis as picturesque is Le Bon Gite. The gardens of the Tuilleries whenregarded from the quay present an odd appearance these days. One seesrow after row of little huts, models of the huts the English Societyof Friends have built in the devastated valley of the Marne. Wherehundreds of families were formerly living in damp cellars or in theruins of large buildings, wherever they could find a sheltering wall, the children dying of exposure, there are now a great number of theseportable huts where families may be dry and protected from theelements, albeit somewhat crowded. 

The object of Le Bon Gite is to furnish these little temporaryhomes--for real houses cannot be built until the men come back fromthe war--and these models in the Tuilleries Gardens show to thevisitor what they can do in the way of furnishing a home that willaccommodate a woman and two children, for three hundred francs (sixtydollars). 

It seems incredible, but I saw the equipment of several of theselittle shelters (which contain several rooms) and I saw the bills. They contained a bed, two chairs, a table, a buffet, a stove, kitchenfurnishings, blankets, linen, and crockery. There were even windowcurtains. The railway authorities had reduced freight rates for theirbenefit fifty per cent; and at that time (July, 1916) they had rescuedthe poor of four wrecked villages from reeking cellars and filthystraw and given some poor poilus a home to come to during their sixdays' leave of absence from the Front. 

The Marquise de Ganay and the Comtesse de Bryas, two of the mostactive members, are on duty in the offices of their neat littleexhibition for several hours every day, and it was becoming one of thecheerful sights of Paris. 

There is little left of the Tuilleries to-day to recall the ornatesplendors of the Second Empire, when the Empress Eugenie held hercourt there, and gave garden parties under the oaks and the chestnuts. There is a vast chasm between the pomp of courts and huts furnishedfor three hundred francs for the miserable victims of the war; butthat chasm, to be sure, was bridged by the Commune and this war hasshown those that have visited the Military Zone that a palace makes ano more picturesque ruin than a village. 

VI

A more curious contrast was a concert given one afternoon in theTuilleries Gardens for the purpose of raising money for one of the warrelief organizations. Madame Paul Dupuy asked me if I would help hertake two blind soldiers to listen to it. We drove first out to Reuillyto the Quinze Vingts, a large establishment where the Government hasestablished hundreds of their war blind (who are being taught a scoreof new trades), and took the two young fellows who were passed out tous. The youngest was twenty-one, a flat-faced peasant boy, whose eyeshad been destroyed by the explosion of a pistol close to his face. Theolder man, who may have been twenty-six, had a fine, thin, dark faceand an expression of fixed melancholy. He had lost his sight fromshock. Both used canes and when we left the car at the entrance to theTuilleries we were obliged to guide them. 

The garden was a strange assortment of fashionable women, many of thembearing the highest titles in France, and poilus in their fadeduniforms, nearly all maimed--réformés, mutilés! The younger of ourcharges laughed uproariously, with the other boys, at the comic song, but my melancholy charge never smiled, and later when, under thethawing influence of tea, he told us his story, I was not surprised. 

He had been the proprietor before the war of a little business in theNorth, prosperous and happy in his little family of a wife and twochildren. His mother was dead but his father and sister lived closeby. War came and he left for the Front confident that his wife wouldrun the business. It was only a few months later that he heard hiswife had run away with another man, that the shop was abandoned, andthe children had taken refuge with his father. 

Then came the next blow. His sister died of successive shocks and hisfather was paralyzed. Then he lost his sight. His children were livinganyhow with neighbors in the half ruined village, and he was learningto make brushes. 

So much for the man's tragedy in war time. It is said that as timegoes on there are more of them. On the other hand, during the firstyear, when the men were not allowed to go home, they formed abidingconnections with women in the rear of the army, and when the six days'leave was granted preferred to take these ladies on a little jauntthan return to the old drab existence at home. 

These are what may be called the by-products of war, but they mayexercise a serious influence on a nation's future. When the hundredsof children born in the North of France, who are half English, or halfScotch, or half Irish, or half German, or half Indian, or halfMoroccan, grow up and begin to drift about and mingle with the generallife of the nation, the result may be that we shall have been the lastgeneration to see a race that however diversified was reasonably proudof its purity. 

VII

MADAME PIERRE GOUJON (Continued)

I

I had gone to Lyons to see the war relief work of that flourishingcity and Madame Goujon went South at the same time to visit herhusband's people. We agreed to meet in the little town of Bourg laBresse, known to the casual tourist for its church erected in thesixteenth century by Margaret of Austria and famous for the carvingson its tombs. 

Otherwise it is a picturesque enlarged village with a meanderingstream that serves as an excuse for fine bridges; high-walled gardens, ancient trees, and many quaint old buildings. 

Not that I saw anything in detail. The Mayor, M. Loiseau, and MadameGoujon met me at the station, and my ride to the various hospitalsmust have resembled the triumphal progress of chariots in ancientRome. The population leaped right and left, the children evenscrambling up the walls as we flew through the narrow winding streets. It was apparent that the limited population of Bourg did not in theleast mind being scattered by their Mayor, for the children shriekedwith delight, and although you see few smiles in the provinces ofFrance these days, and far more mourning than in Paris, at least weencountered no frowns. 

The heroine of Bourg is Madame Dugas. Once more to repeat history:Before the war Madame Dugas, being a woman of fashion and largewealth, lived the usual life of her class. She had a château nearBourg for the autumn months: hunting and shooting before 1914 were asmuch the fashion on the large estates of France as in England. She hada villa on the Rivera, a hôtel in Paris, and a cottage at Dinard. Butas soon as war broke out all these establishments were either closedor placed at the disposal of the Government. She cleaned out a largehotel in Bourg and installed as many beds as it was possible to buy atthe moment. Then she sent word that she was ready to accommodate acertain number of wounded and asked for nurses and surgeons. 

The Government promptly took advantage of her generous offer, and herhospital was so quickly filled with wounded men that she was obligedto take over and furnish another large building. This soon overflowingas well as the military hospitals of the district, she looked about invain for another house large enough to make extensive installationsworth while. 

During all those terrible months of the war, when the wounded arrivedin Bourg by every train, and household after household put on itscrêpe, there was one great establishment behind its lofty walls thattook no more note of the war than if the newspapers that never passedits iron gates were giving daily extracts from ancient history. Thiswas the Convent de la Visitation. Its pious nuns had taken the vownever to look upon the face of man. If, as they paced under the greatoaks of their close, or the stately length of their cloisters tellingtheir beads, or meditating on the negation of earthly existence andthe perfect joys of the future, they heard an echo of the conflictthat was shaking Europe, it was only to utter a prayer that the soulsof those who had obeyed the call of their country and fallengloriously as Frenchmen should rest in peace. Not for a moment did theidea cross their gentle minds that any mortal force short of invasionby the enemy could bring them into contact with it. 

But that force was already in possession of Bourg. Madame Dugas was awoman of endless resource. Like many another woman in this war themoment her executive faculties, long dormant, were stirred, thatmoment they began to develop like the police microbes in feveredveins. 

She had visited that convent. She knew that its great walls shelteredlong rooms and many of them. It would make an ideal hospital and shedetermined that a hospital it should be. 

There was but one recourse. The Pope. Would she dare? People wondered. She did. The Pope, who knew that wounded men cannot wait, granted theholy nuns a temporary dispensation from their vows; and when I walkedthrough the beautiful Convent of the Visitation with Madame Dugas, Madame Goujon, and M. Loiseau, there were soldiers under every treeand nuns were reading to them. 

Nuns were also nursing those still in the wards, for nurses are nonetoo plentiful in France even yet, and Madame Dugas had stipulated forthe nuns as well as for the convent. 

It was a southern summer day. The grass was green. The ancient treeswere heavy with leaves. Younger and more graceful trees drooped fromthe terrace above a high wall in the rear. The sky was blue. Theofficers, the soldiers, looked happy, the nuns placid. It was an oasisin the desert of war. 

I leave obvious ruminations to the reader. 

When I met Madame Dugas, once more I wondered if all Frenchwomen whowere serving or sorrowing were really beautiful or if it were but onemore instance of the triumph of clothes. Madame Dugas is an infirmièremajor, and over her white linen veil flowed one of bright blue, transparent and fine. She wore the usual white linen uniform with thered cross on her breast, but back from her shoulders as she walkedthrough the streets with us streamed a long dark blue cloak. She is avery tall, very slender woman, with a proud and lofty head, a profileof that almost attenuated thinness that one sees only on aFrenchwoman, and only then when the centuries have done the chiseling. As we walked down those long, narrow, twisted streets of Bourg betweenthe high walls with the trees sweeping over the coping, she seemed tome the most strikingly beautiful woman I had ever seen. But whether Ishall still think so if I see her one of these days in a Parisballroom I have not the least idea. 

Madame Dugas runs three hospitals at her own expense and is her owncommittee. Like the rest of the world she expected the war to lastthree months, and like the rest of her countrywomen who immediatelyoffered their services to the state she has no intention of resigninguntil what is left of the armies are in barracks once more. She livesin a charming old house in Bourg, roomy and well furnished and with awild and classic garden below the terrace at the back. (Some day Ishall write a story about that house and garden. ) Here she rests whenshe may, and here she gave us tea. 

One wonders if these devoted Frenchwomen will have anything left oftheir fortunes if the war continues a few years longer. Madame Dugasmade no complaint, but as an example of the increase in her necessaryexpenditures since 1914 she mentioned the steadily rising price ofchickens. They had cost two francs at the beginning of the war andwere now ten. I assumed that she gave her grands blessés chickenbroth, which is more than they get in most hospitals. 

Many of the girls who had danced in her salons two years before, andeven their younger sisters, who had had no chance to "come out, " arehelping Madame Dugas, both as nurses and in many practical ways;washing and doing other work of menials as cheerfully as they everplayed tennis or rode in la chasse. 

II

Curiously enough, the next woman whose work has made her notable, thatMadame Goujon took me to see, was very much like Madame Dugas inappearance, certainly of the same type. 

Val de Grace is the oldest military hospital in Paris. It coversseveral acres and was begun by Louis XIII and finished by Napoleon. Before the war it was run entirely by men, but one by one or group bygroup these men, all reservists, were called out and it became aserious problem how to keep it up to its standard. Of course womenwere all very well as nurses, but it took strong men and many of themto cook for thousands of wounded, and there was the problem of keepingthe immense establishment of many buildings well swept and generallyclean. But the men had to go, réformés were not strong enough for thework, every bed was occupied--one entire building by tuberculars--andthey must both eat and suffer in sanitary conditions. 

Once more they were obliged to have recourse to Woman. 

Madame Olivier, like Madame Dugas a _dame du monde_ and an infirmièremajor, went to one of the hospitals at the Front on the day war brokeout, nursed under fire, of course, but displayed so much originalexecutive ability as well as willingness to do anything to help, nomatter what, that she was soon put in charge of the wounded on trains. After many trips, during which she showed her uncommon talent forsoothing the wounded, making them comfortable even when they werepacked like sardines on the floor, and bringing always some sort oforder out of the chaos of those first days, she was invited to takehold of the problem of Val de Grace. 

She had solved it when I paid my visit with Madame Goujon. She notonly had replaced all the men nurses and attendants with women but wastraining others and sending them off to military hospitals sufferingfrom the same sudden depletions as Val de Grace. She also told me thatthree women do the work of six men formerly employed, and that theyfinished before ten in the morning, whereas the men never finished. The hospital when she arrived had been in a condition such as menmight tolerate but certainly no woman. I walked through its wearymiles (barring the tuberculosis wards) and I never saw a hospital lookmore sanitarily span. 

But the kitchen was the show place of Val de Grace, little as thewomen hard at work suspected it. Where Madame Olivier found thosegiantesses I cannot imagine; certainly not in a day. She must havesifted France for them. They looked like peasant women and no doubtthey were. Only the soil could produce such powerful cart-horsefemales. And only such cart-horses could have cooked in the greatkitchen of Val de Grace. On a high range that ran the length of theroom were copper pots as large as vats, full of stew, and these theBrobdinagians stirred with wooden implements that appeared to myshattered senses as large as spades. No doubt they were of inferiordimensions, but even so they were formidable. How those women stirredand stirred those steaming messes! I never shall forget it. And theycould also move those huge pots about, those terrible females. Ithought of the French Revolution. 

Madame Olivier, ruling all this force, giantesses included, with a rodof iron, stood there in the entrance of the immaculate kitchen lookingdainty and out of place, with her thin proud profile, her clear darkskin, beautifully tinted in the cheeks, her seductive infirmièreuniform. But she has accomplished one of the minor miracles of thewar. 

I wonder if all these remarkable women of France will be decorated oneof these days? They have earned the highest _citations_, but perhapsthey have merely done their duty as Frenchwomen. C'est la guerre. 

VIII

VALENTINE THOMPSON

I

Fortunate are those women who not only are able to take care ofthemselves but of their dependents during this long period offinancial depression; still more fortunate are those who, eitherwealthy or merely independent, are able both to stand between thegreat mass of unfortunates and starvation and to serve their countryin old ways and new. 

More fortunate still are the few who, having made for themselves bytheir talents and energy a position of leadership before the war, wereimmediately able to carry their patriotic plans into effect. 

In March, 1914, Mlle. Valentine Thompson, already known as one of themost active of the younger feminists, and distinctly the mostbrilliant, established a weekly newspaper which she called _La VieFeminine_. The little journal had a twofold purpose: to offer everysort of news and encouragement to the by-no-means-flourishing partyand to give advice, assistance, and situations to women out of work. 

Mlle. Thompson's father at the moment was in the Cabinet, holding theportfolio of Ministre du Commerce. Her forefathers on either side hadfor generations been in public life. She and her grandmother had bothwon a position with their pen and therefore moved not only in the bestpolitical but the best literary society of Paris. Moreover Mlle. Thompson had a special penchant for Americans and knew more or lessintimately all of any importance who lived in Paris or visited itregularly. Mrs. Tuck, the wealthiest American living in France--it hasbeen her home for thirty years and she and her husband have spent afortune on charities--was one of her closest friends. All Americanswho went to Paris with any higher purpose than buying clothes orentertaining duchesses at the Ritz, took letters to her. Moreover, sheis by common consent, and without the aid of widow's bonnet or RedCross uniform, one of the handsomest women in Paris. She is of theAmazon type, with dark eyes and hair, a fine complexion, regularfeatures, any expression she chooses to put on, and she is always thewell-dressed Parisienne in detail as well as in effect. Her carriageis haughty and dashing, her volubility racial, her enthusiasm, whileit lasts, bears down every obstacle, and her nature is imperious. Shemust hold the center of the stage and the reins of power. I should saythat she was the most ambitious woman in France. 

She is certainly one of its towering personalities and if she does notstand out at the end of the war as Woman and Her Achievementspersonified it will be because she has the defects of her genius. Herrestless ambition and her driving energy hurl her headlong into onegreat relief work after another, until she has undertaken more thanany mere mortal can carry through in any given space of time. She istherefore in danger of standing for no one monumental work (as will bethe happy destiny of Mlle. Javal, for instance), although no woman'sactivities or sacrifices will have been greater. 

It may be imagined that such a woman when she started a newspaperwould be in a position to induce half the prominent men and women inFrance either to write for it or to give interviews, and this she did, of course; she has a magnificent publicity sense. The early numbers of_La Vie Feminine_ were almost choked with names known to "tout Paris. "It flourished in both branches, and splendid offices were opened onthe Avenue des Champs Elysées. Women came for advice and employmentand found both, for Mlle. Thompson is as sincere in her desire to helpthe less fortunate of her sex as she is in her feminism. 

II

Then came the War. 

Mlle. Thompson's plans were formed in a day, her Committees almost asquickly. _La Vie Feminine_ opened no less than seven ouvroirs, wherefive hundred women were given work. When the refugees began pouring inshe was among the first to ladle out soup and deplete her wardrobe. She even went to the hastily formed hospitals in Paris and offered herservices. As she was not a nurse she was obliged to do the mostmenial work, which not infrequently consisted in washing the filthypoilus wounded after weeks of fighting without a bath or change ofclothing. Sometimes the dirt-caked soldiers were natives of Algiers. But she performed her task with her accustomed energy andthoroughness, and no doubt the mere sight of her was a God-send tothose men who had for so long looked upon nothing but blood and deathand horrors. 

Then came the sound of the German guns thirty kilometers from Paris. The Government decided to go to Bordeaux. Mlle. Thompson's fatherinsisted that his daughter accompany himself and her mother. At firstshe refused. What should she do with the five hundred women in herouvroirs, the refugees she fed daily? She appealed to AmbassadorHerrick. But our distinguished representative shook his head. He hadtrouble enough on his hands. The more beautiful young women whoremoved themselves from Paris before the Boche entered it the simplerwould be the task of the men forced to remain. It was serious enoughthat her even more beautiful sister had elected to remain with herhusband, whose duties forbade him to flee. Go, Mademoiselle, and goquickly. 

Mlle. Thompson yielded but she made no precipitate flight. Collectingthe most influential and generous members of her Committees, sheraised the sum needed for a special train of forty cars. Into this shepiled the five hundred women of her ouvroirs and their children, alarge number of refugees, and an orphan asylum--one thousand in all. When it had steamed out of Paris and was unmistakably on its way tothe South she followed. But not to sit fuming in Bordeaux waiting forGeneral Joffre to settle the fate of Paris. She spent the three orfour weeks of her exile in finding homes or situations for herthousand helpless charges, in Blanquefort, Lourdes, Bayonne, Marseilles, Bordeaux and other southern cities and small towns, forming in each a Committee to look out for them. 

III

Soon after her return to Paris she conceived and put into operationthe idea of an École Hôtelière. 

Thousands of Germans and Austrians, employed as waiters or in othercapacities about the hotels, either had slunk out of Paris just beforewar was declared or were interned. Even the Swiss had been recalled toprotect their frontiers. The great hotels supplied the vacancies withmen hastily invited from neutral countries, very green and veryexorbitant in their demands. Hundreds of the smaller hotels wereobliged to close, although the smallest were, as ever, run by the wifeof the proprietor, and her daughters when old enough. 

But that was only half of the problem. After the war all these hotelsmust open to accommodate the tourists who would flock to Europe. TheSwiss of course could be relied upon to take the first train to Parisafter peace was declared, but the Germans and Austrians had been asthick in France as flies on a battlefield, and it will be a generationbefore either will fatten on Latin credulity again. Even if the peopleof the Central Powers revolt and set up a republic it will be longbefore the French, who are anything but volatile in their essence, will be able to look at a Boche without wanting to spit on him or tokick him out of the way as one would a vicious cur. 

To Mlle. Thompson, although men fall at her feet, the answer to everyproblem is Woman. 

She formed another powerful Committee, roused the enthusiasm of theTouring Club de France, rented a dilapidated villa in Passy, and afterenlisting the practical sympathies of furnishers, decorators, "magazins, " and persons generally whose business it is to make a housecomfortable and beautiful, she advertised not only in the Paris but inall the provincial newspapers for young women of good family whosemarriage prospects had been ruined by the war and who would wish tofit themselves scientifically for the business of hotel keeping. Eachshould be educated in every department from directrice to scullion. 

The answers were so numerous that she was forced to deny many whoselovers had been killed or whose parents no longer could hope toprovide them with the indispensable dot. The repairs and installationsof the villa having been rushed, it was in running order and itsdormitories were filled by some thirty young women in an incrediblyshort time. Mlle. Jacquier, who had presided over a somewhat similarschool in Switzerland, was installed as directrice. 

Each girl, in addition to irreproachable recommendations and thewritten consent of her parents, must pay seventy francs a month, bringa specified amount of underclothing, etc. ; and, whatever her age oreducation, must, come prepared to submit to the discipline of theschool. In return they were to be taught not only how to fill allpositions in a hotel, but the scientific principles of domesticeconomy, properties of food combined with the proportions necessary tohealth, bookkeeping, English, correspondence, geography, arithmetic--"calcul rapide"--gymnastics, deportment, hygiene. 

Moreover, when at the end of the three months' course they had takentheir diplomas, places would be found for them. If they failed to taketheir diplomas and could not afford another course, still wouldplaces, but of an inferior order, be provided. After the firststudents arrived it became known that an ex-pupil without place andwithout money could always find a temporary refuge there. Even if shehad "gone wrong" she might come and ask for advice and help. 

IV

When I arrived in Paris I had two letters to Mlle. Thompson and afterI had been there about ten days I went with Mr. Jaccaci to call on herat the offices of _La Vie Feminine_, and found them both sumptuousand a hive of activities. In the course of the rapid give-and-takeconversation--if it can be called that when one sits tight with thegrim intention of pinning Mlle. Thompson to one subject long enough toextract definite information from her--we discovered that she hadtranslated one of my books. Neither of us could remember which it was, although I had a dim visualization of the correspondence, but itformed an immediate bond. Moreover--another point I had quiteforgotten--when her friend, Madame Leverrière, had visited the UnitedStates some time previously to put Mlle. Thompson's dolls on themarket, I had been asked to write something in favor of the work forthe New York _Times_. Madame Leverrière, who was present, informed meenthusiastically that I had helped her _énormément, _ and there wasanother bond. 

The immediate consequence was that, although I could get little thatwas coherent from Mlle. Thompson's torrent of classic French, I wasinvited to be an inmate of the École Hôtelière at Passy. I hadmentioned that although I was comfortable at the luxurious Hôtel deCrillon, still when I went upstairs and closed my door I was in theatmosphere of two years ago. And I must have constant atmosphere, formy time was limited. I abominated pensions, and from what I had heardof French families who took in a "paying guest, " or, in their tongue, _dame pensionnaire_, I had concluded that the total renouncement ofatmosphere was the lesser evil. 

Would I go out and see the École Feminine? I would. It soundedinteresting and a visit committed me to nothing. Mlle. Thompson put itcharmingly. I should be conferring a favor. There was a guest chamberand no guest for the pupils to practice on. And it would be an honor, etc. 

We drove out to Passy and I found the École Feminine in the BoulevardBeauséjour all and more than Mlle. Thompson had taken the time toportray in detail. The entrance was at the side of the house and oneapproached it through a large gateway which led to a cul-de-sac linedwith villas and filled with beautiful old trees that enchanted my eye. I cursed those trees later but at the moment they almost decided mebefore I entered the house. 

The interior, having been done by enthusiastic admirers of Mlle. Thompson, was not only fresh and modern but artistic and striking. Thesalon was paneled, but the dining-room had been decorated by Poiretwith great sprays and flowers splashed on the walls, picturesquevegetables that had parted with their humility between the garden andthe palette. Through a glass partition one saw the shining kitchenwith its large modern range, its rows and rows of the most expensiveutensils--all donations by the omnifarious army of Mlle. Thompson'sdevotees. 

Behind the salon was the schoolroom, with its blackboard, its fourlong tables, its charts for food proportions. All the girls wore bluelinen aprons that covered them from head to foot. 

I followed Mlle. Thompson up the winding stair and was shown thedormitories, the walls decorated as gaily as if for a bride, butotherwise of a severe if comfortable simplicity. Every cot was as neatas a new hospital's in the second year of the war, and there was animmense lavatory on each floor. 

Then I was shown the quarters destined for me if I would so farcondescend, etc. There was quite a large bedroom, with a windowlooking out over a mass of green, and the high terraces of housesbeyond; the garden of a neighbor was just below. There was a verylarge wardrobe, with shelves that pulled out, and one of thosewash-stands where a minute tank is filled every morning (when notforgotten) and the bowl is tipped into a noisy tin just below. 

The room was in a little hallway of its own which terminated in alarge bathroom with two enormous tubs. Of course the water was heatedin a copper boiler situated between the tubs, for although the ÉcoleFeminine was modern it was not too modern. The point, however, wasthat I should have my daily bath, and that the entire school woulddelight in waiting on me. 

It did not take me any time whatever to decide. I might not becomfortable but I certainly should be interested. I moved in that day. Mlle. Thompson's original invitation to be her guest (in return forthe small paragraph I had written about the dolls) was not to beentertained for a moment. I wished to feel at liberty to stay as longas I liked; and it was finally agreed that at the end of the weekMlle. Thompson and Mlle. Jacquier should decide upon the price. 

V

I remained something like three months. There were three trolleylines, a train, a cab-stand, a good shopping street within a fewsteps, the place itself was a haven of rest after my long days inParis meeting people by the dozen and taking notes of their work, andthe cooking was the most varied and the most delicate I have evereaten anywhere. A famous retired chef had offered his services threetimes a week for nothing and each girl during her two weeks in thekitchen learned how to prepare eggs in forty different ways, to saynothing of sauces and delicacies that the Ritz itself could notafford. I received the benefit of all the experiments. I could alsoamuse myself looking through the glass partition at the little masterchef, whose services thousands could not command, rushing about thekitchen, waving his arms, tearing his hair, shrieking against theincredible stupidity of young females whom heaven had not endowed withthe genius for cooking; and who, no doubt, had never cooked anythingat all before they answered the advertisement of Mlle. Thompson. Fewthat had not belonged to well-to-do families whose heavy work had beendone by servants. 

A table was given me in a corner by myself and the other tables wereoccupied by the girls who at the moment were not serving theirfortnight in the kitchen or as waitresses. These were treated asceremoniously (being practiced on) as I was, although their food, substantial and plentiful, was not as choice as mine. I could have hadall my meals served in my rooms if I had cared to avail myself of theprivilege; but not I! If you take but one letter to Society in Franceyou may, if you stay long enough, and are not personally disagreeable, meet princesses, duchesses, marquises, countesses, by the dozen; butto meet the coldly aloof and suspicious bourgeoisie, who hate thesight of a stranger, particularly the petite bourgeoisie, is moredifficult than for a German to explain the sudden lapse of his countryinto barbarism. Here was a unique opportunity, and I held myself to bevery fortunate. 

Was I comfortable? Judged by the American standard, certainly not. Mybed was soft enough, and my breakfast was brought to me at whateverhour I rang for it. But, as was the case all over Paris, the centralheat had ceased abruptly on its specified date and I nearly froze. During the late afternoon and evenings all through May and the greaterpart of June I sat wrapped in my traveling cloak and went to bed assoon as the evening ceremonies of my two fortnightly attendants wereover. I might as well have tried to interrupt the advance of a Germantaube as to interfere with any of Mlle. Jacquier's orthodoxies. 

Moreover four girls, with great chattering, invariably prepared mybath--which circumstances decided me to take at night--and I had towait until all their confidences--exchanged as they sat in a row onthe edge of the two tubs--were over. Then something happened to theboiler, and as all the plumbers were in the trenches, and ubiquitouswoman seemed to have stopped short in her new accomplishments atmending pipes, I had to wait until a permissionnaire came home on hissix days' leave, and that was for five weeks. More than once I decidedto go back to the Crillon, where the bathrooms are the last cry inluxury, for I detest the makeshift bath, but by this time I was toofascinated by the École to tear myself away. 

Naturally out of thirty girls there were some antagonisticpersonalities, and two or three I took such an intense dislike to thatI finally prevailed upon Mlle. Jacquier to keep them out of my roomand away from my table. But the majority of the students were "regulargirls. " At first I was as welcome in the dining-room as a Prussiansentinel, and they exchanged desultory remarks in whispers; but aftera while they grew accustomed to me and chattered like magpies. I couldhear them again in their dormitories until about half-past ten atnight. Mlle. Jacquier asked me once with some anxiety if I minded, andI assured her that I liked it. This was quite true, for these girls, all so eager and natural, and even gay, despite the tragedy in thebackground of many, seemed to me the brightest spot in Paris. 

It is true that I remonstrated, and frequently, against the terrificnoise they made every morning at seven o'clock when they clampedacross the uncarpeted hall and down the stairs. But although theywould tiptoe for a day they would forget again, and I finally resignedmyself. I also did my share in training them to wait on a guest in herroom! Not one when I arrived had anything more than a theoretical ideaof what to do beyond making a bed, sweeping, and dusting. I soondiscovered that the more exacting I was--and there were times when Iwas exceeding stormy--the better Mlle. Jacquier was pleased. 

She had her hands full. Her discipline was superb and she addressedeach with invariable formality as "Mademoiselle----"; but they werereal girls, full of vitality, and always on the edge of rebellion. Ilistened to some stinging rebukes delivered by Mlle. Jacquier when shewould arise in her wrath in the dining-room and address themcollectively. She knew how to get under their skin, for they wouldblush, hang their heads, and writhe. 

VI

But Mlle. Jacquier told me that what really kept them in order was theinfluence of Mlle. Thompson. At first she came every week late in theafternoon to give them a talk; then every fortnight; then--oh là! là!

I listened to one or two of these talks. The girls sat in asemicircle, hardly breathing, their eyes filling with tears wheneverMlle. Thompson, who sat at a table at the head of the room, played onthat particular key. 

I never thought Valentine Thompson more remarkable than during thishour dedicated to the tuning and exalting of the souls of these girls. Several told me that she held their hearts in her hands when shetalked and that they would follow her straight to the battlefield. She, herself, assumed her most serious and exalted expression. I havenever heard any one use more exquisite French. Not for a moment didshe talk down to those girls of a humbler sphere. She lifted them toher own. Her voice took on deeper tones, but she always stopped shortof being dramatic. French people of all classes are too keen andclear-sighted and intelligent to be taken in by theatrical tricks, andMlle. Thompson made no mistakes. Her only mistake was in neglectingthese girls later on for other new enterprises that claimed her ardentimagination. 

She talked, I remember, of patriotism, of morale, of their duty toexcel in their present studies that they might be of service not onlyto their impoverished families but to their beloved France. It was notso much what she said as the lovely way in which she said it, herimpressive manner and appearance, her almost overwhelming but, for theoccasion, wholly democratic personality. 

Once a week Mlle. Thompson and the heads of the Touring Club deFrance had a breakfast at the École and tables were laid even in thesalon. I was always somebody's guest upon these Tuesdays, unless I wasengaged elsewhere, and had, moreover, been for years a member of theTouring Club. Some of the most distinguished men and women of Pariscame to the breakfasts: statesmen, journalists, authors, artists, people of _le beau monde_, visiting English and Americans as well asFrench people of note. Naturally the students became expert waitressesand chasseurs as well as cooks. 

Altogether I should have only the pleasantest memories of the ÉcoleFeminine had it not been for the mosquitoes. I do not believe that NewJersey ever had a worse record than Paris that summer. Every leaf ofevery one of those beautiful trees beyond my window, over whose tops Iused to gaze at the airplanes darting about on the lookout for taubes, was an incubator. I exhausted the resources of two chemist shops inPassy and one in Paris. I tried every invention, went to bed reekingwith turpentine, and burned evil-smelling pastiles. Mlle. Jacquiercame in every night and slew a dozen with a towel as scientifically asshe did everything else. All of no avail. At one time I was so spottedthat I had to wear a still more heavily spotted veil. I looked as ifafflicted with measles. 

Oddly enough the prettiest of the students, whose first name wasAlice, was the only one of us all ignored by the mosquitoes. She hadred-gold hair and a pink and white skin of great delicacy, and shemight have been the twin of Elsie Ferguson. A few of the other girlswere passably good-looking but she was the only one with anything likebeauty--which, it would seem, is practically confined to the noblesseand grande bourgeoisie in France. Next to her in looks came Mlle. Jacquier, who if she had a dot would have been snapped up long since. 

Alice had had two fiancés (selected by her mother) and both youngofficers; one, an Englishman, had been killed in the first year of thewar. She was only eighteen. At one time the northern town she lived inwas threatened by the Germans, and Mrs. Vail of Boston (whose daughteris so prominent at the American Fund for French Wounded headquartersin Paris), being on the spot and knowing how much there would be leftof the wildrose innocence that bloomed visibly on Alice's plumpcheeks, whisked her off to London. There she remained until she heardof Mlle. Thompson's School, when Mrs. Vail brought her to Paris. Asshe was not only pretty and charming but intelligent, I exerted myselfto find her a place before I left, and I believe she is still withMrs. Thayer in the Hotel Cecilia. 

VII

The École Féminine, I am told, is no more. Mlle. Thompson found itimpossible to raise the necessary money to keep it going. The truthis, I fancy, that she approached generous donators for too manydifferent objects and too many times. Perhaps the École will bereopened later on. If not it will always be a matter of regret notonly for France but for Valentine Thompson's own sake that she did notconcentrate on this useful enterprise; it would have been a definitemonument in the center of her shifting activities. 

I have no space to give even a list of her manifold oeuvres, but oneat least bids fair to be associated permanently with her name. What isnow known in the United States as the French Heroes' Fund was startedby Mlle. Thompson under the auspices of _La Vie Féminine_ to help theréformés rebuild their lives. The greater number could not work attheir old avocations, being minus an arm or a leg. But they learned tomake toys and many useful articles, and worked at home; in goodweather, sitting before their doors in the quiet village street. Avast number of these Mlle. Thompson and various members of herCommittee located, tabulated, encouraged; and, once a fortnight, collected their work. This was either sold in Paris or sent toAmerica. 

In New York Mrs. William Astor Chanler and Mr. John Moffat organizedthe work under its present title and raised the money to buyLafayette's birthplace. They got it at a great bargain, $20, 000; for alarge number of acres were included in the purchase. Another $20, 000, also raised by Mr. Moffatt, repaired and furnished the château, whichnot only is to be a sort of French Mt. Vernon, with rooms dedicated torelics of Lafayette and the present war, as well as a memorial roomfor the American heroes who have fallen for France, but an orphanageis to be built in the grounds, and the repairs as well as all theother work is to be done by the blind and the mutilated, who will thusnot be objects of charity but made to feel themselves men once moreand able to support their families. The land will be rented to theréformés, the mutilés and the blind. 

Mlle. Thompson and Mrs. Chanler, with the help of a powerfulCommittee, are pushing this work forward as rapidly as possible in thecircumstances and no doubt it will be one of the first war meccas ofthe American tourists so long separated from their beloved Europe. 

VIII

The most insistent memory of my life in Passy at the Hôtel Féminine isthe Battle of the Somme. After it commenced in July I heard the greatguns day and night for a week. That deep, steady, portentous boominghad begun to exert a morbid fascination before the advance carried thecannon out of my range, and I had an almost irresistible desire topack up and follow it. The ancestral response to the old god of war ismore persistent than any of us imagine, I fancy. I was close to thelines some weeks later, when I went into the Zone des Armées, and itis quite positive that not only does that dreary and dangerous regionexert a sinister fascination but that it seems to expel fear fromyour composition. It is as if for the first time you were in thenormal condition of life, which during the centuries of the ancestorsto whom you owe your brain-cells, was war, not peace. 

IX

MADAME WADDINGTON

I

One has learned to associate Madame Waddington so intimately with theglittering surface life of Europe that although every one knows shewas born in New York of historic parentage, one recalls with somethingof a shock now and then that she was not only educated in this countrybut did not go to France to live until after the death of her fatherin 1871. 

This no doubt accounts for the fact that meeting her for the firsttime one finds her unmistakably an American woman. Her language may beFrench but she has a directness and simplicity that no more identifiesher with a European woman of any class than with the well-knownexigencies of diplomacy. Madame Waddington strikes one as quiteremarkably fearless and downright; she appears to be as outspoken asshe is vivacious; and as her husband had a highly successful career asa diplomatist, and as his debt to his brilliant wife is freelyconceded, Madame Waddington is certainly a notable instance of the gaypersistence of an intelligent American woman's personality, combinedwith the proper proportion of acuteness, quickness, and charm whichforce a highly conventionalized and specialized society to take her onher own terms. The greater number of diplomatic women as well asladies-in-waiting that I have run across during my European orWashington episodes have about as much personality as a door-mat. Manyof our own women have been admirable helpmates to our ambassadors, butI recall none that has played a great personal rôle in the world. Nota few have contributed to the gaiety of nations. 

Madame Waddington has had four separate careers quite aside from thealways outstanding career of girlhood. Her father was Charles King, President of Columbia College and son of Rufus King, second UnitedStates Minister to England. When she married M. Waddington, aFrenchman of English descent, and educated at Rugby and Cambridge, hewas just entering public life. His château was in the Department ofthe Aisne and he was sent from there to the National Assembly. Twoyears later he was appointed Minister of Public Instruction, and inJanuary, 1876, he was elected Senator from the Aisne. In December ofthe following year he once more entered the Cabinet as Minister ofPublic Instruction, later accepting the portfolio for Foreign Affairs. 

During this period, of course, Madame Waddington lived the brilliantsocial and political life of the capital. M. Waddington began hisdiplomatic career in 1878 as the first Plenipotentiary of France tothe Congress of Berlin. In 1883 he was sent as AmbassadorExtraordinary to represent France at the coronation of Alexander III;and it was then that Madame Waddington began to send history throughthe diplomatic pouch, and sow the seeds of that post-career whichcomes to so few widows of public men. 

Madame Waddington's letters from Russia, and later from England whereher husband was Ambassador from 1883 to 1893 are now so famous, beingprobably in every private library of any pretensions, that it would bea waste of space to give an extended notice of them in a book whichhas nothing whatever to do with the achievements of its heroines inart and letters in that vast almost-forgotten period, Before the War. Suffice it to say that they are among the most delightful epistolarycontributions to modern literature, the more so perhaps as they werewritten without a thought of future publication. But being a bornwoman of letters, every line she writes has the elusive qualities ofstyle and charm; and she has besides the selective gift of puttingdown on paper even to her own family only what is worth recording. 

When these letters were published in _Scribner's Magazine_ in 1902, eight years after M. Waddington's death, they gave her an instantposition in the world of letters, which must have consoled her for theloss of that glittering diplomatic life she had enjoyed for so manyyears. 

Not that Madame Waddington had ever dropped out of society, exceptduring the inevitable period of mourning. In Paris up to the outbreakof the war she was always in demand, particularly in diplomaticcircles, by far the most interesting and kaleidoscopic in the Europeancapitals. I was told that she never paid a visit to England withoutfinding an invitation from the King and Queen at her hotel, as well asa peck of other invitations. 

I do not think Madame Waddington has ever been wealthy in our sense ofthe word. But, as I said before, her career is a striking example ofthat most precious of all gifts, personality. And if she lives untilninety she will always be in social demand, for she is what is knownas "good company. " She listens to you but you would far rather listento her. Unlike many women of distinguished pasts she lives in hersvery little. It is difficult to induce the reminiscent mood. She livesintensely in the present and her mind works insatiably upon everythingin current life that is worth while. 

She has no vanity. Unlike many ladies of her age and degree in Parisshe does not wear a red-brown wig, but her own abundant hair, as softand white as cotton and not a "gray" hair in it. She is now too muchabsorbed in the war to waste time at her dressmakers or even to carewhether her placket-hole is open or not. I doubt if she ever did caremuch about dress or "keeping young, " for those are instincts thatsleep only in the grave. War or no war they are as much a part of thedaily habit as the morning bath. I saw abundant evidence of thisimmortal fact in Paris during the second summer of the war. 

Nevertheless, the moment Madame Waddington enters a room she seems tocharge it with electricity. You see no one else and you are impatientwhen others insist upon talking. Vitality, an immense intelligencewithout arrogance or self-conceit, a courtesy which has no relation todiplomatic caution, a kindly tact and an unmistakable integrity, combine to make Madame Waddington one of the most popular women inEurope. 

II

This brings me to Madame Waddington's fourth career. The war which haslifted so many people out of obscurity, rejuvenated a few dyingtalents, and given thousands their first opportunity to be useful, simply overwhelmed Madame Waddington with hard work and a multitude ofnew duties. If she had indulged in dreams of spending the rest of herdays in the peaceful paths of literature when not dining out, theywere rudely dissipated on August 1st, 1914. 

Madame Waddington opened the Ouvroir Holophane on the 15th of August, her first object being to give employment and so countercheck thedouble menace of starvation and haunted idleness for at least fiftypoor women: teachers, music-mistresses, seamstresses, lace makers, women of all ages and conditions abruptly thrown out of work. 

Madame Waddington, speaking of them, said: "We had such piteous casesof perfectly well-dressed, well-educated, gently-bred women that wehardly dared offer them the one-franc-fifty and 'gouter' (bowl ofcafé-au-lait with bread and butter), which was all we were able togive for four hours' work in the afternoon. "

However, those poor women were very thankful for the work and sewedfaithfully on sleeping-suits and underclothing for poilus in thetrenches and hospitals. Madame Waddington's friends in Americaresponded to her call for help and M. Mygatt gave her rooms on theground floor of his building in the Boulevard Haussmann. 

When the Germans were rushing on Paris and invasion seemed asinevitable as the horrors that were bound to follow, Mr. Herrickinsisted that Madame Waddington and her sister Miss King, who wasalmost helpless from rheumatism, follow the Government to the South. This Madame Waddington reluctantly did, but returned immediately afterthe Battle of the Marne. 

It was not long before the Ouvroir Holophane outgrew its originalproportions, and instead of the women coming there daily to sew, theycalled only for materials to make up at home. For this ouvroir (if ithas managed to exist in these days of decreasing donations) sends tothe Front garments of all sorts for soldiers ill or well, pillow-cases, sheets, sleeping-bags, slippers. 

Moreover, as soon as the men began to come home on their six days'leave they found their way to the generous ouvroir on the BoulevardHaussmann, where Madame Waddington, or her friend Mrs. Greene (also anAmerican), or Madame Mygatt, always gave the poor men what they neededto replace their tattered (or missing) undergarments, as well ascoffee and bread and butter. 

The most difficult women to employ were those who had been accustomedto make embroidery and lace, as well as many who had led pamperedlives in a small way and did not know how to sew at all. Butone-franc-fifty stood between them and starvation and they learned. To-day nearly all of the younger women assisted by those firstouvroirs are more profitably employed. France has adjusted itself to astate of war and thousands of women are either in Government serviceand munition factories, or in the reopened shops and restaurants. 

III

The Waddingtons being the great people of their district were, ofcourse, looked upon by the peasant farmers and villagers asaristocrats of illimitable wealth. Therefore when the full force ofthe war struck these poor people--they were in the path of the Germansduring the advance on Paris, and ruthlessly treated--they looked toMadame Waddington and her daughter, Madame Francis Waddington, to putthem on their feet again. 

Francis Waddington, to whom the château descended, was in thetrenches, but his mother and wife did all they could, as soon as theGermans had been driven back, to relieve the necessities of the dazedand miserable creatures whose farms had been devastated and shopsrifled or razed. Some time, by the way, Madame Waddington may tell thedramatic story of her daughter-in-law's escape. She was alone in thechâteau with her two little boys when the Mayor of the nearest villagedashed up with the warning that the Germans were six kilometers away, and the last train was about to leave. 

She had two automobiles, but her chauffeur had been mobilized andthere was no petrol. She was dressed for dinner, but there was no timeto change. She threw on a cloak and thinking of nothing but herchildren went off with the Mayor in hot haste to catch the train. Fromthat moment on for five or six days, during which time she never tookoff her high-heeled slippers with their diamond buckles, until shereached her husband in the North, her experience was one of the sidedramas of the war. 

I think it was early in 1915 that Madame Waddington wrote in_Scribner's Magazine_ a description of her son's château as it wasafter the Germans had evacuated it. But the half was not told. Itnever can be, in print. Madame Huard, in her book, _My Home on theField of Honor_, is franker than most of the current historians havedared to be, and the conditions which she too found when she returnedafter the German retreat may be regarded as the prototype of thedisgraceful and disgusting state in which these lovely country homesof the French were left; not by lawless German soldiers but byofficers of the first rank. Madame Francis Waddington did not even runupstairs to snatch her jewel case, and of course she never saw itagain. Her dresses had been taken from the wardrobes and slashed fromtop to hem by the swords of these incomprehensible barbarians. Themost valuable books in the library were gutted. But these outrages arealmost too mild to mention. 

IV

The next task after the city ouvroir was in running order was to teachthe countrywomen how to sew for the soldiers and pay them for theirwork. The region of the Aisne is agricultural where it is not heavilywooded. Few of the women had any skill with the needle. The two MadameWaddingtons concluded to show these poor women with their coarse redhands how to knit until their fingers grew more supple. This they tookto very kindly, knitting jerseys and socks; and since those early daysboth the Paris and country ouvroirs had sent (June, 1916) twentythousand packages to the soldiers. Each package contained a flannelshirt, drawers, stomach band, waistcoat or jersey, two pairs of socks, two handkerchiefs, a towel, a piece of soap. Any donations of tobaccoor rolled cigarettes were also included. 

This burden in the country has been augmented heavily by refugeesfrom the invaded districts. Of course they come no more these days, but while I was in Paris they were still pouring down, and as theWaddington estate was often in their line of march they simply campedin the park and in the garage. Of course they had to be clothed, fed, and generally assisted. 

As Madame Waddington's is not one of the picturesque ouvroirs she hasfound it difficult to keep it going, and no doubt contributes all shecan spare of what the war has left of her own income. Moreover, she ison practically every important war relief committee, sometimes ashonorary president, for her name carries great weight, often asvice-president or as a member of the "conseil. " After her ouvroirs themost important organization of which she is president is the ComitéInternational de Pansements Chirurgicaux des Etats Unis--in otherwords, surgical dressings--started by Mrs. Willard, and run activelyin Paris by Mrs. Austin, the vice-president. When I visited it theywere serving about seven hundred hospitals, and no doubt by this timeare supplying twice that number. Two floors of a new apartment househad been put at their disposal near the Bois, and the activity andshining whiteness were the last word in modern proficiency (I shallnever use that black-sheep among words, _efficiency_, again). 

One of Madame Waddington's more personal oeuvres is the amusement she, in company with her daughter-in-law, provides for the poilus in thevillage near her son's estate. Regiments are quartered there, eitherto hold themselves in readiness, or to cut down trees for the army. They wandered about, desolate and bored, until the two MadameWaddingtons furnished a reading-room, provided with letter paper andpost-cards, books and, I hope, by this time a gramophone. Here theysit and smoke, read, or get up little plays. As the château is nowoccupied by the staff the two patronesses are obliged to go back andforth from Paris, and this they do once a week at least. 

V

Madame Waddington, knowing that I was very anxious to see one of thecantines at the railway stations about which so much was said, took melate one afternoon to St. Lazare. Into this great station, as into allthe others, train after train hourly gives up its load ofpermissionnaires--men home on their six days' leave--; men for theéclopé stations; men from shattered regiments, to be held at LeBourget until the time comes to be sent to fill other gaps made by theGerman guns; men who merely arrive by one train to take another out, but who must frequently remain for several hours in the dépôt. 

I have never entered one of these _gares_ to take a train that I havenot seen hundreds of soldiers entering, leaving, waiting; sometimeslying asleep on the hard floor, always on the benches. It is for allwho choose to take advantage of them that these cantines are run, andthey are open day and night. 

The one in St. Lazare had been organized in February, 1915, by theBaronne de Berckheim (born Pourtales) and was still run by her inperson when I visited it in June, 1916. During that time she and herstaff had taken care of over two hundred thousand soldiers. From 8 to11 A. M. Café-au-lait, or café noir, or bouillon, paté de foie orcheese is served. From 11 to 2 and from 6 to 9, bouillon, a plate ofmeat and vegetables, salad, cheese, fruits or compote, coffee, a quartof wine or beer, cigarettes. From 2 to 6 and after 9 P. M. , bouillon, coffee, tea, paté, cheese, milk, lemonade, cocoa. 

The rooms in the station are a donation by the officials, of course. The dining-room of the St. Lazare cantine was fitted up with severallong tables, before which, when we arrived, every square inch of thebenches was occupied by poilus enjoying an excellent meal of whichbeef à la mode was the pièce de résistance. The Baroness Berckheim andthe young girls helping her wore the Red Cross uniform, and theyserved the needs of the tired and hungry soldiers with a humbledevotion that nothing but war and its awful possibilities can inspire. It was these nameless men who were saving not only France from themost brutal enemy of modern times but the honor of thousands of suchbeautiful and fastidious young women as these. No wonder they werewilling and grateful to stand until they dropped. 

[Illustration: A RAILWAY DEPOT CANTINE]

It was evident, however, that their imagination carried them beyondman's interiorities. The walls were charmingly decorated not only withpictures of the heroes of the war but with the colored supplements ofthe great weekly magazines which pursue their even and welcome way inspite of the war. Above there were flags and banners, and the lightswere very bright. Altogether there was no restaurant in Paris morecheerful--or more exquisitely neat in its kitchen. I went behind andsaw the great roasts in their shining pans, the splendid loaves ofbread, the piles of clean dishes. Not a spot of grease in thosecrowded quarters. In a corner the President of the Chamber of Commercewas cashier for the night. 

Adjoining was a rest-room with six or eight beds, and a lavatory largeenough for several men simultaneously to wash off the dust of theirlong journey. 

These cantines are supported by collections taken up on trains. On anytrain between Paris and any point in France outside of the War Zonegirls in the uniform of the Croix Rouge appear at every stop and shakea box at you. They are wooden boxes, with a little slit at the top. AsI have myself seen people slipping in coppers and, no doubt, receivingthe credit from other passengers of donating francs, I suggested thatthese young cadets of the Red Cross would add heavily to their day'stoll if they passed round open plates. Certainly no one would darecontribute copper under the sharp eyes of his fellows. This, I wastold, was against the law, but that it might be found practicable touse glass boxes. 

In any case the gains are enough to run these cantines. The girls arealmost always good looking and well bred, and they look very seriousin their white uniform with the red cross on the sleeves; and thepsychotherapeutic influence is too strong for any one to resist. 

Madame Waddington had brought a large box of chocolates and she passeda piece over the shoulder of each soldier, who interrupted the moreserious business of the moment to be polite. Other people bring themflowers, or cigarettes, and certainly there is no one in the world sosatisfactory to put one's self to any effort for as a poilu. On hermanners alone France should win her war. 

X

THE COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE[D]

I

Madame la Comtesse d'Haussonville, it is generally conceded, is notonly the greatest lady in France but stands at the very head of allwomen working for the public welfare in her country. That is saying agreat deal, particularly at this moment. 

 [D] Naturally this should have been the first chapter, both on account of the importance of the work and the position of Madame d'Haussonville among the women of France, but unfortunately the necessary details did not come until the book was almost ready for press. 

Madame d'Haussonville is President of the first, or noblesse, divisionof the Red Cross, which, like the two others, has a title as distinctas the social status of the ladies who command, with diminishingdegrees of pomp and power. 

Société Française de Secours aux Blessés Militaires is the name of thecrack regiment. 

The second division, presided over by Madame Carnot, leader of thegrande bourgeoisie, calls itself Association des Dames Françaises, andembraces all the charitably disposed of that haughty and powerfulbody. 

The third, operated by Madame Perouse, and composed of able and usefulwomen whom fate has planted in a somewhat inferior social sphere--inmany social spheres, for that matter--has been named (note thesignificance of the differentiating noun) Union des Femmes de France. 

Between these three useful and admirable organizations there is nolove lost whatever. That is to say, in reasonably normal conditions. No doubt in that terrible region just behind the lines they sink alldifferences and pull together for the common purpose. 

The Red Cross was too old and too taken-for-granted an organization, and too like our own, for all I knew to the contrary, to tempt me togive it any of the limited time at my disposal in France; so, as ithappened, of these three distinguished chiefs the only one I met wasMadame d'Haussonville. 

She interested me intensely, not only because she stood at the head ofthe greatest relief organization in the world, but because she is oneof the very few women, of her age, at least, who not only is a greatlady but looks the rôle. 

European women tend to coarseness, not to say commonness, as theyadvance in age, no matter what their rank; their cheeks sag andbroaden, and their stomachs contract a fatal and permanent ententewith their busts. Too busy or too indifferent to charge spitefulnature with the daily counter-attacks of art, they put on a red-brownwig (generally sideways) and let it go at that. Sometimes they smudgetheir eyebrows with a pomade which gives that extinct member the lookof being neither hair, skin, nor art, but they contemptuously rejectrouge or even powder. When they have not altogether discarded thefollies or the ennui of dress, but patronize their modisteconscientiously, they have that "built up look" peculiar to thoseuncompromisingly respectable women of the first society in our ownland, who frown upon the merely smart. 

It is only the young women of fashion in France who make up lips, brows, and cheeks, as well as hair and earlobes, who often look likeyoung clowns, and whose years give them no excuse for making up beyondsubservience to the mode of the hour. 

It is even sadder when they are emulated by ambitious ladies in theprovinces. I went one day to a great concert--given for charity, ofcourse--in a town not far from Paris. The Mayor presided and his wifewas with him. As I had been taken out from Paris by one of the PatronsI sat in the box with this very well-dressed and important youngwoman, and she fascinated me so that I should have feared to appearrude if she had not been far too taken up with the titled women fromParis, whom she was meeting for the first time in her life, to pay anyattention to a mere American. 

She may have been twenty-eight, certainly not over thirty, but she hadonly one front tooth. It was a very large tooth and it stuck straightout. Her lips were painted an energetic vermillion. Her mouth too waslarge, and it spread across her dead white (and homely) face like amalignant sore. She smiled constantly--it was her rôle to be graciousto all these duchesses and ambassadresses--and that solitary toothdarted forward like a sentinel on a bridge in the War Zone. But Ienvied her. She was so happy. So important. I never met anybody whomade me feel so insignificant. 

II

Madame d'Haussonville naturally suggests to the chronicler thesharpest sort of contrasts. 

I am told that she devoted herself to the world until the age offifty, and she wielded a power and received a measure of adulationfrom both sexes that made her the most formidable social power inFrance. But the De Broglies are a serious family, as their record inhistory proves. Madame d'Haussonville, without renouncing her place inthe world of fashion, devoted herself more and more to good works, hersuperior brain and executive abilities forcing her from year to yearinto positions of heavier responsibility. 

I was told that she was now seventy; but she is a woman whosepersonality is so compelling that she rouses none of the usual vulgarcuriosity as to the number of years she may have lingered on thisplanet. You see Madame d'Haussonville as she is and take not theleast interest in what she may have been during the years before youhappened to meet her. 

Very tall and slender and round and straight, her figure could hardlyhave been more perfect at the age of thirty. The poise of her head isvery haughty and the nostril of her fine French nose is arched andthin. She wears no make-up whatever, and, however plainly she may feelit her duty to dress in these days, her clothes are cut by a masterand an excessively modern one at that; there is none of the Victorianbuilt-up effect, to which our own grandes dames cling as to the rockof ages, about Madame d'Haussonville. Her waist line is in its properplace--she does not go to the opposite extreme and drag it down to herknees--and one feels reasonably sure that it will be there at the ageof ninety--presupposing that the unthinkable amount of hard work sheaccomplishes daily during this period of her country's crucifixionshall not have devoured the last of her energies long before she isable to enter the peaceful haven of old age. 

She is in her offices at the Red Cross headquarters in the RueFrançois I'er early and late, leaving them only to visit hospitals orsit on some one of the innumerable committees where her advice isimperative, during the organizing period at least. 

Some time ago I wrote to Madame d'Haussonville, asking her if shewould dictate a few notes about her work in the Red Cross, and as shewrote a very full letter in reply, I cannot do better than quote it, particularly as it gives a far more comprehensive idea of herpersonality than any words of mine. 

"Paris, March 28th, 1917. 

"DEAR MRS. ATHERTON:

"I am very much touched by your gracious letter and very happy if Ican serve you. 

"Here are some notes about our work, and about what I have seen sinceAugust, 1914. All our thoughts and all our strength are in the greattask, that of all French women, to aid the wounded, the ill, those whoremain invalids, the refugees of the invaded districts, all thesufferings actually due to these cruel days. 

"Some weeks before the war, I was called to the ministry, where theyasked me to have two hundred infirmaries ready for all possiblehappenings. We had already established a great number, of which manyhad gone to Morocco and into the Colonies. To-day there are fifteen orsixteen thousand volunteer nurses to whom are added about eleventhousand auxiliaries used in accessory service (kitchen, bandages, sterilization, etc. ) and also assisting in the wards of the ill andthe wounded. 

"To the hospitals there have been added since the month of August, 1914, the infirmaries and station cantines where our soldiers receivethe nourishment and hot drinks which are necessary for their longjourneys. 

"At Amiens, for instance, the cantine, an annex of the stationinfirmary began with the distribution of slices of bread and drinksmade by our women as the trains arrived. Then a big room used forbaggage was given to us. A dormitory was made of it for tiredsoldiers, also a reading-room. At any hour French, English or Belgiansmay receive a good meal--soup, one kind of meat and vegetables, coffeeor tea. Civil refugees are received there and constantly aided andfed. 

"Our nurses attend to all wants, and above everything they believe inputting their hearts into their work administering to those who sufferwith the tenderness of a mother. In the hospital wards nothing touchedme more than to see the thousand little kindnesses which they gave tothe wounded, the distractions which they sought to procure for themeach day. 

"In our great work of organization at the Bureau on Rue François I'er, I have met the most beautiful devotion. Our nurses do not hesitate atcontagion, nor at bombardments, and I know some of your compatriots(that I can never admire enough), who expose themselves to the samedangers with hearts full of courage. 

"I have visited the hospitals nearest the Front, Dunkerque, so cruellyshelled. I have been to Alsace, to Lorraine, then to Verdun from whereI brought back the most beautiful impression of calm courage. 

"Here are some details which may interest your compatriots:

"June 1916. My first stop was at Châlons, where with Mme. Terneaux-Compans our devoted senior nurse, I visited the hospitalCorbineau, former quarters for the cavalry, very well reconstructed bythe Service de Santé, for sick soldiers; our nurses are doing servicethere; generous gifts have enabled us to procure a small motor whichcarries water to the three stories, and we have been able to installbaths for the typhoid patients. 

"At the hospital Forgeot (for the officers) I admired theingeniousness with which our nurses have arranged for their wounded aquite charming assembly-room with a piano, some growing plants andseveral games. 

"I also visited our auxiliary hospital at Sainte-Croix. It would beimpossible to find a more beautiful location, a better organization. Ihave not had, to my great regret, the time to visit the otherhospitals, which, however, I already know. That will be, I hope, foranother time. 

"The same day I went to Revigny. Oh, never shall I forget theimpressions that I received there. First, the passage through thatpoor village in ruins, then the visit to the hospital situated nearthe station through which most of the wounded from Verdun pass. 

"What was, several months ago, a field at the edge of the road, hasbecome one big hospital of more than a thousand beds, divided intobaraques. We have twenty-five nurses there. Since the beginning of thebattle they have been subjected to frightful work; every one has tocare for a number of critically wounded--those who have need ofoperations and who are not able to travel further. What moved me aboveeverything was to find our nurses so simple and so modest in theircourage. Not a single complaint about their terrible fatigue--theirone desire is to hold out to the end. When I expressed my admiration, one of them answered: 'We have only one regret: it is that we have toomuch work to give special attention to each of the wounded, and thenabove all it is terrible to see so many die. '

"I visited some of the baraques, and I observed that, in spite of theexcessive work, they were not only clean but well cared for, andflowers everywhere! I also saw a tent where there were about tenGermans; one of our nurses who spoke their language was in charge;they seemed to me very well taken care of--'well, ' because they werewounded, not 'too well' because--we cannot forget. 

"I tore myself away from Revigny, where I should have liked to remainlonger, and I arrived that night at Jeans d'Heurs, which seemed to mea small paradise. The wounded were admirably cared for in beautifulrooms, with windows opening on a ravishing park; the nurses housedwith the greatest care. 

"The next day I was at Bar-le-Duc, first at the Central, which is animmense hospital of three thousand beds. Before the war it was acaserne (barrack). They reconstructed the buildings and in the courtsthey put up sheds; our nurses are at work there--among them thebeloved President of our Association--the Mutual Association ofNurses. All these buildings seemed to me perfect. I visited speciallythe splendidly conducted surgical pavilion and the typhoid pavilion. 

"The white-washed walls have been decorated by direction of the nurseswith great friezes of color, producing a charming effect which oughtto please the eyes of our beloved sick. 

"I visited also the laboratory where they showed me the chart of thetyphoid patients--the loss so high in 1914--so low in 1915. I noteddown some figures which I give here for those who are interested inthe question of anti-typhoid vaccine: In November 1914, 379 deaths. InNovember 1915, 22! What a new and wonderful victory for Frenchscience! I must add that three of our nurses have contracted typhoidfever; none of them was inoculated; twenty who were inoculated caughtnothing. 

"While we were making this visit, we heard the whistle which announcedthe arrival of taubes--we wanted very much to remain outside to see, but we were ordered to go in; I observed that our nurses obeyed theorder because of discipline, not on account of fear. 'We can only dieonce!' one of them said to me, shrugging her shoulders. Their chiefconcern is for the poor wounded. Many of them now that they are inbed, powerless to defend themselves, become nervous at the approach ofdanger. They have to be reassured. If the shelling becomes too heavy, they carry them down into the cellars. 

"These taubes having gone back this time without causing any damage, we set off for Savonnières, a field hospital of about three hundredbeds, established in a little park. It is charming in summer, it maybe a little damp in winter, but the nurses do not complain; the nursesnever complain!

"Saturday was the most interesting day of my trip. I saw two fieldhospitals between Bar-le-Duc and Verdun. Oh! those who have not beenin the War Zone cannot imagine the impression that I received on theroute which leads 'out there, ' toward the place where the greatest, the most atrocious struggle that has ever been is going on. All thosetrucks by hundreds going and coming from Verdun; those poor menbreaking stones, ceaselessly repairing the roads, the aeroplane bases, the dépôts of munitions, above all the villages filled with troops, all those dear little soldiers, some of them fresh and clean, going, the others yellow with mud returning--all this spectacle grips andthrills you. 

"We breakfasted at Chaumont-sur-Aire; I cannot say how happy I was toshare, if only for an hour, the life of our dear nurses! Life here ishard. They are lodged among the natives more or less well. They livein a little peasant's room near a stable; they eat the food of thewounded, not very varied--'boule' every two weeks. How they welcomedthe good fresh bread that I brought!

"Their work is not easy, scattered over a wide field; tents, and barnshere and there, and then they have been deprived of an 'autocher, 'which had to leave for some other destination. 

"Many of the wounded from Verdun come there; and what wounded! Nevershall I forget the frightful plight of one unfortunate, upon whom theywere going to operate without much chance of success alas. He hadremained nearly four days without aid, and gangrene had done its work. 

"I had tears in my eyes watching the sleep of our heroes who hadarrived that morning overcome and wornout, all covered with dust; Iwould have liked to put them in good beds, all white with soft pillowsunder their heads. Alas in these hospitals at the front, one cannotgive them the comfort of our hospitals in the rear. 

"After having assisted at the great spectacle of a procession oftaubes going toward Bar-le-Duc, I was obliged to leave Chaumont to goto Vadelaincourt, which is thirteen kilometres from Verdun, thenearest point of our infirmaries. I was there in March at thebeginning of the battle. 

"What wonderful work has been accomplished! It is not for me to judgethe Service de Santé, but I cannot help observing that a hospital likethat of Vadelaincourt does honor to the head doctor who organized itin full battle in the midst of a thousand difficulties. It is verysimple, very practical, very complete. I found nurses there who forthe most part have not been out of the region of Verdun since thebeginning of the war. Their task is especially hard. How many woundedhave passed through their hands; how have they been able to overcomeall their weariness? It is a pleasure to find them always alert andwatchful; I admired and envied them. 

"It was not without regret that I turned my back on this region whoseclose proximity to the Front makes one thrill with emotion; I went tocalmer places, I saw less thrilling things, but nevertheless, interesting: the charming layout at Void, that at Sorcy, in process oforganizing, the grand hospital of Toul which was shelled by taubes. Iwas able to see the enormous hole dug by the bomb which fell very nearthe building that sheltered our nurses, who had but one idea, to runto their wounded and reassure them. 

"I visited at Nancy a very beautiful hospital, the Malgrange, which isalmost unique; it is the Red Cross which houses the military hospital. At the instant of bombardment, most of the hospitals were vacated;ours, situated outside of the city, gathered in the wounded and allthe personnel of the military hospital, and it goes very well. 

"I finished my journey with the Vosges, Épinal, Belfort, Gerardmer, Bussang, Morvillars; all these hospitals which were filled for a longtime with the wounded from the battles of the Vosges (especially ourbrave Alpines) are quiet now. 

"If I congratulated the nurses of the region of Verdun upon theirendurance, I do not congratulate less those of the Vosges upon theirconstancy; Gerardmer has had very full days--days when one could nottake a thought to one's self. There is something painful, in a way, inseeing great happenings receding from you. We do not hear the cannonany longer, the wounded arrive more rarely, we have no longer enoughto do, we are easily discouraged, we should like to be elsewhere andyet one must remain there at his post ready in case of need, which maycome perhaps when it is least expected. 

"I shall have many things still to tell you, but I am going to resumemy impressions of this little trip in a few words. 

"I have been filled with admiration. The word has, I believe, fallenmany times from my pen, and it will fall again and again. I haveadmired our dear wounded, so courageous in their suffering, sogracious to all those who visit them; I have admired the doctors whoare making and have made every day, such great efforts to organize andto better conditions; and our nurses I have never ceased to admire. When I see them I find them just as I hoped, very courageous and alsovery simple. They speak very little of themselves, and a great deal oftheir wounded; they complain very little of their fatigue, sometimesof not having enough to do. They always meet cheerfully the materialdifficulties of their existence as they do almost always the moraldifficulties which are even more difficult. Self-abnegation, attentionto their duty, seem to them so natural that one scarcely dares topraise them. 

"There is one thing that I must praise them for particularly--thatthey always seem to keep the beautiful charming coquetry that belongsto every woman. I often arrived without warning. I never saw hairdisarranged or dress neglected. This exterior perfection is, I maysay, a distinctive mark of our nurses. 

"And then I like the care with which they decorate and beautify theirhospital. Everywhere flowers, pictures, bits of stuff to drape theirrooms. At Revigny in one of the baraques I saw flowers, simple flowersgathered in the neighboring field, so prettily arranged, portraits ofour generals framed in green. When I complimented a nurse, sheanswered: 'Ah, no; it is not well done; but I hadn't the time to dobetter. '

"At Vadelaincourt, a little room was set aside for dressings, all donein white with curtains of white and two little vases of flowers. Whata smiling welcome for the poor wounded who come there! 'Thearrangement of a room has a great deal of influence on the morale ofthe wounded, ' a doctor said to me. All this delights me!

"I have finished, but I shall think for a long time of this journeywhich has left in my memory unforgettable sights and in my heart verytender impressions. 

"In the Somme, also, our nurses have worked with indefatigable ardor, and they go on without relaxation. The poor refugees, which theGermans return to us often sick and destitute of everything, arereceived and comforted by our women of the Red Cross. 

"The three societies of the Red Cross--our Society for the Relief ofthe Military Wounded, the Union of the Women of France, and theAssociation of the Ladies of France--work side by side under thedirection of the Service de Santé. 

"Our Society for the Relief of the Military Wounded has actually aboutseven hundred hospitals, which represent sixty thousand beds, wheremany nurses are occupied from morning until night, and many of themserve also at the military hospital at the Front, and in the Orient(three to four thousand nurses). 

"Every day new needs make us create new oeuvres, which we organizequickly. 

"The making of bandages and compresses has always been an importantwork with us. Yards of underclothing and linen are continually askedof us by our nurses for their sick. The workshops which we have openedsince the beginning of the war assist with work a great number ofwomen who have been left by the mobilization of their men withoutresources. 

"The clubs for soldiers, in Paris especially, give to theconvalescents and to the men on leave wholesome amusement andcompensate somewhat for their absent families. 

"Just now we are trying to establish an anti-tuberculosis organizationto save those of our soldiers who have been infected or are menaced. Many hospitals are already opened for them. At Mentom, on theMediterranean, for the blind tubercular; at Hauteville, in theDepartment of the Aisne, for the officers and soldiers; at LaRochelle, for bone-tuberculosis; but the task is enormous. 

"We seek also, and the work is under way, to educate intelligently themutilated, so that they may work and have an occupation in the sadlife which remains to them, and I assure you, chère madame, that somany useful things to be done leave very few leisure hours. If alittle weariness has in spite of everything slipped into our hearts, avisit to the hospitals, to the ambulances at the Front, the sight ofsuffering so bravely, I will even say so cheerfully, supported by oursoldiers, very quickly revives our courage, and brings us back ourstrength and enthusiasm. .. . "

 * * * * *

The Countess de Roussy de Sales (an American brought up in Paris) wasone of the first of the infirmières to be mobilized by Madamed'Haussonville on the declaration of war. She went to Rheims with thetroops, standing most of the time, but too much enthralled by thespirit of the men to notice fatigue. She told me that although theywere very sober, even grim, she heard not a word of complaint, butconstantly the ejaculation: "It is for France and our children. Whatif we die, so long as our children may live in peace?"

At Rheims, so impossible had it been to make adequate preparationswith the Socialists holding up every projected budget, there were noinstallations in the hospitals but beds. The nurses and doctors wereobliged to forage in the town for operating tables and the hundred andone other furnishings without which no hospital can be conducted. Andthey had little time. The wounded came pouring in at once. Madame deRoussy de Sales said they were so busy it was some time before itdawned on them, in spite of the guns, that the enemy was approaching. But when women and children and old people began to hurry through thestreets in a constant procession they knew it was only a matter oftime before they were ordered out. They had no time to think, however;much less to fear. 

Finally the order came to evacuate the hospitals and leave the town, which at that time was in imminent danger of capture. There was littlenotice. The last train leaves at three o'clock. Be there. Madame deRoussy de Sales and several other nurses begged to go with those oftheir wounded impossible to transfer by trains, to the civilianhospitals and make them comfortable before leaving them in the handsof the local nurses; and obtained permission. The result was that whenthey reached the station they saw the train retreating in thedistance. But they had received orders to report at a hospital inanother town that same afternoon. No vehicles were to be had. Therewas nothing to do but walk. They walked. The distance was twenty-threekilometres. As they had barely sat down since their arrival in Rheimsit may be imagined they would have been glad to rest when theyreached their destination. But this hospital too was crowded withwounded. They went on duty at once. C'est la guerre! I never heard anyone complain. 

XI

THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ

The Marquise d'Andigné, who was Madeline Goddard of Providence, R. I. , is President of Le Bien-Être du Blessé, an oeuvre formed by Madamed'Haussonville at the request of the Ministère de la Guerre in May, 1915. She owes this position as president of one of the most importantwar relief organizations (perhaps after the Red Cross the mostimportant) to the energy, conscientiousness, and brilliant executiveabilities she had demonstrated while at the Front in charge of morethan one hospital. She is an infirmiére major and was decorated twicefor cool courage and resource under fire. 

The object of Le Bien-Être du Blessé is to provide delicacies for thedietary kitchens of the hospitals in the War Zone, as many officersand soldiers had died because unable to eat eggs, or drink milk, theonly two articles furnished by the rigid military system of the mostconservative country in the world. The articles supplied by LeBien-Être du Blessé are very simple: condensed milk, sugar, cocoa, Franco-American soups, chocolate, sweet biscuits, jams, preserves, prunes, tea. Thousands of lives have been saved by Bien-Être duringthe past year; for men who are past caring, or wish only for therelease of death, have been coaxed back to life by a bit of jam on thetip of a biscuit, or a teaspoonful of chicken soup. 

Some day I shall write the full and somewhat complicated history of LeBien-Être du Blessé, quoting from many of Madame d'Andigné'sdelightful letters. But there is no space here and I will merelymention that my own part as the American President of Le Bien-Être duBlessé is to provide the major part of the funds with which it is run, lest any of my readers should be tempted to help me out. [E] Donationsfrom ten cents to ten thousand are welcome, and $5 keeps a wounded manfor his entire time in one of those dreary hospitals in thatdevastated region known as "Le Zone des Armées, " where relatives norfriends ever come to visit, and there is practically no sound but thethunder of guns without and groans within. Not that the French dogroan much. I went through many of these hospitals and never heard ademonstration. But I am told they do sometimes. 

 [E] All donations in money are sent to the bankers, Messers John Munroe & Co. , _Eighth Floor_, 360 Madison Avenue, New York. 

To Madame d'Andigné belongs all the credit of building up Le Bien-Êtredu Blessé from almost nothing (for we were nearly two years behind theother great war-relief organizations in starting). Although many giveher temporary assistance no one will take charge of any one departmentand she runs every side and phase of the work. Last winter she wascold, and hungry, and always anxious about her husband, but she wasnever absent from the office for a day except when she could not getcoal to warm it; and then she conducted the business of the oeuvre inher own apartment, where one room was warmed with wood she had sawedherself. 

To-day Le Bien-Être du Blessé is not only one of the most famous ofall the war-relief organizations of the fighting powers but it hasbeen run with such systematic and increasing success that the WarOffice has installed Bien-Être kitchens in the hospitals (before, thenurses had to cook our donations over their own spirit lamp) anddelegated special cooks to relieve the hard-worked infirmières of avery considerable tax on their energies. This is a tremendous bit ofradicalism on the part of the Military Department of France, and onethat hardly can be appreciated by citizens of a land always in a stateof flux. There is even talk of making these Bien-Être kitchens a partof the regular military system after the war is over, and if they docommit themselves to so revolutionary an act no doubt the name of theyoung American Marquise will go down to posterity--as it deserves todo, in any case. 

XII

MADAME CAMILLE LYON

Madame Lyon committed on my behalf what for her was a tremendousbreach of the proprieties: she called upon me without the formality ofa letter of introduction. No American can appreciate what such aviolation of the formalities of all the ages must have meant to apillar of the French Bourgeoisie. But she set her teeth and did it. Her excuse was that she had read all my books, and that she was afriend of Mlle. Thompson, at whose École Hôtelière I was lodging. 

I was so impressed at the unusualness of this proceeding that, beingout when she first called, and unable to receive her explanations, Iwas filled with dark suspicion and sought an explanation of Mlle. Jacquier. Madame Lyon? Was she a newspaper woman? A secret serviceagent? Between the police round the corner and Mlle. Jacquier, underwhose eagle eye I conformed to all the laws of France in war time, Ifelt in no further need of supervision. 

Mlle. Jacquier was very much amused. Madame Lyon was a very importantperson. Her husband had been associated with the Government forfourteen years until he had died, leaving a fortune behind him, ayear before; and Madame Lyon was not only on intimate terms with theGovernment but made herself useful in every way possible to them. Shewas one of the two ladies asked to cooperate with the Government intheir great enterprise to wage war on tuberculosis--Le Comité Centrald'Assistance aux Militaires Tuberculeux; and was to open ateliers toteach the men how to learn new trades by which they might sit at homein comfort and support themselves. 

And she had her own ouvroir--"L'Aide Immédiate"--for providing thingsfor the permissionnaires, who came to the door and asked for them. Sheran, with a committee of other ladies, a café in Paris, where thepermissionnaires or the réformés could go and have their afternooncoffee and smoke all the cigarettes that their devoted patronsprovided. One hundred poilus came here a day, and her ouvroir hadalready assisted eighteen thousand. And----

But by this time I was more interested to meet Madame Lyon than anyone in Paris. As I have said before, a letter or two will open thedoors of the noblesse or the "Intellectuals" to any stranger who knowshow to behave himself and is no bore, but to get a letter to a memberof the bourgeoisie--I hadn't even made the attempt, knowing how futileit would be. If one of them was doing a great work, like Mlle. Javal, I could meet her quite easily through some member of her committee;but when Frenchwomen of this class, which in its almost terrifiedexclusiveness reminds me only of our own social groups balancing onthe very tip of the pyramid and clutching one another lest someintruder topple them off, or cast the faintest shadow on theirhard-won prestige, are working in small groups composed of their ownfriends, I could not meet one of them if I pitched my tent under herwindows. 

Madame Lyon gave me a naïve explanation of her audacity when wefinally did meet. "I am a Jewess, " she said, "and therefore not sobound down by conventions. You see, we of the Jewish race weresuppressed so long that now we have our freedom reaction makes usalmost adventurous. "

Besides hastening to tell me of her race she promptly, as if it were amatter of honor, informed me that she was sixty years old! She lookedabout forty, her complexion was white and smooth, her nose little andstraight, her eyes brilliant. She dressed in the smartest possiblemourning, and with that white ruff across her placid brow--Oh là là!

She has one son, who was wounded so terribly in the first year of thewar, and was so long getting to a hospital where he could receiveproper attention, that he was gangrened. In consequence his recoverywas very slow, and he was not permitted to go again to the trenches, but was, after his recovery, sent up north to act as interpreterbetween the British and French troops. He stood this for a few months, and Madame Lyon breathed freely, but there came a time when M. Lyon, although a lawyer in times of peace, could not stand the tame life ofinterpreter. He might be still delicate, but, he argued, there wereofficers at the front who had only one arm. At the present moment heis in the stiffest fighting on the Somme. 

I saw a great deal of Madame Lyon and enjoyed no one more, she was soindependent, so lively of mind, and so ready for anything. She wentwith me on two of my trips in the War Zone, being only too glad ofmental distraction; for like all the mothers of France she dreads thering of the door-bell. She told me that several times the ladies whoworked in her ouvroir would come down with beaming faces and readextracts from letters just received from their sons at the Front, thengo home and find a telegram announcing death or shattered limbs. 

Madame Lyon has a hôtel on the Boulevard Berthier and before herhusband's death was famous for her political breakfasts, which werealso graced by men and women distinguishing themselves in the arts. These breakfasts have not been renewed, but I met at tea there anumber of the political women. One of these was Madame Ribot, wife ofthe present Premier. She is a very tall, thin, fashionable lookingwoman, and before she had finished the formalities with her hostess(and these formalities do take so long!) I knew her to be an American. She spoke French as fluently as Madame Lyon, but the accent, howeverfaint--or was it a mere intonation, --was unmistakable. She told meafterward that she had come to France as a child and had not been inthe United States for fifty-two years!

One day Madame Lyon took me to see the ateliers of Madame Viviani--inother words, the workshops where the convalescents who must becomeréformés are learning new trades and industries under the patronage ofthe wife of the cabinet minister now best known to us. Madame Vivianihas something like ten or twelve of these ateliers, but after I hadseen one or two of the same sort of anything in Paris, and listened tolong conscientious explanations, and walked miles in those enormoushospitals (originally, for the most part, Lycées) I felt thatduplication could not enhance my knowledge, and might, indeed, havethe sad effect of blunting it. 

Madame Lyon said to me more than once: "Ma chère, you are withoutexception, the most impatient woman I have ever seen in my life. Youno sooner enter a place than you want to leave it. " She was referringat the moment to the hospitals in the War Zone, where she would leanon the foot of every bed and have a long gossip with the delightedinmate, extract the history of his wound, and relate the tale ofsimilar wounds, healed by surgery, time and patience--while I, havingmade the tour of the cots, either opened and shut the doorsignificantly, or walked up and down impatiently, occasionallymuttering in her ear. 

The truth of the matter was that I had long since cultivated the habitof registering definite impressions in a flash, and after a tour ofthe cots, which took about seven minutes, could have told her thenature of every wound. Moreover, I knew the men did not want to talkto me, and I felt impertinent hanging round. 

But all this was incomprehensible to a Frenchwoman, to whom time isnothing, and who knows how the French in any conditions love to talk. 

However, to return to Madame Viviani. 

After one futile attempt, when I got lost, I met Madame Lyon and herdistinguished but patient friend out in one of the purlieus of Pariswhere the Lycée of Arts and Crafts has been turned into a hospital forconvalescents. 

Under the direction of a doctor each convalescent was working at whathis affected muscles most needed or could stand. Those that ransewing-machines exercised their legs. Those that made toys and cutwood with the electric machines got a certain amount of arm exercise. The sewing-machine experts had already made fifty thousand sacks forsand fortifications and breastworks. 

From this enormous Lycée (which cost, I was told, five million francs)we drove to the Salpêtrière, which in the remote ages before the war, was an old people's home. Its extent, comprising, as it does, courtafter court, gardens, masses of buildings which loom beyond and yetbeyond, not only inspired awed reflections of the number of old thatmust need charity in Paris but made one wonder where they were at thepresent moment, now that the Salpêtrière had been turned into ahospital. Perhaps, being very old, they had conveniently died. 

Here the men made wooden shoes with leather tops for the trenches, cigarette packages, ingenious toys--the airships and motor ambulanceswere the most striking; baskets, chairs, lace. 

The rooms I visited were in charge of an English infirmière and werefairly well aired. Some of the men would soon be well enough to goback to the Front and were merely given occupation during theirconvalescence. But in the main the object is to prepare theunfortunates known as réformés for the future. 

Since the fighting on the Somme began Madame Lyon has gone severaltimes a month to the recaptured towns, in charge of train-loads ofinstallations for the looted homes of the wretched people. In oneentire village the Germans had left just one saucepan. Nothing elsewhatever. 

XIII

BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK

THE DUCHESSE D'UZÈS

The Duchesse d'Uzès (_jeune_) was not only one of the reigningbeauties of Paris before the war but one of its best-dressed women;nor had she ever been avoided for too serious tendencies. She went towork the day war began and she has never ceased to work since. She hasstarted something like seventeen hospitals both at the French frontand in Saloniki, and her tireless brain has to its credit severalnotable inventions for moving field hospitals. 

Near Amiens is the most beautiful of the duc's castles, Lucheux, builtin the eleventh century. This she turned into a hospital during thefirst battle of the Somme in 1915, and as it could only accommodate alimited number she had hospital tents erected in the park. Sevenhundred were cared for there. Lucheux is now a hospital for officers. 

She herself is an infirmière major and not only goes back and forthconstantly to the hospitals in which she is interested, particularlyLucheux, but sometimes nurses day and night. 

I was very anxious to see Lucheux, as well as Arras, which is not farfrom Amiens, and, a vast ruin, is said to be by moonlight the mostbeautiful sight on earth. We both besieged the War Office. But invain. The great Battle of the Somme had just begun. They are so politeat the Ministère de la Guerre! If I had only thought of it a monthearlier. Or if I could remain in France a month or two longer? Buthélas! They could not take the responsibility of letting an Americanwoman go so close to the big guns. And so forth. It was sad enoughthat the duchess risked her life, took it in her hand, in fact, everytime she visited the château, but as a Frenchwoman, whose work was ofsuch value to France, it was their duty to assist her in thefulfillment of her own duty to her country. Naturally her suggestionto take me on her passport as an infirmière was received with a smile. So I must see Arras with a million other tourists after the war. 

The duchess prefers for reasons of her own to work, not with thenoblesse division of the Red Cross, but with the Union des Femmes deFrance. As she is extremely independent, impatient, and enterprising, with a haughty disdain of red tape, the reasons for this uncommonsecession may be left to the reader. 

And if she is to-day one of the most valued of the Ministère de laGuerre's coöperators, she has on the other hand reason to be gratefulfor the incessant demands upon her mind, for her anxieties have beengreat--no doubt are still. Not only is the duc at the front, but oneof two young nephews who lived with her was killed last summer, andthe other, a young aviator, who was just recovering from typhoid whenI was there, was ill-concealing his impatience to return to the Front. Her son, a boy of seventeen--a volunteer of course--in the sudden andsecret transfers the army authorities are always making, sometimescould not communicate with her for a fortnight at a time, andmeanwhile she did not know whether he was alive or "missing. " Sincethen he has suffered one of those cruel misfortunes which, in thiswar, seem to be reserved for the young and gallant. She writes of itin that manner both poignant and matter-of-fact that is socharacteristic of the French mother these days:

"I have just gone through a great deal of anguish on account of myoldest son, who, as I told you, left the cavalry to enter thechasseurs à pied at his request. 

"The poor boy was fighting in the splendid (illegible) affair, and hewas buried twice, then caught by the stifling gases, his mask havingbeen torn off. He insisted upon remaining at his post, in spite of thefact that he was spitting blood. Fortunately a lieutenant passed byand saw him. He gave orders to have him carried away. As soon as hereached the ambulance he fainted and could only be brought to himselfwith the greatest difficulty. His lungs are better, thank God, but hisheart is very weak, and even his limbs are affected by the poison. Many weeks will be required to cure him. I don't know yet where hewill be sent to be attended to, but of course I shall accompanyhim. .. . The duc is always in the Somme, where the bombardment issomething dreadful. He sleeps in a hut infested with rats. Really itis a beautiful thing to see so much courage and patience among men ofall ages in this country. "

In the same letter she writes: "I am just about to finish my new Fronthospital according to the desiderata expressed by our President of theHygiène Commission. I hope it will be accepted as a type of thesurgical movable ambulances. "

Before it was generally known that Roumania was "coming in" she haddoctors and nurses for several months in France in the summer of 1916studying all the latest devices developed by the French throughoutthis most demanding of all wars. The officials sent with them adoptedseveral of the Duchesse d'Uzès' inventions for the movable fieldhospital. 

She has never sent me the many specific details of her work that shepromised me, or this article would be longer. But, no wonder! Whattime have those women to sit down and write? I often wonder they gaveme as much time as they did when I was on the spot. 

THE DUCHESSE DE ROHAN

Before the war society used to dance once a week in the red and goldsalon of the historic "hôtel" of the Rohans' in the Faubourg St. Germain, just behind the Hôtel des Invalides. Here the duchessentertained when she took up her residence there as a bride; and, asher love of "the world" never waned, she danced on with the inevitablepauses for birth and mourning, until her daughters grew up and broughtto the salon a new generation. But the duchess and her own friendscontinued to dance on a night set apart for themselves, and in timeall of her daughters, but one, married and entertained in their ownhôtels. Her son, who, in due course, became the Duc de Rohan, alsomarried; but mothers are not dispossessed in France, and the duchessstill remained the center of attraction at the Hôtel de Rohan. 

Until August second, 1914. 

The duchess immediately turned the hôtel into a hospital. When Iarrived last summer it looked as if it had been a hospital for ever. All the furniture of the first floor had been stored and the immensedining-room, the red and gold salon, the reception rooms, all therooms large and small on this floor, in fact, were lined with cots. The pictures and tapestries have been covered with white linen, fourbathrooms have been installed, and a large operating andsurgical-dressing room built as an annex. The hall has been turnedinto a "bureau, " with a row of offices presided over by MauriceRostand. 

Behind the hôtel is the usual beautiful garden, very large and shadedwith splendid trees. During fine weather there are cots or long chairsunder every tree, out in the sun, on the veranda; and, after the WarZone, these men seemed to me very fortunate. The duchess takes in anyone sent to her, the Government paying her one-franc-fifty a day foreach. The greater part of her own fortune was invested in Brussels. 

She and her daughters and a few of her friends do all of the nursing, even the most menial. They wait on the table, because it cheers thepoilus--who, by the way, all beg, as soon as they have been there afew days, to be put in the red and gold salon. It keeps up theirspirits! Her friends and their friends, if they have any in Paris, call constantly and bring them cigarettes. Fortunately I was given thehint by the Marquise de Talleyrand, who took me the first time, andarmed myself with one of those long boxes that may be carried mostconveniently under the arm. Otherwise, I should have felt like asuperfluous intruder, standing about those big rooms looking at themen. In the War Zone where there were often no cigarettes, or anythingelse, to be bought, it was different. The men were only too glad tosee a new face. 

The duchess trots about indefatigably, assists at every operation, assumes personal charge of infectious cases, takes temperatures, waitson the table, and prays all night by the dying. Mr. Van Husen, a youngAmerican who was helping her at that time, told me that if a boy diedin the hospital and was a devout Catholic, and friendless in Paris, she arranged to have a high mass for his funeral service at a churchin the neighborhood. 

The last time I saw her she was feeling very happy because heryoungest son, who had been missing for several weeks, had suddenlyappeared at the hôtel and spent a few days with her. A week later theDuc de Rohan, one of the most brilliant soldiers in France, waskilled; and since my return I have heard of the death of her youngest. Such is life for the Mothers of France to-day. 

COUNTESS GREFFULHE

The Countess Greffulhe (born Princesse de Chimay and consequently aBelgian, although no stretch of fancy could picture her as anythingbut a Parisian) offered her assistance at once to the Government andcorresponded with hundreds of Mayors in the provinces in order to havedeserted hotels made over into hospitals with as little delay aspossible. She also established a dépôt to which women could comeprivately and sell their laces, jewels, bibelots, etc. Her nextenterprise was to form a powerful committee which responsible men andwomen of the allied countries could ask to get up benefits when theneed for money was pressing. 

Upon one occasion when a British Committee made this appeal sheinduced Russia to send a ballet for a single performance; and she alsopersuaded the manager of the Opera House to open it for a galaperformance for another organization. There is a romantic flavor aboutall the countess's work, and just how practical it was or how long itwas pursued along any given line I was unable to learn. 

MADAME PAQUIN

Madame Paquin, better known to Americans, I fancy, than any of thegreat dressmakers of Europe, offered her beautiful home in Neuilly tothe Government to be used as a hospital, and it had accommodated up tothe summer of 1916 eight thousand, nine hundred soldiers. 

She also kept all her girls at work from the first. As no one ordereda gown for something like eighteen months they made garments for thesoldiers, or badges for the numerous appeal days--we all decoratedourselves, within ten minutes after leaving the house, like heroes andheroines on the field, about three times a week--and upon one occasionthis work involved a three months' correspondence with all the Mayorsof France. It further involved the fastening of ribbons and pins(furnished by herself) upon fifteen million medallions. Madame Paquinis also on many important committees, including "L'Orphelinat desArmées, " so well known to us. 

MADAME PAUL DUPUY

Madame Dupuy was also an American girl, born in New York and nowmarried to the owner of Le Petit Parisien and son of one of thewealthiest men in France. She opened in the first days of the war anorganization which she called "Oeuvre du Soldat Blessé ou Malade, " andfrom her offices in the Hôtel de Crillon and her baraque out at theDépôt des Dons (where we all have warehouses), she supplies surgeonsat the Front with wheeling-chairs, surgical dressings, bed garments, rubber for operating tables, instruments, slippers, pillows, blankets, and a hundred and one other things that harassed surgeons at the Frontare always demanding. The oeuvre of the Marquise de Noailles, withwhich a daughter of Mrs. Henry Seligmen, Madame Henri van Heukelom, isclosely associated, is run on similar lines. 

I have alluded frequently in the course of these reminiscences toMadame Dupuy, who was of the greatest assistance to me, and more thankind and willing. I wish I could have returned it by collecting moneyfor her oeuvre when I returned to New York, but I found that LeBien-Être du Blessé was all I could manage. Moreover, it is impossibleto get money these days without a powerful committee behind you. To goto one wealthy and generous person or another as during the first daysof the war and ask for a donation for the president of an oeuvreunrepresented in this country is out of the question. It is no longerdone, as the English say. 

XIV

ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS

Versailles frames in my memory the most tragic of the war-timepictures I collected during my visit to France. That romantic andlovely city which has framed in turn the pomp and glory of France, theiconic simplicities of Marie Antoinette, the odious passions of aFrench mob, screeching for bread and blood, and the creation of aGerman Empire, will for long be associated in my mind with a sad andisolated little picture that will find no niche in history, but, as asymbol, is as diagnostic as the storming of the palace gates in 1789. 

There is a small but powerful oeuvre in Paris, composed with oneexception of Americans devoted to the cause of France. It was foundedby its treasurer, Mr. Frederic Coudert. Mr. August Jaccaci, of NewYork, is President; Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Honorary President; Mrs. Robert Bliss, Vice-President; and the Committee consists of theComtesse de Viel Castel, Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, and Mrs. William H. Hill, of Boston. It is called "The Franco-American Committee for theProtection of the Children of the Frontier. "

This Committee, which in May, 1916, had already rescued twelve hundredchildren, was born of one of those imperative needs of the momentwhen the French civilians and their American friends, working behindthe lines, responded to the needs of the unfortunate, with no time forforesight and prospective organization. 

In August, 1914, M. Cruppi, a former Minister of State, told Mr. Coudert that in the neighborhood of Belfort there were about eightyhomeless children, driven before the first great wind of the war, thebattle of Metz; separated from their mothers (their fathers and bigbrothers were fighting) they had wandered, with other refugees, downbelow the area of battle and were huddled homeless and almost starvingin and near the distracted town of Belfort. 

Mr. Coudert immediately asked his friends in Paris to collect funds, and started with M. Cruppi for Belfort. There they found not eightybut two hundred and five children, shelterless, hungry, some of themhalf imbecile from shock, and all physically disordered. 

To leave any of these wretched waifs behind, when Belfort itself mightfall at any moment, was out of the question, and M. Cruppi and Mr. Coudert crowded them all into the military cars allotted by theGovernment and took them to Paris. Some money had been raised. Mr. Coudert cabled to friends in America, Mrs. Bliss (wife of the FirstSecretary of the American Embassy) and Mrs. Cooper Hewett contributedgenerously, Valentine Thompson gave her help and advice for a time, and Madame Pietre, wife of the sous-préfet of Yvetot, installed thechildren in an old seminary near her home and gave them her personalattention. Later, one hundred were returned to their parents and therest placed in a beautiful château surrounded by a park. 

Every day of those first terrible weeks of the war proved that moreand more children must be cared for by those whom fortune had so farspared. It was then that Mr. Jaccaci renounced all private work andinterests, and that Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Shaw and the Comtesse de VielCastel volunteered. The organization was formed and christened, Mrs. Bliss provided Relief Dépôts in Paris, and Mr. Coudert returned to NewYork for a brief visit in search of funds. 

During the bombardment of the Belgian and French towns these childrencame into Paris on every train. They were tagged like post-officepackages, and it was as well they were, not only because some were toolittle to know or to pronounce their names correctly, but even theolder ones were often too dazed to give a coherent account ofthemselves; although the more robust quickly recovered. The firstthing to do with this human flotsam was to wash and disinfect and feedit, clip its hair to the skull, and then, having burned the rags ofarrival, dress it in clean substantial clothes. While I was in ParisMr. Jaccaci and Mrs. Hill were meeting these trains; and, when thesmaller children arrived frightened and tearful they took them intheir arms and consoled them all the way to the Relief Dépôts. Theresult was that they needed the same treatment as the children. 

It was generally the Curé or the Mayor of the bombarded towns that hadrounded up each little parentless army and headed it toward Paris. When the larger children were themselves again they all told the samebitter monotonous stories. Suddenly a rain of shrapnel fell on theirvillage or town. They fled to the cellars, perhaps to the one CaveVoûtée (a stone cellar with vaulted roof) and there herded inindescribable filth, darkness, fear, hunger for weeks and even monthsat a time. The shelling of a village soon stopped, but in the largertowns, strategic points desired of the enemy, the bombarding would beincessant. Mothers, or older children, would venture out for food, returning perhaps with enough to keep the pale flame of life alive, asoften as not falling a huddled mass a few feet from the exit of thecellar. Mothers died of typhoid, pneumonia, in childbirth; othersnever had reached the cellar with their own children in the panic; oneway or another these children arrived in Paris in a state oforphanhood, although later investigations proved them to have beenhiding close to their mother (and sometimes father; for all men arenot physically fit for war) by the width of a street, in a town wherethe long roar of guns dulled the senses and the affections, and theconstant hail of shrapnel precluded all search for anything but food. 

Moreover, many families had fled from villages lying in the path ofthe advancing hordes to the neighboring towns, and there separated, crowding into the nearest Caves Voûtées. Most of these poor womencarried a baby and were distraught with fear besides; the olderchildren must cling to the mother's skirts or become lost in themêlée. 

When one considers that many of these children, in Rheims or Verdun, for instance, were in cellars not for weeks but for months, withoutseeing the light of day, with their hunger never satisfied, withcorpses unburied for days until a momentary lull encouraged the eldersto remove the sand bags at the exit and thrust them out, with theirrefuge rocking constantly and their ear-drums splitting with raucoussounds, where the stenches were enough to poison what red blood theyhad left and there were no medicines to care for the afflicted littlebodies, one pities anew those mentally afflicted people who assert atautomatic intervals, "I can't see any difference between the crueltyof the British blockade and the German submarines. " The resistantpowers of the human body, given the bare chance of remaining alive, are little short of phenomenal. But then, when Nature compounded thehuman frame it was to fling it into a newborn world far more difficultto survive than even the awful conditions of modern warfare. 

Some of these children were wounded before they reached the cellars. In many cases the families remained in their homes until the walls, atfirst pierced by the shrapnel, began to tumble about their ears. Thenthey would run to the homes of friends on the other side of the town, staying there until the guns, aided by the air scouts, raked suchhouses as had escaped the first assault. Often there were no CavesVoûtées in the villages. The mothers cowered with their children underthe tottering walls or lay flat on the ground until the German gunsturned elsewhere; then they ran for the nearest town. But during thesedistracted transfers many received wounds whose scars they are likelyto carry through life. The most seriously wounded were taken to themilitary hospitals, where they either died, or, if merely in need ofbandages, were quickly turned out to make room for some poilu arrivingin the everlasting procession of stretchers. 

Sometimes, flat on their stomachs, the more curious and intelligent ofthe children watched the shells sailing overhead to drop upon somebeautiful villa or château and transpose it into a heap of stones. Where there were English or Americans in these bombarded towns, orwhere the Curés or the Mayors of those invaded had not been shot orimprisoned, the children were sent as quickly as possible to Paris, the mothers, when there were any, only too content to let them go andto remain behind and take their chances with the shells. 

One little Belgian named Bonduelle, who, with two brothers, reachedParis in safety, is very graphic: "We are three orphans, " he repliedin answer to the usual questions. "Our uncle and aunt took the placeof our dear parents, so soon taken from us. .. . It was towards theevening of Wednesday, 6th September, 1914, that I was coming back tomy uncle's house from Ypres, when all at once I heard shrieks andyells in the distance. I stopped, for I was like one stunned. Onhearing behind me, on the highway, German cavalry, I ran into a housewhere I spent the night. I could not close my eyes when I thought ofthe anxiety of my uncle and aunt and of the fate of my two smallbrothers, Michael and Roger. Early the following day I rushed to ourhouse. Everybody was in the cellar. We shed tears on meeting again. Ifound two of my cousins wounded by a shell which had exploded outsideour door. Soon another shell comes and smashes our house. I waswounded. Dazed with fear, my cousin and myself got out through awindow from the cellar, we ran across fields and meadows to anotheruncle, where the rest of the family followed us soon. We remainedthere the whole winter, but what a sad winter! We have not taken offour clothes, for at every moment we feared to have to run away again. 

"The big guns rumbled very much and the shells whistled over ourheads. Every one heard: 'So-and-so is killed' or 'wounded, by ashell. ' 'Such-and-such-a-house is ruined by a shell. '

"After having spent more than seven months in incredible fear, mybrothers and myself have left the village, at the order of thegendarmes, and the English took us to Hazebrouck, from where we wentto Paris. "

In some cases the parents, or, as was most generally the case, themother, after many terrifying experiences in her village, passed andrepassed by the Germans, having heard of the relief stations in Paris, sent their children, properly tagged, to be cared for in a place ofcomparative safety until the end of the war. Young Bruno VanWonterghem told his experience in characteristically simple words:

"Towards the evening of September 6th, 1914, the Germans arrived atour village with their ammunition. One would have thought the LastJudgment was about to begin. All the inhabitants were hiding in theirhouses. I was hiding in the attic, but, desirous to see a German, Iwas looking through a little window in the roof. Nobody in the housedared to go to bed. It was already very late when we heard knocks atthe door of our shop. It was some Germans who wanted to buy chocolate. Some paid but the majority did not. They left saying, 'Let us kill theFrench. ' The following morning they marched away toward France. In theevening one heard already the big guns in the distance. 

"Turned out of France the Germans came to St. Eloi, where theyremained very long. Then they advanced to Ypres. The whole winter Iheard the rumbling of the big guns, and the whistling of the shells. Ilearned also every day of the sad deaths of the victims of that awfulwar. I was often very frightened and I have been very happy to leavefor France with my companions. "

While I was in Paris the refugee children, of course, were from theinvaded districts of France; the Belgian stream had long since ceased. Already twelve hundred little victims of the first months of the war, both Belgian and French, either had been returned to their mothers orrelatives by the Franco-American Committee, or placed for theeducational period of their lives in families, convents, or boys'schools. The more recent were still in the various coloniesestablished by Mrs. Hill and the other members of the Committee, wherethey received instruction until such time as their parents could befound, or some kind people were willing to adopt them. 

It was on my first Sunday in Paris that Mr. Jaccaci and Mrs. Hillasked me to drive out with them to Versailles and visit a sanitoriumfor the children whose primary need was restoration to health. It wason the estate of Madame Philip Berard, who had contributed thebuilding, while the entire funds for its upkeep, including a trainednurse, were provided by Mrs. Bliss. 

Versailles was as green and peaceful as if a few miles away the shellswere not ripping up a field a shot. After lunch in the famous hotelordinarily one of the gayest in France at that time of the year, wefirst visited the rest hospital of Miss Morgan, Miss Marbury and Missde Wolfe, and then drove out into the country to Madame Berard'shistorical estate. Here, in the courtyard of a good-sized building, we were greeted by about forty children in pink-and-white ginghamaprons, and heads either shaved or finished off with tightly braidedpigtails. It seemed to me then that they were all smiling, and--forthey had been there some weeks--that most of them looked round andhealthy. But I soon found that some were still too languid to play. One lying in a long chair on the terrace at the back of the house andgazing vacantly out at the beautiful woods was tubercular, the victimof months in a damp cellar. Another, although so excessively cheerfulthat I suspect she was not "all there" was also confined to a longchair, with a hip affection of some sort, but she was much petted, andsurrounded by all the little luxuries that the victims of her smilehad remembered to send her. One beautiful child had the rickets, andseveral suffered from intestinal prolapsus and other internalcomplaints, but were on the road to recovery. 

While their Swedish nurse was putting them through their gymnasticexercises I studied their faces. At first my impression was one ofprevailing homeliness; scrubbed, flat, peasant faces, for the mostpart, without the features or the mental apparatus that providesexpression. But soon I singled out two or three pretty and engagingchildren, and rarely one whose face was devoid of character. And theystood well and went through their exercises with precision and vigor. 

It was just before we left that my wandering attention was directedtoward the scene to which I alluded in my first paragraph. The greaternumber of the children were shouting at play in a neighboring field. The preternaturally happy invalid was smiling at the lovely woodsbeyond the terrace, woods where little princes had frolicked, andolder princes had wooed and won. Mr. Jaccaci was still petting thebeautiful little boy who looked like the _bambino_ on the celebratedfresco of Florence; Mrs. Hill was kissing and hugging several littlegirls who had clung to her skirts. It was, in spite of its origin, ahappy scene. 

I had been waiting by the door for these ceremonies of affection tofinish, when I happened to glance at the far end of the wide stoneterrace. There, by the balustrade, in the shadow of the leafy woods, stood a girl of perhaps eight or ten. Her arms hung at her sides andshe was staring straight before her while she cried as I never haveseen a child cry; silently, bitterly, with her heavy plain face hardlytwisted in its tragic silent woe. 

I called Mrs. Hill's attention to her, for I, a stranger, could notintrude upon a grief like that, and the idol of all those childrenimmediately ran over to the desolate figure. She questioned her, sheput her arms about her. She might as well have addressed one of thebroken stone nymphs in the woods. That young mind, startled from thepresent, it may be, by witnessing the endearments lavished uponprettier and smaller children, had traveled far. She was in the past, a past that anteceded even that past of death and thundering guns androcking walls and empty stomachs; a past when the war, of whose likeshe had never heard, was still in the sleepless brains of the monstercriminals of history, when she lived in a home in a quiet village withthe fields beyond; where she had a mother, a father, sisters, brothers; where her tears had been over childish disappointments, andher mother had dried them. Small and homely and insignificant shestood there in her tragic detachment the symbol of all the woe ofFrance, and of the depraved brutality of a handful of ambitious menwho had broken the heart of the world. 

XV

THE MARRAINES

It is hardly too much to say that every woman in France, from noblesseto peasant, has her filleul (godson) in the trenches; in many cases, when she still has a considerable income in spite of taxes, moratoriums, and all the rest of it, she is a marraine on the grandscale and has several hundred. Children have their filleul, correspondwith him, send him little presents several times a month and weepbitterly when word comes that he is deep in his last trench. 

Servants save their wages so that when the filleuls of theirmistresses come home on their six days' leave they at least canprovide the afternoon wine and entertain them royally in the kitchen. Old maids, still sewing in their attic for a few sous a day, havefound a gleam of brightness for the first time in their somber livesin the knowledge that they give a mite of comfort or pleasure to someunknown man, offering his life in the defence of France, and whoseletters, sentimental, effusive, playful, almost resign these poorstranded women to the crucifixion of their country. 

Busy women like Madame d'Andigné sit up until two in the morningwriting to their grateful filleuls. Girls, who once dreamed only ofmarrying and living the brilliant life of the _femme du monde_ spendhours daily not only on cheerful letters, but knitting, sewing, embroidering, purchasing for humble men who will mean nothing to theirfuture, beyond the growth of spirit they unconsciously induced. Poorwomen far from Paris, where, at least, thousands of thesepermissionnaires linger for a few hours on their way home, toil allnight over their letters to men for whom they conceive a profoundsentiment but never can hope to see. Shop girls save their wages andlady's maids pilfer in a noble cause. 

It was Madame Berard (who was a Miss Dana of Boston) who organizedthis magnificent spirit into a great oeuvre, so that thousands of mencould be made happy whom no kindly woman so far had been able todiscover. 

Madame Berard, who has three sons in the army herself, nursed at theFront for several months after the war broke out. Even officers toldher that they used to go off by themselves and cry because they neverreceived a letter, or any sort of reminder that they were anything butpart of a machine defending France. These officers, of course, werefrom the invaded district, and in addition to their isolation, werehaunted by fears for their women now in the power of men who were ascruel as they were sensual and degenerate. 

When she returned to her home she immediately entered upon the careerof marraine, corresponding with several hundred of the men she eitherhad known or whose names were given to her by their commandingofficers. Naturally the work progressed beyond her capacity and shecalled upon friends to help her out. Out of this initial and purelypersonal devotion grew the great oeuvre, Mon Soldat, which has metwith such a warm response in this country. 

Madame Berard's headquarters are in a villa in the Parc Monceau. Hereis conducted all the correspondence with the agents in other cities, here come thousands of letters and presents by every mail to beforwarded to the Front, and here come the grateful--andhopeful--permissionnaires, who never depart without a present andsometimes leave one, generally an ingenious trinket made in thetrenches. 

When I visited the villa last summer the oeuvre had eight thousandmarraines, and no doubt the number has doubled to-day. Fifteen hundredof these were American, marshalled by Madame Berard's representativein New York, Mr. R. W. Neeser. Some of these fairy godmothers had tenfilleuls. Packages were dispatched to the Front every week. Women thatcould not afford presents wrote regularly. There were at that timeover twenty thousand filleuls. 

The letters received from these men of all grades must be a source ofpsychologic as well as sympathetic interest to the more intelligentmarraines, for when the men live long enough they reveal much of theirnative characteristics between the formalities so dear to the French. But too many of them write but one letter, and sometimes they do notfinish that. 

XVI

PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE

I

What the bereft mothers of France will do after this war is over andthey no longer have the mutilated sons of other mothers to nurse andserve and work for, is a problem for themselves; but what the youngerwomen will do is a problem for the men. 

Practically every day of the three months I spent in Passy I used oneof the three lines of tramcars that converge at La Muette (it isalmost immoral to take a taxi these days); and I often amused myselfwatching the women conductors. They are quick, keen, and competent, but, whether it was owing to the dingy black uniforms anddistressingly unbecoming Scotch military cap or not, it never didoccur to me that there would be any mad scramble for them when the menof France once more found the leisure for love and marriage. 

Grim as these women looked, however, "on their job, " I often noticedthem laughing and joking when, off duty for a few moments, they restedunder the trees at the terminus. No doubt there is in them thatineradicable love of the home so characteristic of the French race, and as there is little beauty in their class at the best, they mayappeal more to the taste of men of that class than they did to mine. And it may be that those who are already provided with husbands willcheerfully renounce work in their favor and return to the hearthstone. Perhaps, however, they will not, and wise heads of the sex which hasruled the world so long are conferring at odd moments upon these andother females who have taken up so many of the reins laid down by menand driven the man-made teams with a success that could not be morecomplete if they had been bred to it, and with a relish that hasgrown, and shows no sign of retroaction. 

[Illustration: DELIVERING THE POST]

The French women of the people, however, unlovely to look upon, toil-worn, absorbed from childhood in petty economics, have little totempt men outside of the home in which they reign, so for those thatdo return the problem ends. But it is an altogether different matterwith the women of the leisure classes. The industrial women who haveproved so competent in the positions occupied for centuries by menmerely agitate the economic brain of France, but the future of thewomen of the upper strata of the bourgeoisie is shaking the very soulof the social psychologist. 

II

At the outbreak of the war hundreds of girls belonging to the bestfamilies volunteered as nurses. Some quickly retired to committee workin disgust, or because their pampered bodies rebelled under thestrain. 

Others have never faltered, doing the most repulsive and arduous workday by day, close to the thunder of guns, or under the constant menaceof the taube whose favorite quarry is the hospital full of ill andwounded, and of pretty women whose torn bodies even in imaginationsatisfy the perversities of German lust; but if they ever go home torest it is under the peremptory orders of their médecin major, who hasno use for shattered nervous systems these days. 

While these girls may have lost their illusions a little earlier thanthey would in matrimony, the result is not as likely to affect thepractical French mind toward the married state as it might that of themore romantic and self-deluding American or English woman. There islittle doubt that they will marry if they can, for to marry and marryearly has been for too many centuries a sort of religious duty withwell-born French women to be eradicated by one war; and as they willmeet in hospital wards many officers who might not otherwise crosstheir narrow paths, their chances, if the war ends soon enough, willbe reasonably increased. 

Moreover, many a man who was a confirmed bachelor will, after theacute discomfort of years of warfare, look upon the married state as agreater reward than the medals on his breast; and on the other handmany girls will be glad to marry men old enough to be a parent of theyoung husband they once dreamed of; for hardly since the ThirtyYears' War will men when peace comes be so scarce and women so many. 

There has even been talk from time to time of bringing the Koranic lawacross the Mediterranean and permitting each able-bodied Frenchman ofany class to have three registered wives besides the one of hischoice, the additional expense and responsibility being borne by theState. 

But of all the countries in Europe polygamy is most unthinkable inFrance. The home is as perfected and as sacred an economic institutionas the State. To reign over one of those important units, even if deepin the shadow of the expansive male, to maintain it on that high levelof excellence which in the aggregate does so much to maintain Franceat the very apex of civilization, in spite of another code whichshocks Anglo-Saxon morality--this, combined with the desire to gratifythe profoundest instincts of woman, is the ambition of everywell-conditioned French girl. 

She would far rather, did the demand of the State for male childrenbecome imperative, give it one or more outside the law rather thanforfeit her chance to find one day a real husband and to be acomponent part of that great national institution, The Family. Shewould not feel in the same class for a moment with the women who liveto please men and refrain from justifying themselves by fulfilling atthe same time a duty to their depleted State. 

III

The women of the noblesse, like the aristocracies of any country, andwhatever the minor shadings and classifications, are divided into twoclasses: the conservative, respectable, home-loving, no matter whatthe daily toll to rank; and the devotees of dress, pleasure, sex, subdivided, orchestrated, and romanticized. As these women move in themost brilliant society in the world and can command the willingattendance of men in all circles; as their husbands are so oftenforaging far afield; and as temptation is commonly proportionate toopportunity, little wonder that the Parisian _femme du monde_ is themost notable disciple of Earth's politer form of hedonism. 

This is true to only a limited extent in the upper circles of thebourgeoisie. Some of the women of the wealthier class dressmagnificently, have their lovers and their scandals (in what class dothey not?), and before the war danced the night away. But the greatmajority rarely wandered far from their domestic kingdom, quitecontent with an occasional ball, dinner, or play. A daughter'smarriage was the greatest event in their lives, and the endlesspreparations throughout the long engagement, a subdued but deliciousperiod of excitement. Their social circles, whatever their birth, wereextremely restricted, and they were, above all things, the mates oftheir husbands. 

IV

But the war has changed all that. France has had something like a wara generation from time immemorial, but in modern times, since womanhas found herself, they have been brief. Feminism, whether approved bythe great mass of Frenchwomen or not, has done its insidious work. Andfor many years now there has been the omnipresent American woman withher careless independence; and, still more recently, the desperatefight of the English women for liberty. 

It was quite natural when this war swept across Europe like a fierywater-spout, for the French woman of even the bourgeoisie to comeforth from her shell (although at first not to the same degree as thenoblesse) and work with other women for the men at the Front and thestarving at home. Not only did the racing events of those first weekscompel immediate action, but the new ideas they had imbibed, howeverunwillingly, dictated their course as inevitably as that of the moreexperienced women across the channel. The result was that these womenfor the first time in their narrow intensive lives found themselvesmeeting, daily, women with whom they had had the most distant if anyacquaintance; sewing, knitting, talking more and more intimately overtheir work, running all sorts of oeuvres, founding homes for refugees, making up packages for prisoners in Germany (this oeuvre was conceivedand developed into an immense organization by Madame Wallestein), serving on six or eight committees, becoming more and moreinterdependent as they worked for a common and unselfish cause; theircircle of acquaintances and friends as well as their powers ofusefulness, their independent characteristics which go so far towardthe making of personality, rising higher and higher under the impetusof deprisoned tides until they flowed gently over the dam of thecenturies; the flood, be it noted, taking possession of wide pasturesheretofore sacred to man. 

Naturally these women spent very little time at home; although, suchis the incomparable training of those practical methodical minds, evenwith a diminished staff of servants the domestic machinery ran assmoothly as when they devoted to it so many superfluous hours. 

And with these new acquaintances, all practically of their own class, they talked in time not only of the war and their ever augmentingduties, but, barriers lowered by their active sympathies, foundthemselves taking a deep interest in other lives, and in the thingsthat had interested other women of more intelligence or of morediversified interests than their own. 

Insensibly life changed, quite apart from the rude shocks of war;lines were confused, old ideals were analyzed in many instances ashoary conventions, which had decayed inside until a succession ofsharp quick contacts caused the shell to cave in upon emptiness. 

V

A year passed. During that time husbands did not return from the frontunless ill or maimed (and thousands of husbands are even to-day quiteintact). Then came Chapter Two of the domestic side of the War, whichshould be called "Les Permissionnaires. " Officers and soldiers wereallowed a six days' leave of absence from the front at statedintervals. 

The wives were all excitement and hope. They snatched time toreplenish their wardrobes, and once more the thousand corridors of theGaleries Lafayette swarmed, the dressmakers breathed again. Shopwindows blossomed with all the delicate fripperies with which aFrenchwoman can make old garments look new. Hotel keepers emerged fromtheir long night like hibernates that had overslept, and rubbing theirhands. The men were coming back. Paris would live again. And Paris, the coquette of all the ages, forgot her new rôle of lady of sorrowsand smiled once more. 

The equally eager husband (to pass over "les autres") generallysneaked into his house or apartment by the back stairs and into thebathtub before he showed himself to his adoring family; but afterthose first strenuous hours of scrubbing and disinfecting and shaving, and getting into a brand new uniform of becoming horizon blue, therefollowed hours of rejoicing unparalleled by anything but a victoryover "Les Boches. "

For two days husband and wife talked as incessantly as only Gauls can;but by degrees a puzzled look contracted the officer's brow, graduallydeepening into a frown. His fluent wife, whose animation over trifleshad always been a source of infinite refreshment, was talking ofthings which he, after a solid year of monotonous warfare far fromhome, knew nothing. He cared to know less. He wanted the old exchangeof personalities, the dear domestic gabble. 

The wife meanwhile was heroically endeavoring to throw off a feelingof intolerable ennui. How was it that never before had she found thehearthstone dull? The conversation of her life partner (now doublyhonored) induced a shameful longing for the seventh day. 

So it was. During that year these two good people had grown apart. Thewife's new friends bored the husband, and the gallant soldier'sstories of life at the Front soon became homogeneous. Whether he willaccept his wife's enlarged circle and new interests after the war isover is one of the problems, but nothing is less likely than that shewill rebuild the dam, recall the adventurous waters of herpersonality, empty her new brain cells, no matter how much she maycontinue to love her husband and children. 

VI

Nor to give up her new power. In those divisions of the bourgeoisiewhere the wife is always the husband's partner, following a custom ofcenturies, and who to-day is merely carrying on the business alone, there will be no surrender of responsibilities grown precious, nosense of apprehension of loss of personal power. But in those moreleisured circles where, for instance, a woman has been for the firsttime complete mistress of all expenditures, domestic oradministrative, and of her childrens' destinies; has learned to thinkand act for herself as if she were widowed in fact; and in additionhas cultivated her social sense to an extreme unprecedented in theentire history of the bourgeoisie, she will never return to the oldstatus, even though she disdain feminism per se and continue to preferher husband to other men--that is to say, to find him more tolerable. 

A young woman of this class, who until the war widowed her had been ashappy as she was favored by fortune: wealthy, well-bred, brilliantlyeducated, and "elle et lui" with her husband, told me that no Americancould understand the peculiarly intensive life led by a French couplewho found happiness in each other and avoided the fast sets. Andwhereas what she told me would have seemed natural enough in the lifeof a petite bourgeoisie, I must confess I was amazed to have it fromthe lips of a clever and beautiful young woman whom life had pampereduntil death broke loose in Europe. 

The husband, she told me, did the thinking. Before he left home in themorning he asked his wife what she intended to order for dinner andaltered the menu to his liking; also the list of guests, if it hadbeen thought well to vary their charming routine with a selectcompany. 

Before his wife bought a new gown she submitted the style and colorsto what seems literally to have been her other half, and he solemnlypondered over both before pronouncing his august and final opinion. 

If they had children, the interest was naturally extended. His concernin health and in illness, in play and in study, was nothing short ofmeticulous. I asked my informant if Frenchwomen would ever againsubmit to a man's making such an infernal nuisance of himself, and, sad as she still was at her own great loss, she replied positivelythat they would not. They had tasted independence and liked it toowell ever to drop back into insignificance. 

"Nor, " she added, "will we be content with merely social and domesticlife in the future. We will love our home life none the less, but wemust always work at something now; only those who have lost theirhealth, or are natural parasites will ever again be content to livewithout some vital personal interest outside the family. "

Words of tremendous import to France, those. 

VII

I caught a glimpse more than once of the complete submergence ofcertain Frenchwomen by husbands too old for war, but important inmatters of State. They bored me so that I only escaped betraying acutemisery by summoning all my powers of resistance and talking againsttime until I could make a graceful exit. They were, these women (wholooked quite happy), mere echoes of the men to whom their eyeswandered in admiration and awe. The last thing I had imagined, however, was that the men would concern themselves about details that, in Anglo-Saxon countries at least, have for centuries been firmlyrelegated to the partner of the second part. How many American womendrive their husbands to the club by their incessant drone about theiniquities of servants and the idiosyncrasies of offspring?

And much as the women of our race may resent that their rôle inmatrimony is the one of petty detail while the man enjoys the "broaderinterests, " I think few of us would exchange our lot for one ofconstant niggling interference. It induces a certain pleasure toreflect that so many Frenchwomen have reformed. Frenchmen, with alltheir conservatism, are the quickest of wit, the most supple ofintellect in the world. No doubt after a few birth-pains they willconform, and enjoy life more than ever. Perhaps, also, they will ceaseto prowl abroad for secret entertainment. 

VIII

Nothing, it is safe to say, since the war broke out, has so astonishedFrenchwomen--those that loved their husbands and those that lovedtheir lovers--as the discovery that they find life quite full andinteresting without men. At the beginning all their faculties were putto so severe a strain that they had no time to miss them; as Francesettled down to a state of war, and life was in a sense normal again, it was only at first they missed the men--quite aside from theirnatural anxieties. But as time went on and there was no man alwayscoming in, husband or lover, no man to dress for, scheme for, exercisetheir imaginations to please, weep for when he failed to come, orlapsed from fever heat to that temperature which suggests exoticfevers, they missed him less and less. 

Unexpected resources were developed. Their work, their many works, grew more and more absorbing. Gradually they realized that they werelooking at life from an entirely different point of view. 

Voilà!

Is the reign of the male in the old countries of Europe nearing itsend, even as Kings and Kaisers are reluctantly approaching the vaultsof history? An American woman married to a Frenchman said to me oneday:

"Intelligent Frenchwomen complain to me that they never win anythingon their merits. They must exert finesse, seduction, charm, magnetism. For this reason they are always in a state of apprehension that someother woman equally feminine, but more astute and captivating, willwin their man away. The result is the intense and unremittingjealousies in French society. They see in this war their opportunityto show men not only their powers of individual usefulness, oftenequal if not superior to that of their husband or lover, but theirabsolute indispensability. They are determined to win respect asindividuals, rise above the rank of mere females. "

IX

Moreover, this war is bringing a liberty to the French girl which mustsometimes give her the impression that she is living in a fantasticdream. Young people already had begun to rebel at the old order ofmatrimonial disposition by parental authority, but it is doubtful ifthey will ever condescend to argument again, or even to the old formalrestrictions during the period of the long engagement. Not only willhusbands be too scarce to dicker about, but these girls, too, areliving their own lives, going to and coming from hospital work daily(unless at the Front), spending long hours by convalescent cots, corresponding with filleuls, attending half a dozen clubs for work;above all, entertaining their brothers' friend during those oasesknown as _permission_, or six days' leave. And very often the friendsof their brothers are young men of a lower rank in life, whose valoror talents in the field have given them a quick promotion. 

The French army is the one perfect democracy in the world. Its men, from duke to peasant-farmer, have a contemptuous impatience for socialpretense when about the business of war, and recognition is swift andpractical. As the young men of the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisiehave lost more and more of their old friends they have replaced themwith men they like for good masculine reasons alone, and these theyhave taken to bringing home, when permissionnaires at the same time. Nothing can be more certain than that girls, once haughty andexacting, will marry these young men and be glad to get them. 

A student of his race said to me one day: "France is the mostconservative country in Europe. She goes on doing the same thinggeneration after generation paying no attention to rebellious mutters, hardly hearing them in fact. She believes herself to have been mouldedand solidified long since. Then, presto! Something sudden and violenthappens. Old ideas are uprooted. New ones planted. Is there astruggle? Not for a moment. They turn an intellectual somersault andare immediately as completely at home with the new as the old. "

During the second year of the war a feminist was actually invited toaddress the graduation class of a fashionable girls' school. She toldthem that the time had come when girls of all classes should betrained to earn their living. This war had demonstrated theuncertainty of human affairs. Not a family in France, not even the_haute finance_, but would have a curtailed income for years to come, and many girls of good family could no longer count on a dot if thewar lasted much longer. Then there was the decrease in men. Better goout into the world and make any sort of respectable career than be anold maid at home. She gave them much practical advice, told them thatone of the most lucrative employments was retouching photographs, andimplored them to cultivate any talent they might have and market it assoon as possible. 

The girls sat throughout this discourse as stunned as if a bomb haddropped on the roof. They were still discussing it when I left Paris. No doubt it is already beginning to bear fruit. Few of them but havethat most dismal of all fireside ornaments, a half-effaced old-maidsister, one of the most tragic and pitiable objects in France. Thenoble attributes which her drab and eventless life sometimes leaveun-withered were superbly demonstrated to the American audience someyears ago by Nance O'Neil in "The Lily. "

X

One of the new officers I happened to hear of was a farmer who notonly won the _Croix de Guerre_ and the _Croix de la Legion d'Honneur_very early in the war but rose in rank until, when I heard the story, he was a major. One day a brother officer asked him if he shouldremain in the army after peace was declared. 

"No, " he replied, and it was evident that he had thought the matterover. "My wife is not a lady. She is wholly unfitted to take her placein the officers' class. There is no democracy among women. Better forus both that I return whence I came. "

This is a fair sample of the average Frenchman's ironic astuteness, that clear practical vision that sees life without illusions. But ifthe war should drag on for years the question is, would he be willingto surrender the position of authority to which he had grownaccustomed, and which satisfies the deepest instincts of a man'snature after youth has passed? After all there may be a new "officers'class. "

I heard another story, told me by a family doctor, equallyinteresting. The son of a wealthy and aristocratic house and his valetwere mobilized at the same time. The young patrician was a good and agallant soldier but nothing more. The valet discovered extraordinarycapacities. Not only did he win the coveted medals in the course ofthe first few months, but when his shattered regiment under fire inthe open was deprived of its officers he took command and led theremnant to victory. A few more similar performances proving that hisusefulness was by no means the result of the moment's exaltation butof real however unsuspected gifts, he was rapidly promoted until hewas captain of his former employer's company. There appears to havebeen no mean envy in the nature of the less fortunate aristocrat. Several times they have received their _permission_ together and hehas taken his old servant home with him and given him the seat ofhonor at his own table. His mother and sisters have made no demurwhatever, but are proud that their ménage should have given a finesoldier to France. Perhaps only the noblesse who are unalterably sureof themselves would have been capable of rising above the age-oldprejudices of caste, war or no war. 

XI

French women rarely emigrate. Never, if they can help it. Our servantquestion may be solved after the war by the manless women of otherraces, but the Frenchwoman will stay in her country, if possible inher home. All girls, the major part of the young widows (who havecreated a panic among the little spinsters) will marry if they can, not only because marriage is still the normal career of woman butbecause of their sense of duty to the State. But that social Franceafter the war will bear more than a family resemblance to the Francethat reached the greatest climax in her history on August second, nineteen-fourteen, has ceased to be a matter of speculation. 

 * * * * *

Although I went to France to examine the work of the Frenchwomen only, it would be ungracious, as well as a disappointment to many readers, not to give the names at least of some of the many American women wholive in France or who spend a part of the year there and are workingas hard as if this great afflicted country were their own. Some daytheir names will be given to the world in a full roll of honor. I donot feel sure that I know of half of them, but I have written down allI can recall. The list, of course, does not include the names ofAmericans married to Frenchmen:

Mrs. Sharp, Miss Anne Morgan, Mrs. Tuck, Mrs. Bliss, Miss ElisabethMarbury, Miss Elsie de Wolfe, Mrs. Robert Bacon, Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Whitney Warren, Mrs. Wharton, Mrs. Canfield Fisher, Miss GraceEllery Channing, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Carroll of Carrollton, Mrs. Sherman, Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Miss Holt, Mrs. William H. Hill, Mrs. Shaw, Mrs. Frederick H. Allen, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, Miss Fairchild, Mrs. Younger, Mrs. Morton Mitchell, Mrs. Fleury, Mrs. Sales, Mrs. Hyde, Mrs. William Astor Chanler, Mrs. Ridgeley Carter, Miss Ethel Crocker, Miss Daisy Polk, Miss Janet Scudder, Mrs. Lathrop, Miss Vail, Mrs. Samuel Watson, Mrs. Armstrong Whitney, Mrs. Lawrence Slade, MissYandell, Mrs. Greene, Mrs. Duryea, Mrs. Depew, Mrs. Marion Crocker, Miss Mary Eyre, Mrs. Gros, Mrs. Van Heukelom, Mrs. Tarn McGrew, Mrs. Schoninger, Miss Grace Lounsbery, Mrs. Lawrence, the PrincessPoniatowska, and Isadora Duncan. 

BOOK II

FEMINISM IN PEACE AND WAR

I

THE THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE

I

It is possible that if the European War had been averted the historyof Feminism would have made far different reading--say fifty yearshence. The militant suffragettes of England had degenerated fromsomething like real politicians into mere neurasthenics and not onlyhad lost what little chance they seemed for a time to have of beingtaken seriously by the British Government, but had very nearlyalienated the many thousands of women without the ranks that werewavering in the balance. This was their most serious mistake, for thechief handicap of the militants had been that too few women weredisposed toward suffrage, or even interested. The history of the worldshows that when any large body of people in a community want anythinglong enough and hard enough, and go after it with practical methods, they obtain it in one form or another. But the women of Britain aswell as the awakening women of other nations east and west of theAtlantic, were so disgusted and alarmed by this persisting lack ofself-control in embryonic politicians of their sex that they votedsilently to preserve their sanity under the existing régime. It hasformed one of the secret sources of the strength of the antis, thatfear of the complete demoralization of their sex if freed from theimmemorial restraints imposed by man. 

This attitude of mind does not argue a very distinguished order ofreasoning powers or of clear thinking; but then not too many men, inspite of their centuries of uninterrupted opportunity, faceinnovations or radical reforms with unerring foresight. There is astrong conservative instinct in the average man or woman, born of thehereditary fear of life, that prompts them to cling to old standards, or, if too intelligent to look inhospitably upon progress, to movevery slowly. Both types are the brakes and wheel-horses necessary to astable civilization, but history, even current history in thenewspapers, would be dull reading if there were no adventurous spiritswilling to do battle for new ideas. The militant women of Englandwould have accomplished wonders if their nervous systems had notbroken down under the prolonged strain. 

It is probable that after this war is over the women of thebelligerent nations will be given the franchise by the weary men thatare left, if they choose to insist upon it. They have shown the samebravery, endurance, self-sacrifice, resource, and grim determinationas the men. In every war, it may be argued, women have displayed thesame spirit and the same qualities, proving that they needed but thetouchstone of opportunity to reveal the splendor of their endowment, but treated by man, as soon as peace was restored, as the same oldinferior annex. 

This is true enough, but the point of difference is that never, priorto the Great War, was such an enormous body of women awake after thelethargic submission of centuries, and clamoring for their rights. Never before have millions of women been supporting themselves; neverbefore had they even contemplated organization and the directpolitical attack. Of course the women of Europe, exalted and workedhalf to death, have, with the exception of a few irrepressibles, putall idea of self-aggrandizement aside for the moment; but this ideahad grown too big and too dominant to be dismissed for good and all, with last year's fashions and the memory of delicate _plats_ preparedby chefs now serving valiantly within the lines. The big idea, themaster desire, the obsession, if you like, is merely taking anenforced rest, and there is persistent speculation as to what thethinking and the energetic women of Europe will do when this war isover, and how far men will help or hinder them. 

I have written upon this question in its bearings upon the women ofFrance more fully in another chapter; but it may be stated here thatsuch important feminists as Madame Vérone, the eminent avocat, andMlle. Valentine Thompson, the youngest but one of the ablest of theleaders, while doing everything to help and nothing to embarrass theirGovernment, never permit the question to recede wholly to thebackground. Mlle. Thompson argues that the men in authority should notbe permitted for a moment to forget, not the services of women in thisterrible chapter of France's destiny, for that is a matter of course, as ever, but the marked capabilities women have shown when suddenlythrust into positions of authority. In certain invaded towns the wivesof imprisoned or executed Mayors have taken their place almostautomatically and served with a capacity unrelated to sex. In some ofthese towns women have managed the destinies of the people since thefirst month of the war, understanding them as no man has ever done, and working harder than most men are ever willing to work. Thousandshave, under the spur, developed unsuspected capacities, energies, endurance, above all genuine executive abilities. That these womenshould be swept back into private life by the selfishness of men whenthe killing business is over, is, to Mlle. Thompson's mind, unthinkable. In her newspaper, _La Vie Feminine_, she gives weeklyinstances of the resourcefulness and devotion of French womanhood, andalthough the women of her country have never taken as kindly to theidea of demanding the franchise as those of certain other nations, still it is more than possible that she will make many converts beforethe war is over. 

These are not to be "suffrage" chapters. There is no doubt in my mindthat the women of all nations will have the franchise eventually, ifonly because it is ridiculous that they should be permitted to worklike men (often supporting husbands, fathers, brothers) and not bepermitted all the privileges of men. Man, who grows more enlightenedevery year--often sorely against his will--must appreciate thisanomaly in due course, and by degrees will surrender the franchise asfreely to women as he has to negroes and imbeciles. When women havereceived the vote for which they have fought and bled, they will useit with just about the same proportion of conscientiousness andenthusiasm as busy men do. One line in the credo might have beenwritten of human nature A. D. 1914-1917: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. "

But while suffrage and feminism are related, they are far fromidentical. Suffrage is but a milestone in feminism, which may bedescribed as the more or less concerted sweep of women from thebackwaters into the broad central stream of life. Having for untoldcenturies given men to the world they now want the world from men. There is no question in the progressive minds of both sexes that, outside of the ever-recurrent war zones, they should hereafter dividethe great privileges of life and civilization in equal shares withmen. 

Several times before in the history of the world comparatively largenumbers of women have made themselves felt, claiming certain equalrights with the governing sex. But their ambitions were generallyconfined to founding religious orders, obtaining admission to theuniversities, or to playing the intellectual game in the socialpreserves. In the wonderful thirteenth century women rivaled men inlearning and accomplishments, in vigor of mind and decision ofcharacter. But this is the first time that millions of them have beenout in the world "on their own, " invading almost every field of work, for centuries sacrosanct to man. There is even a boiler-maker in theUnited States who worked her way up in poor-boy fashion and nowattends conventions of boiler-makers on equal terms. In tens ofthousands of cases women have made good, in the arts, professions, trades, businesses, clerical positions, and even in agriculture andcattle raising. They are brilliant aviators, yachtsmen, automobiledrivers, showing failure of nerve more rarely than men, although, asthey are not engaged in these pursuits in equal numbers perhaps thatis not a fair statement. Suffice it to say that as far as they havegone they have asked for no quarter. It is quite true that in certainof the arts, notably music, they have never equaled men, and it hasbeen held against them that all the great chefs are men. Here it isquite justifiable to take refuge in the venerable axiom, "Rome was notmade in a day. " It is not what they have failed to accomplish withtheir grinding disabilities but the amazing number of things in whichthey have shown themselves the equal if not the superior of men. Whether their success is to be permanent, or whether they have donewisely in invading man's domain so generally, are questions to beattacked later when considering the biological differences between menand women. The most interesting problem relating to women thatconfronts us at present is the effect of the European War on the wholestatus of woman. 

If the war ends before this nation is engulfed we shall at least keepour men, and the males of this country are so far in excess of thefemales that it is odd so many American women should be driven toself-support. In Great Britain the women have long outnumbered themen; it was estimated before the war that there were some threehundred thousand spinsters for whom no husbands were available. Afterthe war there will be at best something like a proportion of one wholeman to three women (confining these unwelcome prophecies to people ofmarriageable age); and the other afflicted countries, with thepossible exception of Russia, will show a similar dislocation of thenormal balance. The acute question will be repopulation--with a viewto another trial of military supremacy a generation hence!--and allsorts of expedients are being suggested, from polygamy to artificialfertilization. It may be that the whole future of woman as well as ofcivilization after this war is over depends upon whether she concludesto serve the State or herself. 

While in France in the summer of 1916, I heard childless women say:"Would that I had six sons to give to France!" I heard unmarriedwomen say: "Thank heaven I never married!" I heard bitternessexpressed by bereft mothers, terror and despair by others when thecurtain had rung down and they could relax the proud and smiling frontthey presented to the world. Not one would have had her son shirk hisduty, nor asked for compromise with the enemy, but all prayed for thewar to end. It is true that these men at the front are heroes in theeyes of their women, worshiped by the majority when they come homebriefly as permissionnaires, and it is also true that France is an oldmilitary nation and that the brain-cells of its women are full ofancestral memories of war. But never before have women done as muchthinking for themselves as they are doing to-day, as they had done forsome fifteen or twenty years before the war. That war has now lastedalmost three years. During this long and terrible period there hasbeen scarcely a woman in France, as in Britain, Russia, Italy, Germany, who has not done her share behind the lines, working, at herself-appointed tasks or at those imposed by the Government, for monthson end without a day of rest. They have had contacts that never wouldhave approached them otherwise, they have been obliged to think forthemselves, for thousands of helpless poor, for the men at the Front. The Frenchwomen particularly have forced men to deal with them ashuman beings and respect them as such, dissipating in some measurethose mists of sex through which the Frenchman loves to stalk insearch of the elusive and highly-sophisticated quarry. As long as awoman was sexually attractive she could never hope to meet man on anequal footing, no matter how entrancing he might find her mentalqualities. She must play hide-and-seek, exercise finesse, seduction, keep the flag of sex flying ever on the ramparts. It is doubtful ifFrenchmen will change in this respect, but it is more than doubtful ifwomen do not. 

There is hardly any doubt that if this war lasts long enough women forthe first time in the history of civilization will have it in theirpower to seize one at least of the world's reins. But will they doit--I am now speaking of women in mass, not of the advanced thinkers, or of women of the world who have so recently ascertained that thereis a special joy in being free of the tyranny of sex, a tyranny thatemanated no less from within than without. 

It is to be imagined that all the men who are fighting in this mosttrying of all wars are heroes in the eyes of European women--as wellthey may be--and that those who survive are likely to be regarded witha passionate admiration not unmixed with awe. The traditional weaknessof women where men are concerned (which after all is but a cunningdevice of Nature) may swamp their great opportunity. They may fightover the surviving males like dogs over a bone, marry with sensationsof profound gratitude (or patriotic fervor) the armless, the legless, the blind, the terrible face mutilés, and drop forever out of theranks of Woman as differentiated from the ranks of mere women. Whathas hampered the cause of Woman in Great Britain and Europe so far isthe quite remarkable valuation put upon the male by the female. Thisis partly temperamental, partly female preponderance, but it is evenmore deeply rooted in those vanished centuries during which manproclaimed and maintained his superiority. Circumstances helped himfor thousands of years, and he has been taken by the physically weakerand child-bearing sex at his own estimate. It is difficult forAmerican women to appreciate this almost servile attitude of evenBritish women to mere man. One of the finest things about the militantwoman, one by which she scored most heavily, was her flinging off ofthis tradition and displaying a shining armor of indifference towardman as man. This startled the men almost as much as the windowsmashing, and made other women, living out their little lives underthe frowns and smiles of the dominant male, think and ponder, wonderif their small rewards amounted to half as much as the untastedpleasures of power and independence. 

It is always a sign of weakness to give one side of a picture andblithely ignore the other. Therefore, let me hasten to add that it isa well-known fact that Mrs. Pankhurst had borne and reared sixchildren before she took up the moribund cause of suffrage; and thatafter a season's careful investigation in London at the height of themilitant movement I concluded that never in the world had so manyunattractive females been banded together in any one cause. Even theyoung girls I heard speaking on street corners, mounted on boxes, looked gray, dingy, sexless. Of course there were many handsome, evenlovely, women, --like Mrs. Cavendish-Bentinck and Lady Hall, forinstance--interested in "the movement, " contributing funds, and givingit a certain moral support; but when it came to the window smashers, the jail seekers, the hunger-strikers, the real martyrs of thatextraordinary minor chapter of England's history, there was only onegood-looking woman in the entire army--Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence--andmilitant extravagances soon became too much for her. There wereintelligent women galore, women of the aristocracy born with a certainstyle, and showing their breeding even on the soap-box, but sexuallyattractive women never, and even the youngest seemed to have been bornwithout the bloom of youth. The significance of this, however, worksboth ways. If men did not want them, at least there was something bothnoble and pitiful in their willingness to sacrifice those dreams andhopes which are the common heritage of the lovely and the plain, theold and the young, the Circe and the Amazon, to the ultimate freedomof those millions of their sisters lulled or helpless in the enchantednet of sex. 

It is doubtful if even the militants can revert to their formersingleness of purpose; after many months, possibly years, of devotionto duty, serving State and man, the effacement of self, appreciationof the naked fact that the integrity of their country matters morethan anything else on earth, they may be quite unable to rebound totheir old fanatical attitude toward suffrage as the one importantissue of the Twentieth Century. Even the very considerable number ofthose women that have reached an appearance which would eliminate themfrom the contest over such men as are left may be so chastened by thehideous sufferings they have witnessed or heard of daily, so moved bythe astounding endurance and grim valor of man (who nearest approachesto godhood in time of war) that they will have lost the disposition totear from him the few compensations the new era of peace can offer. Ifthat is the case, if women at the end of the war are soft, completelyrehabilitated in that femininity, or femaleness, which was theiroriginal endowment from Nature, the whole great movement will subside, and the work must begin over again by unborn women and theiraccumulated grievances some fifty years hence. 

Nothing is more sure than that Nature will take advantage of the lullto make a desperate attempt to recover her lost ground. Progressivewomen, and before the war their ranks were recruited daily, were oneof the most momentous results of the forces of the highercivilization, an evolution that in Nature's eye represented alamentable divergence from type. Here is woman, with all her physicaldisabilities, become man's rival in all of the arts, save music, andin nearly all of the productive walks of life, as well as in a largepercentage of the professional and executive; intellectually theequal if not the superior of the average man--who in these days, poordevil, is born a specialist--and making a bold bid for politicalequality. 

It has been a magnificent accomplishment, and it has marked one of themost brilliant and picturesque milestones in human progress. It seemsincredible that woman, in spite of the tremendous pressure that Naturewill put upon her, may revert weakly to type. The most powerful of allthe forces working for Nature and against feminism will be the quitebrutal and obscene naturalness of war, and the gross familiarity ofcivilization with it for so long a period. There is reversion to typewith a vengeance! The ablest of the male inheritors of the accumulatedwisdom and experiences and civilizing influences of the ages were inpower prior to August 1914, and not one of them nor all combined hadthe foresight to circumvent, or the diplomatic ingenuity to keep inleash the panting Hun. They are settling their scores, A. D. 1914-1917, by brute fighting. There has been some brain work during this war sofar, but a long sight more brute work. As it was in the beginning, etc. 

And the women, giving every waking hour to ameliorating the lot of thedefenders of their hearth and their honor, or nursing the wounded inhospital, have been stark up against the physical side: whether makingbombs in factories, bandages or uniforms, washing gaping wounds, preparing shattered bodies for burial, or listening to the horridtales of men and women home on leave. 

II

The European woman, in spite of her exalted pitch, is living a more orless mechanical life at present. Even where she has revealedunsuspected creative ability, as soon as her particular task is mappedshe subsides into routine. As a rule she is quite automatically andnaturally performing those services and duties for which Nature soelaborately equipped her, ministering to man almost exclusively, evenwhen temporarily filling his place in the factory and the tram-car. _Dienen! Dienen!_ is the motto of one and all of these Kundrys, whether they realize it or not, and it is on the cards that they maynever again wish to somersault back to that mental attitude where theywould dominate not serve. 

On the other hand civilization may for once prove stronger thanNature. Thinking women--and there are a few hundred thousands ofthem--may emerge from this hideous reversion of Europe to barbarismwith an utter contempt for man. They may despise the men of affairsfor muddling Europe into the most terrible war in history, in the verymidst of the greatest civilization of which there is any record. Theymay experience a secret but profound revulsion from the men wallowingin blood and filth for months on end, living only to kill. The factthat the poor men can't help it does not alter the case. The womencan't help it either. Women have grown very fastidious. The sensualwomen and the quite unimaginative women will not be affected, but howabout the others? And only men of the finest grain survive a longperiod of war with the artificial habits of civilization strong uponthem. 

The end of this war may mark a conclusive revulsion of the presentgeneration of European women from men that may last until they havepassed the productive age. Instead of softening, disintegrating backto type, they may be insensibly hardening inside a mould that willeventually cast them forth a more definite third sex than any thatthreatened before the war. Woman, blind victim of the race as she hasbeen for centuries, seldom in these days loves without an illusion ofthe senses or of the imagination. She has ceased, in the wider avenuesof life, lined as they are with the opulent wares of twentieth centurycivilization, to be merely the burden-bearing and reproductive sex. Life has taught her the inestimable value of illusions, and the morepractical she becomes, the more she cherishes this divine gift. It ispossible that man has forfeited his power to cast a glamour over allbut the meanest types of women. If that should be the case women willask: Why settle down and keep house for the tiresome creatures, studytheir whims, and meekly subside into the second place, or be eternallyon the alert for equal rights? As for children? Let the state sufferfor its mistakes. Why bring more children into the world to be blownto pieces on the field of battle, or a burden to their womenthroughout interminable years? No! For a generation at least theworld shall be ours, and then it may limp along with a depletedpopulation or go to the dogs. 

Few, no doubt, will reason it out as elaborately as this or be soconsciously ruthless, but a large enough number are likely enough tobring the light of their logic to bear upon the opportunity, and astill larger number to feel an obscure sense of revolt against man forhis failure to uphold civilization against the Prussian anachronism, combined with a more definite desire for personal liberty. And both ofthese divisions of their sex are likely to alter the course ofhistory--far more radically than has ever happened before at the closeof any fighting period. Even the much depended upon maternal instinctmay subside, partly under the horrors of field hospitals where so manymother's sons are ghastly wrecks, partly under a heavy landslide ofdisgust that the sex that has ruled the world should apparently be sohelpless against so obscene a fate. 

They will reflect that if women are weak (comparatively) physically, there is all the more hope they may develop into giants mentally; oneof man's handicaps being that his more highly vitalized body with itscoercive demands, is ever waging war with a consistent and completedevelopment of the mind. And in these days, when the science of thebody is so thoroughly understood, any woman, unless afflicted with anorganic disease, is able to keep her brain constantly supplied withred unpoisoned blood, and may wax in mental powers (there being nonatural physical deteriorations in the brain as in the body) so longas life lasts. 

Certainly these women will say: We could have done no worse than thesechess players of Europe and we might have done better. Assuredly if wegrasp and hold the reins of the world there will never be another war. We are not, in the first place, as greedy as men; we will divide theworld up in strict accordance with race, and let every nation have itsown place in the sun. Commercial greed has no place in our make-up, and with the hideous examples of history it will never obtainentrance. 

How often has it been the cynical pleasure of mere ministers of stateto use kings as pawns? Well, we despise the game. Also, we shall haveno kings, and republics are loth to make war. Our instincts arehumanitarian. We should like to see all the world as happy as thatlovely countryside of Northeastern France before August 1914. We atleast recognize that the human mind is as yet imperfectly developed;and if, instead of setting the world back periodically, and drenchingmankind in misery, we would have all men and women as happy as humannature will permit, we should devote our abilities, uninterrupted bywar, to solving the problem of poverty (the acutest evidence of man'sfailure), and to fostering the talents of millions of men and womenthat to-day constitute a part of the wastage of Earth. Of course, being mortal, we shall make mistakes, give way, no doubt, to racialjealousies, and personal ambitions; but our eyes have been opened wideby this war and it is impossible that we should make the terriblemistakes we inevitably would have made had we obtained power before wehad seen and read its hideous revelations--day after day, month aftermonth, year after year! It is true that men have made theseresolutions many times, but men have too much of the sort of bloodthat goes to the head, and their lust for money is even greater thantheir lust for power. 

Now, this may sound fantastic but it is indisputably probable. Muchhas been said of the patriotic exaltation of young women during warand just after its close, which leads them to marry almost any one inorder to give a son to the state, or even to dispense with the legalformality. But although I heard a great deal of that sort of talkduring the first months of the war I don't hear so much of it now. Nordid I hear anything like as much of it in France as I expected. Toquote one woman of great intelligence with whom I talked many times, and who is one of the Government's chosen aids; she said one day, "Itwas a terrible distress to me that I had only one child, and Iconsulted every specialist in France. Now I am thankful that I didhave but one son to come home to me with a gangrene wound, and then, after months of battling for his life, to insist upon going back tothe Front and exposing it every day. I used to feel sad, too, thatValentine Thompson" (who is not only beautiful but an Amazon inphysique) "did not marry and be happy like other girls, instead ofbecoming a public character and working at first one scheme or anotherfor the amelioration of the lot of woman. Now, I am thankful that shenever married. Her father is too old to go to war and she has neitherhusband nor son to agonize over. Far better she live the life ofusefulness she does than deliberately take upon herself the commonburdens of women. " No Frenchwoman could be more patriotic than the onewho made this speech to me, and if she had had many sons she wouldhave girded them all for war, but she had suffered too much herselfand she saw too much suffering among her friends daily, not to hatethe accursed institution of war, and wish that as many women could bespared its brutal impositions as possible. 

Nobody has ever accused me of being a Pacifist. Personally, I thinkthat every self-respecting nation on the globe should have risen in1914 and assisted the Allies to blast Prussia off the face of theEarth, but after this war is over if the best brains in these nationsdo not at once get to work and police the world against future wars, it will be a matter for regret that they were not all on the Germanship when she foundered. 

III

It is to be remembered that woman has, in her subconsciousbrain-cells, ancestral memories of the Matriarchate. It is interestingto quote in this connection what Patrick Geddes and G. ArthurThompson have to say on the mooted question of the Mother-Age:

"Prehistoric history is hazardous, but there is a good case to be madeout for a Mother-Age. This has been reconstructed from fossils in thefolk lore of agriculture and housewifery, in old customs, ceremonies, festivals, games; in myths and fairy tales and age-worn words. 

"Professor Karl Pierson finds in the study of witchcraft some of thefossils that point back to the Matriarchate. In the older traditions'the witch resumes her old position as the wise-woman, the medicinewoman, the leader of the people, the priestess. ' 'We have accordinglyto look upon the witch as essentially the degraded form of the oldpriestess, cunning in the knowledge of herbs and medicine, jealous ofthe rights and of the goddess she serves, and preserving in spells andincantations such wisdom as early civilization possessed. '

"The witch's weather wisdom is congruent with the fact that women werethe earliest agriculturists; her knowledge of herbs with that of theancient medicine women; her diablerie with that of the ancient grouprelations of the sexes so different from what we call marriage to-day;her nocturnal dances with the ancient choruses of marriage-ripemaidens. The authority and magic circle kept by the broom are those ofthe hearth and floor in her primeval roundhut; and her distaff andpitchfork, her caldron, her cat and dog, are all in keeping with therôle of woman in the Mother-Age. 

"But there is another way, and that certainly not less reliable, bywhich we can arrive at some understanding of the Mother-Age, and howit naturally came about, namely, by a study of our 'contemporaryancestors, ' of people who linger on the matriarchal level. Suchpeople, as well as others on the still lower nomad stage ofcivilization, are to be found at this day in Australia. 

"While the purely nomad stage lasted, little progress could be made, because the possessions of a group were limited by the carrying powersof its members. But in a favorite forest spot a long halt waspossible, the mothers were able to drop their babies and give a largerpart of their attention to food-getting. As before, the forestproducts--roots and fruits--were gathered in, but more time andingenuity were expended in making them palatable and in storing themfor future use. The plants in the neighborhood, which were useful forfood or for their healing properties, were tended and kept free ofweeds, and by and by seeds of them were sown in cleared ground withineasy reach of the camp. Animals gathered about the rich food area, andwere at first tolerated--certain negro tribes to-day keep hens abouttheir huts, though they eat neither them nor their eggs--and laterencouraged as a stable source of food-supply. The group was anchoredto one spot by its increasing possessions; and thus home-making, gardening, medicine, the domestication of animals and evenagriculture, were fairly begun. Not only were all these activities inthe hands of women, but to them, too, were necessarily left the careand training of the young. 

"The men meanwhile went away on warlike expeditions against othergroups, and on long hunting and fishing excursions, from which theyreturned with their spoils from time to time, to be welcomed by thewomen with dancing and feasting. Hunting and war were their onlyoccupations, and the time between expeditions was spent in resting andin interminable palavers and dances, which we may perhaps look upon asthe beginnings of parliaments and music halls. 

"Whether this picture be accurate in detail or not there is at anyrate a considerable body of evidence pointing to the 'Matriarchate' asa period during which women began medicine, the domestication of thesmaller animals, the cultivation of vegetables, flax and corn, the useof the distaff, the spindle, the broom, the fire-rake and thepitchfork. 

"In the Mother-Age the inheritance of property passed through themother; the woman gave the children her own name; husband and fatherwere in the background--often far from individualized; the brother anduncle were much more important; the woman was the depository ofcustom, lore, and religious tradition; she was, at least, the nominalhead of the family, and she had a large influence in tribal affairs. "

For some years past certain progressive women have shown signs of areversion to the matriarchal state--or shall we say a disposition torevive it? In spite of human progress we travel more or less incircles, a truth of which the present war and its reversions is themost uncompromising example. 

In the married state, for instance, these women have retained theirown name, not even being addressed as Mrs. , that after all is a politevariation of the Spanish "de, " which does not by any means indicatenoble birth alone, women after marriage proudly announcing themselvesas legally possessed. For instance a girl whose name has been ElenaLopez writes herself after marriage Elena Lopez de Morena, the "de" inthis case standing for "property of. " It will be some time before thewomen of Spain travel far on the Northern road toward pride in sexdeliverance, but with us, and in Britain, the custom is growingprevalent. 

Then there is the hyphen marriage, more common still, in which thewoman retains her own name, but condescends to annex the man's. Oncein a way a man will prefix his wife's name to his own, and there isone on record who prefixed his own to his wife's. But any woman mayhave her opinion of him. 

So far as I have been able to ascertain these marriages are quite assuccessful as the average; and if the woman has a career on hand--andshe generally has--she pursues it unhampered. The grandmother or aunttakes charge of the children, if there are any, while she is at herduties without the home, and so far, the husband has been permittedthe compensation of endowing the children with his name. 

The reversion to the prehistoric matriarchate can hardly be completein these days, but there are many significant straws that indicate therising of a new wind blown by ancient instincts. To look upon them asshockingly advanced or abnormal is an evidence of conservatism thatdoes not reach quite far enough into the past. 

A still more significant sign of the times (in the sense of linkingpast with present) is the ever-increasing number of women doctors andtheir success. Men for the most part have ceased to sneer or even tobe more than humanly jealous, often speaking in terms of the warmestadmiration not only of their skill but of their conscientiousness andpower of endurance. When I went to live in Munich (1903) a womansurgeon was just beginning to practice. This, to Germany, was aninnovation with a vengeance, and the German male is the least tolerantof female encroachment within his historic preserves. The menpractitioners threw every possible obstacle in her way, and with noparticular finesse. But nothing could daunt her, and two or threeyears later she was riding round in her car--a striking red one--whilethe major number of her rivals were still dependent upon the amblingcab-horse, directed off and on by a fat driver who was normallyasleep. Jealousy, however, for the most part had merged intoadmiration; for your average male, of whatever race, is not onlyphilosophical but bows to success; she was both recognized and calledin for consultation. Hang on! Hang on! should be the motto of allwomen determined to make their mark in what is still a man's world. Life never has denied her prizes to courage and persistence backed byability. 

A curious instance of man's inevitable recognition of the places ofresponsibility women more and more are taking is in the new reading ofthe Income Tax papers for 1917. Heretofore only married men wereexempted taxation on the first $4000 but from now on, apparently, women who are also "heads of families" are likewise favored. Asthousands of women are supporting their aged parents, their brotherswhile studying, their children and even their husbands, who for onereason or other are unequal to the family strain, this exemptionshould have been made coincidentally with the imposing of the tax. Butmen are slow to see and slower still to act where women are concerned. 

As we all know, women have invaded practically every art, trade, andindustry, but--aside from the arts, for occasionally Nature is soimpartial in her bestowal of genius that art is accepted assexless--in no walk of life has woman been so uniformly successful asin medicine. This is highly significant in view of the fact that theyinvented and practiced it in the dawn of history, while man was toorudimentary to do anything but fight and fill the larder. It wouldseem that the biological differences between the male and the femalewhich are so often the cause of woman's failure in many spherespreëmpted throughout long centuries by man, is in her casecounteracted not only by her ancestral inheritance, but by the highmoral element without which no doctor or surgeon can long stand theexactions and strain of his terrible profession. No woman goesblithely into surgery or medicine merely to have a career or to make aliving, although ten thousand girls to her one will essay to write, orpaint, or clerk, or cultivate her bit of voice, with barely a thoughtexpended upon her fitness or the obligations involved. 

But the woman who deliberately enters the profession of healing has, almost invariably, a certain nobility of mind, a lack of personalselfishness, and a power of devotion to the race quite unknown to theaverage woman, even the woman of genius when seeking a career. 

During the Great War there have been few women doctors at the Front, but hundreds of women nurses, and they have been as intrepid anduseful as their rivals in sex. They alone, by their previousexperience of human suffering, bad enough at best, were in a measureprepared for the horrors of war and the impotence of men laid low. Butthat will not restore any lost illusions, for they took masculinecourage for granted with their mothers' milk, and they cannot fail tobe imbued to the marrow with a bitter sense of waste and futility, ofthe monstrous sacrifice of the best blood of their generation. 

II

THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE

I

Certain doctors of England have gone on record as predicting alamentable physical future for the army of women who are at presentdoing the heavy work of men, particularly in the munition factories. They say that the day-long tasks which involve incessant bending andstanding and lifting of heavy weights will breed a terrible reactionwhen the war ends and these women are abruptly flung back intodomestic life. There is almost no man's place in the industrial worldthat English women are not satisfactorily filling, with either muscleor brains, and the doctors apprehend a new problem in many thousandneurotics or otherwise broken-down women at the close of the war. Although this painful result of women's heroism would leave just thatmany women less to compete for the remaining men sound of wind andlimb, still, if true, it raises the acute question: Are women theequal of men in all things? Their deliverance from the old maritalfetish, and successful invasion of so many walks of life, have madesuch a noise in the world since woman took the bit between her teeth, more or less en masse, that the feministic pæan of triumph has almostsmothered an occasional protest from those concerned with biology; butas a matter-of-fact statistics regarding the staying power of women inwhat for all the historic centuries have been regarded as avocationsheaven-designed and with strict reference to the mental and physicalequipment of man, are too contradictory to be of any value. 

Therefore, the result of this prolonged strain on a healthy woman of aNorthern race evidently predestined to be as public as their presentaccomplishment, will be awaited with the keenest interest, and nodoubt will have an immense effect upon the future status of woman. Shehas her supreme opportunity, and if her nerves are equal to her nerve, her body to her spirit, if the same women are working at the severetasks at the end of the war as during the first months of theirexaltation, and instead of being wrecks are as hardened as themiserable city boys that have become wiry in the trenches--then, beyond all question woman will have come to her own and it will be forher, not for man, to say whether or not she shall subside and attendto the needs of the next generation. 

Before I went to France in May 1916 I was inclined to believe thatonly a small percentage of women would stand the test; but since thenI have seen hundreds of women at work in the munition factories ofFrance. As I have told in another chapter, they had then been at workfor some sixteen months, and, of poor physique in the beginning, werenow strong healthy animals with no sign of breakdown. They were moresatisfactory in every way than men, for they went home and slept allnight, drank only the light wines of their country, smoked less, if atall, and had a more natural disposition toward cleanliness. Their baremuscular arms looked quite capable of laying a man prostrate if hecame home and ordered them about, and their character and pride haddeveloped in proportion. [F]

 [F] Dr. Rosalie Morton, the leading woman doctor and surgeon of New York, who also studied this subject at first hand, agrees with me that the war tasks have improved the health of the European women. 

It is not to be imagined, however, that the younger, at least, ofthese women will cling to those greasy jobs when the world is normalagain and its tempered prodigals are spending money on the eleganciesof life once more. And if they slump back into the sedentary life whenmen are ready to take up their old burdens, making artificial flowers, standing all day in the fetid atmosphere of crowded and noisy shops, stitching everlastingly at lingerie, there, it seems to me, lies thedanger of breakdown. The life they lead now, arduous as it is, notonly has developed their muscles, their lungs, the power to digesttheir food, but they are useful members of society on the grand scale, and to fall from any height is not conducive to the well-being of bodyor spirit. No doubt, when the sudden release comes, they will returnto the lighter tasks with a sense of immense relief; but will it last?Will it be more than a momentary reaction to the habit of their ownyears and of the centuries behind, or will they gradually become aware(after they have rested and romped and enjoyed the old life in theold fashion when off duty) that with the inferior task they havebecome the inferior sex again. The wife, to be sure, will feelsomething more than her husband's equal, and the Frenchwoman never hasfelt herself the inferior in the matrimonial partnership. But howabout the wage earners? Those that made ten to fifteen francs a day inthe _Usines de Guerre_, and will now be making four or five? How aboutthe girls who cannot marry because their families are no longer in aposition to pay the dot, without which no French girl dreams ofmarrying? These girls not only have been extraordinarily (forFrenchwomen of their class) affluent during the long period of thewar, but they order men about, and they are further upheld with thethought that they are helping their beloved France to conquer theenemy. They live on another plane, and life is apt to seem very meanand commonplace under the old conditions. 

That these women are not masculinized is proved by the fact that manyhave borne children during the second year of the war, their tasksbeing made lighter until they are restored to full strength again. They invariably return as soon as possible, however. It may be, ofcourse, that the young men and women of the lower bourgeoisie willforswear the dot, for it would be but one more old custom giving wayto necessity. In that case the sincere, hardworking and not veryhumorous women of this class no doubt would find full compensation inthe home, and promptly do her duty by the State. But I doubt if anyother alternative will console any but the poorest intelligence or thenaturally indolent--and perhaps Frenchwomen, unless good old-fashionedbutterflies, have less laziness in their make-up than any other womenunder the sun. 

The natural volatility of the race must also be taken intoconsideration. Stoical in their substratum, bubbling on the surface, it may be that these women who took up the burdens of men so bravelywill shrug their shoulders and revert to pure femininity. Those pastthe age of allurement may fight like termagants for their lucrativejobs, their utter independence; but coquetry and the joy in life, or, to put it more plainly, the powerful passions of the French race, maydo more to effect an automatic and permanent return to the old statusthan any authoritative act on the part of man. 

II

The women of England are (or were) far more neurotic than the women ofFrance, as they have fewer natural outlets. And the struggle for legalenfranchisement, involving, as it did, a sensationalism that affectedeven the non-combatants, did much to enhance this tendency, and it isinteresting to speculate whether this war will make or finish them. Once more, personally, I believe it will make them, but as I was notable to go to London after my investigations in France were concludedand observe for myself I refuse to indulge in speculations. Time willshow, and before very long. 

No doubt, however, when the greater question of winning the war issettled, the question of sex equality will rage with a new violence, perhaps in some new form, among such bodies of women as are not sosubject to the thrall of sex as to desert their new colors. It wouldseem that the lot of woman is ever to be on the defensive. Naturehandicapped her at the start, giving man a tremendous advantage in hisminimum relationship to reproduction, and circumstances (mainlyperpetual warfare) postponed the development of her mental powers forcenturies. Certainly nothing in the whole history of mankind is sostartling as the abrupt awakening of woman and her demand for aposition in the world equal to that of the dominant male. 

I use the word abrupt, because in spite of the scattered instances offemale prosiliency throughout history, and the long struggle beginningin the last century for the vote, or the individual determination tostrive for some more distinguished fashion of coping with poverty thanschool-teaching or boarding-house keeping, the concerted awakening ofthe sex was almost as abrupt as the European War. Like many fires itsmouldered long, and then burst into a menacing conflagration. But Ido not for a moment apprehend that the conflagration will extinguishthe complete glory of the male any more than it will cause a revulsionof nature in the born mother. 

But may there not be a shuffling of the cards? Take the question ofservant-girls for instance. Where there are two or more servants in afamily their lot is far better than that of the factory girl. But itis quite a different matter with the maid-of-all-work, the householddrudge, who is increasingly hard to find, partly because she, quitenaturally, prefers the department store, or the factory, with itsdefinite hours and better social status, partly because there isnothing in the "home" to offset her terrible loneliness butinterminable hours of work. In England, where many people live inlodgings, fashionable and otherwise, and have all meals served intheir rooms, it is a painful sight to see a slavey toiling up two orthree flights of stairs--and four times a day. In the United States, the girls who come over from Scandinavia or Germany with roseate hopessoon lose their fresh color and look heavy and sullen if they findtheir level in the household where economy reigns. 

Now, why has no one ever thought of men as "maids" of all work? Onocean liners it is the stewards that take care of the state-rooms, andthey keep them like wax, and make the best bed known to civilization. The stewardesses in heavy weather attend to the prostrate of theirsex, but otherwise do nothing but bring the morning tea, hook up, andreceive tips. Men wait in the diningroom (as they do in allfirst-class hotels), and look out for the passengers on deck. Not themost militant suffragette but would be intensely annoyed to havestewardesses scurrying about on a heaving deck with the morning brothand rugs, or dancing attendance in a nauseous sea. 

The truth of the matter is that there is a vast number of men of allraces who are fit to be nothing but servants, and are so misplaced inother positions where habit or vanity has put them, that they fail farmore constantly than women. All "men" are not real men by any means. They are not fitted to play a man's part in life, and many of thethings they attempt are far better done by strong determined women, who have had the necessary advantages, and the character to ignore thehandicap of sex. 

I can conceive of a household where a well-trained man cooks, does the"wash, " waits on the table, sweeps, and if the mistress has a youngchild, or is indolent and given to the rocking-chair and anovel-a-day, makes the beds without a wrinkle. He may lack ambitionand initiative, the necessary amount of brains to carry him to successin any of the old masculine jobs, but he inherits the thoroughness ofthe ages that have trained him, and, if sober, rides the heavy wavesof his job like a cork. I will venture to say that a man thus employedwould finish his work before eight P. M. And spend an hour or twobefore bed-time with his girl or at his club. 

Many a Jap in California does the amount of work I have described, andabsorbs knowledge in and out of books during his hours of leisure. Sometimes they do more than I have indicated as possible for the whiteman. Energetic boys, who want to return to Japan as soon as possible, or, mayhap, buy a farm, make a hundred dollars a month by getting upat five in the morning to wash a certain number of stoops and sweepsidewalks, cook a breakfast and wash up the dinner dishes in oneservantless household, the lunch dishes in another, clean up generallyin another, cook the dinner, wait on the table, clean up in stillanother. As white men are stronger they could do even more, andsupport a wife in an intensive little flat where her work would beboth light and spiritually remunerative. Domestic service would solvethe terrible problem of life for thousands of men, and it wouldcoincidentally release thousands of girls from the factory, thecounter, and the exhausting misery of a "home" that never can be theirown. At night he could feel like a householder and that he lived tosome purpose. If he is inclined to complain that such a life is not"manly, " let him reflect that as he is not first-rate anyhow, andnever can compete with the fully equipped, he had best bephilosophical and get what comfort out of life he can. Certainly theincreased economic value of thousands of men, at present slaving asunderpaid clerks and living in hall bedrooms, would thin the ranks ofthe most ancient of all industries, if, according to our ardentreformers, they are recruited from the ranks of the lonelyservant-girl, the tired shop-girl, and the despairing factory hand. 

III

For it is largely a question of muscle and biology. 

I have stated elsewhere that I believe in equal suffrage, if onlybecause women are the mothers of men and therefore their equals. But Ithink there are several times more reasons why American women at leastshould not overwork their bodies and brains and wear themselves outtrying to be men, than why it is quite right and fitting they shouldwalk up to the polls and cast a vote for men who more or less controltheir destinies. 

To digress a moment: When it comes to the arts, that is quite anothermatter. If a woman finds herself with a talent (I refrain from such abig word as genius, as only posterity should presume to apply thatterm to any one's differentiation from his fellows), by all means lether work like a man, take a man's chances, make every necessarysacrifice to develop this blessed gift; not only because it is a dutybut because the rewards are adequate. The artistic career, where theimpulse is genuine, furnishes both in its rewards and in the exerciseof the gift itself far more happiness, or even satisfaction, thanhusband, children, or home. The chief reason is that it is the supremeform of self-expression, the ego's apotheosis, the power to indulge inthe highest order of spiritual pride, differentiation from the mass. These are brutal truths, and another truth is that happiness is theuniversal goal, whatever form it may take, and whatever form humanhypocrisy may compel it to take, or even to deny. Scientificeducation has taught us not to sacrifice others too much in itspursuit. That branch of ancestral memory known as conscience hasmorbid reactions. 

To create, to feel something spinning out of your brain, which youhardly realize is there until formulated on paper, for instance; theadventurous life involved in the exercise of any art, with itsuncertainties, its varieties, its disappointments, its mistakes; thefight, the exaltations, the supreme satisfactions--all this is thevery best life has to offer. And as art is as impartial as a microbicdisease, women do achieve, individually, as much as men; sometimesmore. If their bulk has not in the past been as great, the originalhandicaps, which women in general, aided by science and a moreenlightened public, are fast shedding, alone were to blame. Certainlyas many women as men in the United States are engaged in artisticcareers; more, if one judged by the proportion in the magazines. 

Although I always feel that a man, owing to the greater freedom of hislife and mental inheritances, has more to tell me than most womenhave, and I therefore prefer men as writers, still I see very littledifference in the quality of their work. Often, indeed, the magazinefiction (in America) of the women shows greater care in phrase andworkmanship than that of the men (who are hurried and harried byexpensive families), and often quite as much virility. 

No one ever has found life a lake. Life is a stormy ocean at best, andif any woman with a real gift prefers to sink rather than struggle, or to float back to shore on a raft, she deserves neither sympathy norrespect. Women born with that little tract in their brain sown byNature with bulbs of one of the arts, may conquer the world as proudlyas men, although not as quickly, for they rouse in disappointed orapprehensive men the meanest form of sex jealousy; but if they have asmuch courage as talent, if they are willing to dedicate their lives, not their off hours, to the tending of their rich oasis in the generaldesert of mind, success is theirs. Biological differences between thesexes evaporate before these impersonal sexless gifts (or whims orinadvertencies) of conservative Nature. 

Of course women have worked themselves to death in their passionatedevotion to art. So have men. Women have starved to death in garrets, their fine efforts rejected by those that buy, and sell again to anuncertain public. So have men. The dreariest anecdotes of England andFrance, so rich in letters, are of great men-geniuses who died youngfor want of proper nourishment or recognition, or who struggled on tomiddle-age in a bitterness of spirit that corroded their highendowment. I do not recall that any first-rate women writers have diedfor want of recognition, possibly because until now they have been fewand far between. The Brontës died young, but mainly because they livedin the midst of a damp old churchyard and inherited tuberculartendencies. The graves and old box tombs crowd the very walls of theparsonage, and are so thick you hardly can walk between them. I spenta month in the village of Haworth, but only one night in the villageinn at the extreme end of the churchyard; I could read theinscriptions on the tombs from my windows. 

Charlotte had immediate recognition even from such men as Thackeray, and if the greater Emily had to wait for Swinburne and posterity itwas inherited consumption that carried her off in her youth. Althoughmuch has been made of their poverty I don't think they were so badlyoff for their times. The parsonage is a well-built stone house, theirfather had his salary, and the villagers told me that the three girlslooked after the poor in hard winters, often supplying whole familieswith coal. Of course they led lives of a maddening monotony, but theywere neither hungry nor bitter, and at least two of them developed ahigher order of genius than was possible to the gifted Jane Austin inher smug life of middle-class plenty, and, to my mind, far morehampering restrictions. 

Even if the Brontës had been sufficiently in advance of their times to"light out" and seek adventure and development in the great world, their low state of health would have kept them at home. So impressedwas I with the (to a Californian) terrible pictures of poverty inwhich the Brontes were posed by their biographers that I grew up withthe idea that one never could develop a gift or succeed in the highermanner unless one lived in a garret and half starved. I never had thecourage to try the regimen, but so deep was the impression that Inever have been able to work except in austere surroundings, and Ihave worked in most abominably uncomfortable quarters with anequanimity that was merely the result of the deathless insistence ofan old impression sunk deep into a mind then plastic. 

Let me hasten to add that many successful authors work in the mostluxurious quarters imaginable. It is all a matter of temperament, or, it may be, of accident. Moreover this outer evidence of prosperitymakes a subtle appeal to the snobbery of the world and to a certainorder of critic, by no means to be despised. Socially and in the artswe Americans are the least democratic of people, partly because we areso damnably unsure of ourselves; and if I were beginning my careerto-day I doubt if I should be so unbusiness-like as to take the lowlyBrontes as a model. 

If I have digressed for a moment from the main theme of this book ithas been not only to show what the influence of such brave women asthe Brontes has been on later generations of writers, but that biologymust doff its hat at the tomb in Haworth Church. Their mental virilityand fecundity equalled that of any man that has attained an equaleminence in letters, and they would have died young and suffered muchif they never had written a line. They had not a constitution betweenthe four of them and they spent their short lives surrounded by thedust and the corruption of death. 

IV

But when it comes to working like men for the sake of independence, ofavoiding marriage, of "doing something, " that is another matter. To mymind it is abominable that society is so constituted that women areforced to work (in times of peace) for their bread at tasks that arefar too hard for them, that extract the sweetness from youth, andunfit them physically for what the vast majority of women want morethan anything else in life--children. If they deliberately preferindependence to marriage, well and good, but surely we are growingcivilized enough (and this war, in itself a plunge into the dark ages, has in quite unintentional ways advanced civilization, for never inthe history of the world have so many brains been thinking) so toarrange the social machinery that if girls and young women are forcedto work for their daily bread, and often the bread of others, at leastit shall be under conditions, including double shifts, that willenable them, if the opportunity comes, as completely to enjoy all thathome means as falls to the lot of their more fortunate sisters. Eventhose who launch out in life with no heavier need than their drivingindependence of spirit should be protected, for often they too, whenworn in body and mind, realize that the independent life per se is adelusion, and that their completion as well as their ultimatehappiness and economic security lies in a brood and a husband tosupport it. 

There used to be volumes of indignation expended upon the Americanmother toiling in the home, at the wash-tub for hire, or trudgingdaily to some remunerative task, while her daughters, after a faireducation, idly flirted, and danced, and read, and finally married. Now, although that modus operandi sounds vulgar and ungrateful it is, biologically speaking, quite as it should be. Girls of that age shouldbe tended as carefully as young plants; and, for that matter, it wouldbe well if women until they have passed the high-water mark ofreproductivity should be protected as much as possible from severephysical and mental strain. If women ever are to compete with men onanything like an equal basis, it is when they are in their middleyears, when Nature's handicaps are fairly outgrown, child-bearing andits intervening years of lassitude are over, as well as the recurrentcarboniferous wastes and relaxations. 

Why do farmers' wives look so much older than city women of the sameage in comfortable circumstances? Not, we may be sure, because ofexposure to the elements, or even the tragic loneliness that wastheirs before the pervasion of the automobile. Women in city flats arelonely enough, but although those that have no children or "lighthousekeeping" lead such useless lives one wonders why they were born, they outlast the women of the small towns by many years because of theminimum strain on their bodies. [G]

 [G] The French are far too clever to let the women in the munition factories injure themselves. They have double, treble, and even quadruple shifts. 

As a matter of fact in the large cities where the struggle of life issuperlative they outlast the men. About the time the children aregrown, the husband, owing to the prolonged and terrific strain incompeting with thousands of men as competent as himself, to keep hisfamily in comfort, educate his children, pay the interest on his lifeinsurance policy, often finds that some one of his organs is breakingdown and preparing him for the only rest he will ever find time totake. Meanwhile his prospective widow (there is, by the way, no nationin the world so prolific of widows and barren of widowers as theUnited States) is preparing to embark on her new career as a clubwoman, or, if she foresees the collapse of the family income, ofself-support. 

And in nine cases out of ten, if she has the intelligence to make useof what a combination of average abilities and experience hasdeveloped in her, she succeeds, and permanently; for women do not goto pieces between forty and fifty as they did in the past. They havelearned too much. Work and multifarious interests distract their mind, which formerly dwelt upon their failing youth, and when they sadlycomposed themselves in the belief that they had given the last oftheir vitality to the last of their children; to-day, instead ofsitting down by the fireside and waiting to die, they enter resolutelyupon their second youth, which is, all told, a good deal moresatisfactory than the first. 

Every healthy and courageous woman's second vitality is stronger andmore enduring than her first. Not only has her body, assisted bymodern science, settled down into an ordered routine that isimpregnable to anything but accident, but her mind is delivered fromthe hopes and fears of the early sex impulses which so often sickenthe cleverest of the younger women both in body and mind, filling thebody with lassitude and the mind either with restless impatience or acomplete indifference to anything but the tarrying prince. To blamethem for this would be much like cursing Gibraltar for not getting outof the way in a storm. They are the tools of the race, the chosenmediums of Nature for the perpetuation of her beloved species. But thefact remains--that is to say, in the vast majority of girls. There is, as we all know, the hard-shell division of their sex who, even withouta gift, infinitely prefer the single and independent life in theirearly youth, and only begin to show thin spots in their armor as theyapproach thirty, sometimes not until it is far too late. But if youwill spend a few days walking through the department stores, forinstance, of a large city and observing each of the young faces inturn behind the counters, it will be rarely that you will not feelreasonably certain that the secret thoughts of all that vast armycircle persistently about some man, impinging or potential. Andwherever you make your studies, from excursion boats to the hour ofrelease at the gates of a factory, you must draw the same conclusionthat sex reigns, that it is the most powerful factor in life and willbe so long as Earth at least continues to spin. For that reason, nomatter how persistently girls may work because they must or starve, it is the competent older women, long since outgrown the divinenonsense of youth, who are the more satisfactory workers. Girls, unless indifferently sexed, do not take naturally to work in theiryouth. Whether they have the intelligence to reason or not, they knowthat they were made for a different fate and they resent standingbehind a counter all day long or speeding up machinery for a fewdollars a week. Even the highly intelligent girls who find work onnewspapers often look as if they were at the end of their endurance. It is doubtful if the world ever can run along without the work ofwomen but the time will surely come when society will be soconstituted that no woman in the first flush of her youth will beforced to squander it on the meager temporary reward, and forfeit herbirthright. If she wants to, well and good. No one need be deeplyconcerned for those that launch out into life because they like it. Women in civilized countries are at liberty to make their own lives;that is the supreme privilege of democracy. But the victims of thepropelling power of the world are greatly to be pitied and Societyshould come to their rescue. I know that the obvious answer to this is"Socialism. " But before the rest of us can swallow Socialism it mustspew out its present Socialists and get new ones. Socialists neveropen their mouths that they do not do their cause harm; and whatevervirtues their doctrine may contain we are blinded to it at present. This war may solve the problem. If Socialism should be the inevitableoutcome it would at least come from the top and so be sufferable. 

V

It is all very well to do your duty by your sex and keep up thebirth-rate, and there are compensations, no doubt of that, when thehusband is amiable, the income adequate, and the children are dearsand turn out well; but the second life is one's very own, the duty isto one's self, and, such is the ineradicable selfishness of humannature after long years of self-denial and devotion to others, thereis a distinct, if reprehensible, satisfaction in being quite naturaland self-centered. If, on the other hand, circumstances are such thatthe capable middle-aged woman, instead of living entirely for herself, in her clubs, in her increasing interest in public affairs, and herchosen work, finds herself with certain members of her familydependent upon her, she also derives from this fact an enormoussatisfaction, for it enables her to prove that she can fill a man'splace in the world, be quite as equal to her job. 

Instead of breaking down, this woman, who has outlived the severesthandicap of sex without parting with any of its lore, grows strongerand more poised every year, retaining (or regaining) her looks if shehas the wisdom to keep her vanity alive; while the girl forced tospend her days on her feet behind a counter (we hear of seats forthese girls but we never see them occupied), or slave in a factory(where there is no change of shift as in the munition factories ofthe European countries in war time), or work from morning until nightas a general servant--"one in help"--wilts and withers, grows pasée, fanée, is liable to ultimate breakdown unless rescued by some man. 

The expenditure of energy in these girls is enormous, especially ifthey combine with this devitalizing work an indulgence in theirnatural desire to play. Rapid child-bearing would not deplete themmore; and it is an intensely ignorant or an intensely stupid or, inthe United States, an exceptionally sensual woman who has a largerfamily than the husband can keep in comfort. Moreover, unless in thedepths of poverty, each child means a period of rest, which is morethan the girl behind the counter gets in her entire working period. 

These women, forced by a faulty social structure to support themselvesand carry heavy burdens, lack the intense metabolism of the male, hispower to husband his stores of carbon (an organic exception whichrenders him indifferent to standing), and the superior quality of hismuscle. Biologically men and women are different from crown to sole. It might be said that Nature fashioned man's body for warfare, andthat if he grows soft during intervals of peace it is his own fault. Even so, unless in some way he has impaired his health, he hasheretofore demonstrated that he can do far more work than women, andstand several times the strain, although his pluck may be no finer. 

If one rejects this statement let him look about among hisacquaintance at the men who have toiled hard to achieve anindependence, and whose wives have toiled with them, either becausethey lived in communities where it was impossible to keep servants, orout of a mistaken sense of economy. The man looks fresh and his wifeelderly and wrinkled and shapeless, even if she has reasonable health. It is quite different in real cities where life on a decent income (orsalary) can be made very easy for the woman, as I have just pointedout; but I have noticed that in small towns or on the farm, even now, when these scattered families are no longer isolated as in the dayswhen farmers' wives committed suicide or intoxicated themselves on tealeaves, the woman always looks far older than the man if "she has doneher own work" during all the years of her youth and maturity. If sherenounces housekeeping in disgust occasionally and moves to an hotel, she soon amazes her friends by looking ten years younger; and if herhusband makes enough money to move to a city large enough to minimizethe burdens of housekeeping and offer a reasonable amount ofdistraction, she recovers a certain measure of her youth, althoughstill far from being at forty or fifty what she would have been if herearlier years had been relieved of all but the strains which Natureimposes upon every woman from princess to peasant. 

It remains to be seen whether the extraordinary amount of work theEuropean women are doing in the service of their country, and themarked improvement in their health and physique, marks a strideforward in the physical development of the sex, being the result oflatent possibilities never drawn upon before, or is merely the resultof will power and exaltation, and bound to exhibit its definite limitas soon as the necessity is withdrawn. The fact, of course, remainsthat the women of the farms and lower classes generally in France arealmost painfully plain, and look hard and weather-beaten long beforethey are thirty, while the higher you mount the social scale in yourresearches the more the women of France, possessing little orthodoxbeauty, manage, with a combination of style, charm, sophistication, and grooming, to produce the effect not only of beauty but of a uniquestandard that makes the beauties of other nations commonplace bycomparison. 

Nevertheless, the fact remains that these girls and young womenworking in the _Usines de Guerre_, are better looking than they werebefore and shine with health. The whole point, I fancy, lies in thefact that they work under merciful masters and conditions. If theywere used beyond their capacity they would look like their sisters onthe farms, upon whom fathers and husbands have little mercy. 

When girls in good circumstances become infected with the microbe ofviolent exercise and insist upon walking many miles a day, besidesindulging for hours in games which permit no rest, they look likehags. Temporarily, of course. When they recover their common sensethey recover their looks, for it is in their power to relax andrecuperate. Men will walk twenty miles, take a cold shower, a goodmeal, a night's rest, and look as well as ever the next day--or at theend of the walk, for that matter. They can afford the waste. Womencannot. If women succeed in achieving hard unyielding muscles in thewrong place they suffer atrociously in childbirth; for Nature, who isas old-fashioned and inhospitable to modern ideas as a Tory statesman, takes a vicious pleasure in punishing one sex every time it succeedsin approaching the peculiar level of the other, or which diverges fromthe normal in any way. Note how many artists, who are nine-tenthstemperament and one-tenth male, suffer; not only because they arebeset with every sort of weakness that affects their social status, but because the struggle with life is too much for them unless theyhave real men behind them until their output is accepted by thepublic, and themselves with it. 

Some day Society will be civilized enough to recognize the limitationsand the helplessness of those who are artists first and menafterwards. But meanwhile we can only rely upon the sympathy and theunderstanding of the individual. 

Far be it from me to advise that girls refrain from doing their partin the general work of the home, if servants are out of the question;that won't hurt them; but if some one must go out and support thefamily it would better be the mother or the maiden aunt. 

Better still, a husband, if marriage is their goal and children thesecret desire of their hearts. 

If girls are so constituted mentally that they long for theindependent life, self-support, self-expression, they will have it andwithout any advice from the worldly-wise; it is as driving an impulseas the reproductive instinct in those who are more liberally sexed. And these last are still in the majority, no doubt of that. Therefore, far better they marry and have children in their youth. They, aboveall, are the women whose support and protection is the natural duty ofman, and while it is one of life's misfortunes for a girl to marrysimply to escape life's burdens, without love and without the desirefor children, it is by far the lesser evil to have the consolation ofhome and children in the general barrenness of life than to slave allday at an uncongenial task and go "home" to a hall bedroom. 

These views were so much misunderstood when they appeared in magazineform that I have felt obliged to emphasize the differences between thestill primitive woman and the woman who is the product of the highercivilization. One young socialist, who looked quite strong enough tosupport a family, asked me if I did not think it better for a girl tosupport herself than to be the slave of a man's lust and bearinnumerable children, whether she wished for them or not, children towhose support society contributed nothing. But why be a man's slave, and why have more children than you can support? We live in theenlightened twentieth century, when there is precious little aboutanything that women do not know, and if they do not they are suchhopeless fools that they should be in the State Institutions. The timehas passed for women to talk of being men's slaves in any sense, except in the economic. There are still sweatshops and there is stillspeeding up in factories, because society is still far from perfect, but if a woman privately is a man's slave to-day it is because she isthe slave of herself as well. 

VI

Personally, although nothing has ever tempted me to marry a secondtime, I am very glad I married in my early youth, not only becausematrimony enables a potential writer to see life from many moreviewpoints than if she remains blissfully single, but because I wassheltered from all harsh contacts with the world. No one was ever lessequipped by nature for domesticity and all the responsibilities ofeveryday life, and if circumstances had so ordered that I had notblundered into matrimony before twenty-four-or-five, no doubt I nevershould have married at all. 

But at that time--I was home on a vacation from boarding-school, andhad had none of that illuminating experience known as being "out, " Idid no reasoning whatever. On the other hand I was far too mentallyundeveloped and arrogant to be capable at that tender age of fallingdeeply in love. My future husband proposed six times (we were in acountry house). I was flattered, divided between the ambition tograduate brilliantly and to be an author with no further loss of time, and wear becoming caps and trains to my frocks. On the other hand Iwanted neither a husband particularly nor to go back to school, for Ifelt that as my grandfather had one of the best libraries inCalifornia nothing could be more pleasant or profitable than to finishmy education in it undisturbed. Nevertheless, quite abruptly I made upmy mind and married; and, if the truth were known, my reasons andimpulses were probably as intelligent as those of the average younggirl who knows the world only through books and thinks it has littlemore to teach her. My life had been objective and sheltered. If forcedto earn my living at sixteen no doubt the contacts impossible toescape would soon have given me a real maturity of judgment and Ishould have grown to love, jealously, my freedom. 

That is to say, if I had been a strong girl. As a matter-of-fact I wasextremely delicate, with a weak back, a threat of tuberculosis, andvery bad eyes. Most of this was the result of over-study, for I hadbeen a healthy child, but I loved books and was indifferent toexercise and nourishment. No doubt if I had been turned out into theworld to fare for myself I should have gone into a decline. Therefore, it was sheer luck that betrayed me into matrimony, for although mymental energies were torpid for several years my first child seemed todissipate the shadows that lay in my blood, and at twenty-five I wasa normally strong woman. We lived in the country. My husband lookedafter the servants, and if we were without a cook for several days hefilled her place (he had learned to cook "camping out" and likednothing better) until my mother-in-law sent a woman from SanFrancisco. I read, strolled about the woods, storing up vitality butoften depressed with the unutterable ennui of youth, and haunted withthe fear that my story-telling faculty, which had been verypronounced, had deserted me. 

When my husband died I had but one child. I left her with her twoadoring grandmothers and fled to New York. I was still as callow as aboarding-school girl, but my saving grace was that I knew I did notknow anything, that I never would know enough to write about lifeuntil I had seen more of it than was on exhibition in California. 

But by that time my health was established. I felt quite equal towriting six books a year if any one would publish them, besidesstudying life at first hand as persistently and deeply as the presentstate of society will permit in the case of a mere woman. For thatreason I shall always be sorry I did not go on a newspaper for a yearas a reporter, as there is no other way for a woman to see life in allits phases. I had a letter to Charles Dana, owner of the New York_Sun_, and no doubt he would have put me to work, but I was still toopampered, or too snobbish, and, lacking the spur of necessity, missedone of the best of educations. Now, no matter who asks my advice inregard to the literary career, whether she is the ambitious daughterof a millionaire or a girl whose talent is for the story and whosefuture depends upon herself, I invariably give her one piece ofadvice: "Go on a newspaper. Be a reporter. Refuse no assignment. Bethankful for a merciless City Editor and his blue pencil. But, if youfeel that you have the genuine story-telling gift, save your money andleave at the end of a year, or two years at most. "

As for myself, I absorbed life as best I could, met people in as manywalks of life as possible. As I would not marry again, and, inconsequence, had no more children, nor suffered from the wearingmonotonies of domestic life, I have always kept my health and beenequal to an immense amount of work. 

But the point is that I had been sheltered and protected during mydelicate years. No doubt it was a part of my destiny to hand on theintensely American qualities of body and mind I had inherited from myDutch and English forefathers, as well as to do my share in carryingon the race. But I got rid of all that as quickly as possible, andstruck out for that plane of modern civilization planted and furrowedand replenished by daughters of men. 

III

THE REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY"

I

There is nothing paradoxical in affirming that while no woman beforeshe has reached the age of thirty-five or forty should, if she canavoid it, compete with men in work which the exigencies ofcivilization (man-made civilization) have adapted to him alone, still, every girl of every class, from the industrial straight up to theplutocratic, should be trained in some congenial vocation during herplastic years. Civilization in certain respects is as inadequate as itwas a thousand years ago. Socialism might solve the problem if it werenot for the Socialists. Certainly no man or body of men has yet arisenwith the proper amount of imagination, selflessness, brains andconstructive genius, necessary to plan a social order in which all menshall work without overworking and support all women during the bestyears of the child-bearing and child-rearing span. If men had beenclever enough to make even an imperfect attempt to protect womenwithout independent means from the terrors of life, say by taxingthemselves, they would not be pestered to-day with the demand forequal rights, see themselves menaced in nearly all of theremunerative industries and professions, above all by the return ofthe Matriarchate. 

It is Life that has developed the fighting instinct in woman, bred themental antagonism of sex. Nature did not implant either. Nor has sheever wavered a jot from the original mix compounded in her immemoriallaboratory. Man is man and woman is woman to-day, even to the superiorlength of limb in the male (relative to the trunk) and the greaterthickness of hairs in the woman's eyelashes. In England women of theleisure class showed during the years of the sports craze a tendencyto an unfeminine length of limb, often attaining or surpassing themale average. But Nature avenged herself by narrowing the pelvis andweakening the reproductive organs. Free trade drove the old sturdyyeoman into the towns and diminished the stature and muscular power oftheir descendants, but ten months of trench life and Nature laughed atthe weak spot in civilization. The moment false conditions are removedshe claims her own. 

Women to-day may prove themselves quite capable of doing, andpermanently, the work of men in ammunition and munition factories, butit is patent that when human bipeds first groped their way about theterrifying Earth, she was not equal to the task of leveling forests, killing the beasts that roamed them, hurling spears in savage warfare, and bearing many children for many years. She played her part in thescheme of things precisely as Nature had meant she should play it:she cooked, she soothed the warrior upon his return from killing ofman or beast, and she brought up her boys to be warriors and her girlsto serve them. There you have Nature and her original plan, a bald anduninteresting plan, but eminently practical for the mere purpose(which is all that concerns her) of keeping the world going. And so itwould be to-day, even in the civilized core, if man had been cleverenough to take the cue Nature flung in his face and kept woman whereto-day he so ingenuously desires to see her, and before whosedeliverance he is as helpless as old Nature herself. 

Man obeyed the herding instinct whose ultimate expression was thegrowth of great cities, invented the telegraph, the cable, the school, the newspaper, the glittering shops, the public-lecture system; and, voluntarily or carelessly, threw open to women the gates of all thearts, to say nothing of the crafts. And all the while he not onlycontinued to antagonize woman, proud and eager in her awakenedfaculties, with stupid interferences, embargoes and underhandthwartings, but he permitted her to struggle and die in the hideouscontacts with life from which a small self-imposed tax would havesaved her. Some of the most brilliant men the world will ever knowhave lived, and administered, and passed into history, and the miseryof helpless women has increased from generation to generation, whilecoincidentally her intelligence has waxed from resignation orperplexity through indignation to a grim determination. Man missedhis chance and must take the consequences. 

Certainly, young women fulfill their primary duty to the race and, incidentally, do all that should be expected of them, in the bringingforth and rearing of children, making the home, and seeing to thecoherence of the social groups they have organized for recreation orpurely in the interest of the next generation. 

Perhaps the women will solve the problem. I can conceive the time whenthere will have developed an enormous composite woman's brain which, combining superior powers of intuition and sympathy with that highintellectual development the modern conditions so generously permit, added to their increasing knowledge of and interest in the social, economic, and political problems, will make them a factor in thefuture development of the race, gradually bring about a state of realcivilization which twenty generations of men have failed toaccomplish. 

But that is not yet, and we may all be dead before its heyday. Thequestions of the moment absorb us. We must take them as they arise anddo the best we can with existing conditions. The world is terriblyconservative. Look at the European War. 

II

Nowhere are fortunes so insecure as in the United States. The phrase, "Three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves, " was notcoined in Europe. But neither does it embrace a great American truthMany a fortune rises and falls within the span of one generation. Manya girl reared in luxury, or what passes in her class for luxury, issuddenly forced out into the economic world with no preparationwhatever. It would be interesting to gather the statistics of men who, with a large salary, or a fair practice, and indulged family, and acertain social position to keep up, either vaguely intend to save andinvest one of these days--perhaps when the children are educated--orcarry a large life insurance which they would find too heavy a tax atthe moment. 

Often, indeed, a man does insure his life, and then in some year ofpanic or depression is forced to sell the policy or go under. Or heinsures in firms that fail. My father insured in three companies andall failed before he died. In San Francisco the "earthquake clause"prevented many men from recovering a penny on their merchandise orinvestments swept away by the fire. Even a large number of the richwere embarrassed by that fire, for, having invested millions in ClassA buildings, which were fire-proof, they saw no necessity forexpending huge sums annually in premiums. They never thought of ageneral conflagration whose momentum would carry the flames across thestreet and into their buildings through the windows, eating up theinteriors and leaving the fire-proof shell. One family lost sixmillion dollars in a few hours, and emigrated to one of the Swisslakes in order to be able to educate their children while theirfortunes slowly recovered with the aid of borrowed capital. 

A large number of girls, who, without being rich, had led thesheltered life before the fire, were obliged to go to work at once. Some were clever enough to know what they could do and did it withoutloss of time, some were assisted, others blundered along and nearlystarved. 

Often men who have done well and even brilliantly up to middle life, are not equal to the tremendous demand upon the vital energies ofbeginning life over again after some disastrous visitation of Nature, or a panic, or an ill-advised personal venture has wrecked their ownbusiness or that of the concern in which they were a highly paid cog. In the mining States men are dependent upon the world's demand fortheir principal product. Farmers and stock-raisers are often cruellyvisited, strikes or hard times paralyze mills and factories; and intimes of panic and dry-rot the dealers in luxuries, includingbooksellers--to say nothing of the writers of books as well as thedevotees of all the arts--are the first to suffer. And it is theirwomen that suffer acutely, because although many of these men may hangon and recover, many more do not. They have used up their vitalforces. It is not so much a matter of will as of physics. A woman inthe same conditions who had been obliged to tax her vital organs foran equal number of years would no doubt have lasted as long. 

Unless defective, there is not a girl alive, certainly not anAmerican girl, who is wholly lacking in some sort of ability. Theparasite type (who is growing rare in these days, by the way, for itis now the fashion to "do things") either fastens herself uponcomplacent relatives or friends when deserted by fortune, or driftsnaturally into the half-world, always abundantly recruited from suchas she. 

Many girls have a certain facility in the arts and crafts, which, withsevere training, might fit them for a second place in the class whichowes its origin to Heaven-born gifts. If their facility manifestsitself in writing they could be trained at college, or even on thesmall local newspaper to write a good mechanical story, constructedout of popular elements and eminently suited to the popular magazine. Or they may fit themselves for dramatic or musical criticism, oradvertisement writing, which pays enormously but is not as easy as itsounds. Or if every school (I am saying nothing about girls' colleges)would train their promising "composition" writers in reporting, theirgraduates would plant their weary feet far more readily than they donow when they come to a great city and beseech a busy editor to givethem a chance. 

Almost anything can be done with the plastic mind. But not always. Itis the better part of wisdom for proud parents to discover just whattheir offspring's facility amounts to before spending money on an artor a musical education, for instance. I had a painful experience, andno doubt it has been duplicated a thousand times, for Europe beforethe war was full of girls (many living on next to nothing) who werestudying "art" or "voice culture, " with neither the order of endowmentnor the propelling brain-power to justify the sacrifice of theirparents or the waste of their own time. 

Some years ago, finding that a young relative, who was just finishingher school course, drew and painted in water colors with quite anotable facility, and the family for generations having manifestedtalents in one way or another, I decided to take her abroad and trainher faculty that she might be spared the humiliation of dependence, nor feel a natural historic inclination to marry the first man whooffered her an alternative dependence; and at the same time be enabledto support herself in a wholly congenial way. I did not delude myselfwith the notion that she was a genius, but I thought it likely shewould become apt in illustrating, and I knew that I could throw anyamount of work in her way, or secure her a position in the artdepartment of some magazine. 

I took her to the European city where I was then living and put her inthe best of its art schools. To make a long story short, after I hadexpended some five thousand dollars on her, including travelingexpenses and other incidentals, the net result was an elongated thumb. I was forced to the conclusion that she had not an atom of realtalent, merely the treacherous American facility. Moreover, she lostall her interest in "art" when it meant hard work and persistentapplication. I was wondering what on earth I was to do with her whenshe solved the problem herself. She announced with unusual decisionthat she wanted to be a nurse, had always wanted to be a nurse (shehad never mentioned the aspiration to me) and that nothing elseinterested her. Her mother had been an invalid; one way or another shehad seen a good deal of illness. 

Accordingly I sent her back to this country and entered her, throughthe influence of friends, at a hospital. She graduated at the head ofher class, and although that was three or four years ago she has neverbeen idle since. She elected to take infectious cases, as theremuneration is higher, and although she is very small, with such tinyhands and feet that while abroad her gloves and boots had to be madeto order, no doubt she has so trained her body that the strains innursing fall upon no particular member. 

In that case I paid for my own mistake, and she found her level inample time, which is as it should be. Of what use is experience if youare to be misled by family vanity? As she is pretty and quite madabout children, no doubt she will marry; but the point is that she canwait; or, later, if the man should prove inadequate, she can once moresupport herself, and with enthusiasm, for she loves the work. 

To be a nurse is no bed of roses; but neither is anything else. To bedependent in the present stage of civilization is worse, and nothingreal is accomplished in life without work and its accompaniment ofhard knocks. Nursing is not only a natural vocation for a woman, butan occupation which increases her matrimonial chances about eighty percent. Nor is it as arduous after the first year's training is over ascertain other methods of wresting a livelihood from an unwillingworld--reporting, for instance. It is true that only the fit survivethe first year's ordeal, but on the other hand few girls are sofoolish as to choose the nursing career who do not feel withinthemselves a certain stolid vitality. After graduation from thehospital course their future depends upon themselves. Doctors soondiscover the most desirable among the new recruits, others findpermanent places in hospitals; and, it may be added, the success ofthese young women depends upon a quality quite apart from mereskill--personality. In the spring of 1915 I was in a hospital andthere was one nurse I would not have in the room. I was told that shewas one of the most valuable nurses on the staff, but that was nothingto me. 

I could not see that any of the nurses in this large hospital wasoverworked. All looked healthy and contented. My own "night special, "save when I had a temperature and demanded ice, slept from the timeshe prepared me for the night until she rose to prepare me for theday, with the exception of the eleven o'clock supper which she sharedwith the hospital staff. Being very pretty and quite charming she willmarry, no doubt, although she refuses to nurse men. But there arealways the visiting doctors, the internes, and the unattached men inhouseholds, where in the most seductive of all garbs, she remains forweeks at a time. 

In fact nearly all nurses are pretty. I wonder why?

The hospital nurses during the day arrived at intervals to take mytemperature, give me detestable nourishment, or bring me flowers or atelephone message. It certainly never occurred to me to pity any ofthem, and when they lingered to talk they entertained me with pleasantpictures of their days off. They struck me as being able to enjoy lifevery keenly, possibly because of being in a position to appreciate itscontrasts. 

I know the daughter of a wealthy and historic family, whose head--heis precisely the type of the elderly, cold-blooded, self-righteous, self-conscious New York aristocrat of the stage--will not permit herto gratify her desire to write for publication, "for, " saith he, "I donot wish to see my honored name on the back of works of fiction. "

I do not think, myself, that he has deprived the world of one moreauthor, for if she had fiction in her brain-cells no parental dictumcould keep it confined within the walls of her skull; but the point isthat being a young woman of considerable energy and mental activity, she found mere society unendurable and finally persuaded her father tomake her one of his secretaries. She learned not only stenography andtypewriting but telegraphy. There is a private apparatus in theirNewport home for her father's confidential work, and this shemanipulates with the skill of a professional. If the fortunes of herfamily should go to pieces, she could find a position and supportherself without the dismal and health-racking transition which is thefate of so many unfortunate girls suddenly bereft and whollyunprepared. 

III

The snobbishness of this old gentleman is by no means a prerogative ofNew York's "old families. " One finds it in every class of American menabove the industrial. In Honoré Willsie's novel, _Lydia of the Pines, _an American novel of positive value, the father was a day laborer, asa matter of a fact (although of good old New England farming stock), earning a dollar and a half a day, and constantly bemoaning the fact;yet when "young Lydia, " who was obliged to dress like a scarecrow, wished to earn her own pin-money by making fudge he objectedviolently. The itching pride of the American male deprives him of manycomforts and sometimes of honor and freedom, because he will not lethis wife use her abilities and her spare time. He will steal orembezzle rather than have the world look on while "his" wife ekes outthe family income. The determined Frenchwomen have had their men intraining for generations, and the wife is the business partnerstraight up to the haute bourgeoisie; but the American woman, for allher boasted tyranny over the busy male of her land, is either anexpensive toy or a mere household drudge, until years and experiencegive her freedom of spirit. This war will do more to liberate her thanthat mild social earthquake called the suffrage movement. The richwomen are working so hard that not only do they dress and entertainfar less than formerly but their husbands are growing quite accustomedto their separate prominence and publicly admitted usefulness. Thesame may be said of groups of women in less conspicuous classes, andwhen the war is over it is safe to say these women will continue to doas they please. There is something insidiously fascinating in work towomen that never have worked, not so much in the publicity it may givebut in the sense of mental expansion; and, in the instance of war, thepassion of usefulness, the sense of dedication to a high cause, thenecessary frequent suppression of self, stamp the soul with an impressthat never can be obliterated. That these women engaged in good worksoften quarrel like angry cats, or fight for their relief organizationas a lioness would fight for her hungry cub, is beside the point. Thatis merely another way of admitting they are human beings; notnecessarily women, but just human beings. As it was in the beginning, is now, etc. Far better let loose their angry passions in behalf ofthe men who are fighting to save the world from a reversion tobarbarism, than rowing their dressmakers, glaring across the bridgetable, and having their blood poisoned by eternal jealousy over someman. 

And if it will hasten the emancipation of the American man from thethralldom of snobbery still another barrier will go down in the pathof the average woman. Just consider for a moment how many men arefailures. They struggle along until forty or forty-five "on theirown, " although fitted by nature to be clerks and no more, strivingdesperately to keep up appearances--for the sake of their own pride, for the sake of their families, even for the sake of being "looked upto" by their wife and observant offspring. But without real hope, because without real ability (they soon, unless fools, outlive theillusions of youth when the conquest of fortune was a matter ofcourse) always in debt, and doomed to defeat. 

How many women have said to me--women in their thirties or earlyforties, and with two or three children of increasing demands: "Oh, ifI could help! How unjust of parents not to train girls to do somethingthey can fall back on. I want to go to work myself and insure mychildren a good education and a start in the world, but what can I do?If I had been specialized in any one thing I'd use it now whether myhusband liked it or not. But although I have plenty of energy andcourage and feel that I could succeed in almost anything I haven't theleast idea how to go about it. "

If a woman's husband collapses into death or desuetude while herchildren are young, it certainly is the bounden duty of some member ofher family to support her until her children are old enough to go toschool, for no one can take her place in the home before that period. Moreover, her mind should be as free of anxiety as her body of strain. But what a ghastly reflection upon civilization it is when she isobliged to stand on her feet all day in a shop or factory, or maketempting edibles for some Woman's Exchange, because she cannot affordto spend time upon a belated training that might admit her lucrativelyto one of the professions or business industries. 

The childless woman solves the problem with comparative ease. Sheinvariably shows more energy and decision, provided, of course, thesequalities have been latent within her. 

Nevertheless, it is often extraordinary just what she does do. Forinstance I knew a family of girls upon whose college education animmense sum had been expended, and whose intellectual arrogance Inever have seen equalled. When their father failed and died, leavingnot so much as a small life insurance, what did they do? Teach? Write?Edit? Become some rich and ignorant man's secretary? Not a bit of it. They cooked. Always noted in their palmy days for their "table, " andaddicted to relieving the travail of intellect with the sedative ofthe homeliest of the minor arts, they began on preserves for theWoman's Exchange; and half the rich women in town were up at theirhouse day after day stirring molten masses in a huge pot on a red-hotrange. 

It was sometime before they were taken seriously, and, particularlyafter the enthusiasm of their friends waned, there was a time of hardanxious struggle. But they were robust and determined, and in timethey launched out as caterers and worked up a first-class business. They took their confections to the rear entrances of their friends'houses on festive occasions and accepted both pay and tips with livelygratitude. They educated their younger brothers and lost theirarrogance. They never lost their friends. 

Owing to dishonest fiction the impression prevails throughout theworld that "Society" is heartless and that the rich and well-to-dodrop their friends the moment financial reverses force them either toreduce their scale of living far below the standard, or go to work. When that happens it is the fault of the reversed, not of theentrenched. False pride, constant whining, or insupportableirritabilities gradually force them into a dreary class apart. Ifanything, people of wealth and secure position take a pride instanding by their old friends (their "own sort"), in showingthemselves above all the means sins of which fiction and the stagehave accused them, and in lending what assistance they can. Even whenthe head of the family has disgraced himself and either blown out hisbrains or gone to prison, it depends entirely upon the personalitiesof his women whether or not they retain their friends. In fact anyobservant student of life is reminded daily that one's real positionin the world depends upon personality, more particularly if backed bycharacter. Certainly it is nine-tenths of the battle for strugglingwomen. 

Another woman whom I always had looked upon as a charming butterfly, but who, no doubt, had long shown her native shrewdness anddetermination in the home, stepped into her husband's shoes when hecollapsed from strain, abetted by drink, and now competes in theinsurance business with the best of the men. But she had borne thelast of her children and she has perfect health. 

Galsworthy's play, _The Fugitive_, may not have been good drama but ithad the virtue of provoking thought after one had left the theater. More than ever it convinced me, at least, that the women of means andleisure with sociological leanings should let the working girl takecare of herself for a time and devote their attention to the far morehopeless problem of the lady suddenly thrown upon her own resources. 

No doubt this problem will have ceased to exist twenty years hence. Every girl, rich or poor, and all grades between, will havespecialized during her plastic years on something to be used as aresource; but at present there are thousands of young women who findthe man they married in ignorance an impossible person to live withand yet linger on in wretched bondage because what little they know ofsocial conditions terrifies them. If they are pretty they fear othermen as much as they fear their own husbands, and for all the "jobs"open to unspecialized women, they seem to be preeminently unfitted. Ifthe rich women of every large city would build a great college inwhich every sort of trade and profession could be taught, from nursingto stenography, from retouching photographs to the study of law, while the applicant, after her sincerity had been established, waskept in comfort and ease of mind, with the understanding that sheshould repay her indebtedness in weekly installments after the collegehad launched her into the world, we should have no more such ghastlyplays as _The Fugitive_ or hideous sociological tracts as _A Bed ofRoses_. 

IV

ONE SOLUTION OF A GREAT PROBLEM

I

The world is willing and eager to buy what it wants. If you have goodsto sell you soon find your place at the counter, unless owing to somefault of character your fellow barterers and their patrons will havenone of you. Of course there is always the meanest of all passions, jealousy, waiting to thwart you at every turn, but no woman with amodicum of any one of those wares the world wants and must have needfear any enemy but her own loss of courage. 

The pity is that so many women with no particular gift and only minorenergies are thrust into the economic world without either natural ordeliberate equipment. All that saves them in nine cases out of ten isconserved energies, and if they are thrust out too young they aredoubly at a disadvantage. 

A good deal has been written about the fresh enthusiasm of the youngworker, as contrasted with the slackened energies and disillusionedviewpoint of middle life. But I think most honest employers willtestify that a young girl worker's enthusiasm is for closing time, andher dreams are not so much of the higher skilfulness as of theinevitable man. Nature is inexorable. She means that the young thingsshall reproduce. If they will not or cannot that is not her fault; sheis always there with the urge. Even when girls think they sellthemselves for the adornments so dear to youth they are merely thevictims of the race, driven toward the goal by devious ways. Nature, of course, when she fashioned the world reckoned without science. Isometimes suspect her of being of German origin, for so methodical andmechanical is her kultur that she will go on repeating "two and twomake four" until the final cataclysm. 

I think that American women are beginning to realize that American menare played out at forty-five; or fifty, at the most. There areexceptions, of course, but with the vast majority the strain is toogreat and the rewards are too small. They cannot retire in time. Ihave a friend who, after a brilliant and active career, has withdrawnto the communion of nature and become a philosopher. He insists thatall men should be retired by law at forty-five and condemned to spendthe rest of their days tilling the soil gratis for women and therising generation. The outdoor life would restore a measure of theirdissipated vitality and prolong their lives. 

This may come to pass in time: stranger things have happened. But, asI remarked before, it is the present we have to consider. It seems tome it would be a good idea if every woman who is both protected anduntrained but whose husband is approaching forty should, if notfinancially independent, begin seriously to think of fitting herselffor self-support. The time to prepare for possible disaster is notafter the torpedo has struck the ship. 

A thousand avenues are open to women, and fresh ones open yearly. Shecan prepare secretly, or try her hand at first one and then another(if she begins by being indeterminate) of such congenial occupationsas are open to women of her class, beyond cooking, teaching, clerking. Those engaged in reforms, economic improvements, church work, andabove all, to-day, war relief work, should not be long discoveringtheir natural bent as well as its marketable value, and the particularrung of the ladder upon which to start. 

Many women whose energies have long been absorbed by the home arecapable of flying leaps. These women still in their thirties, far fromneglecting their children when looking beyond the home, are merelyensuring their proper nourishment and education. 

Why do not some of the public spirited women, whose own fortunes aresecure, form bureaus where all sorts of women, apprehensive of thefuture, may be examined, advised, steered on their way? In this theywould merely be taking a leaf from the present volume of Frenchhistory its women are writing. It is the women of independent meansover there who have devised so many methods by which widows and girlsand older spinsters tossed about in the breakers of war may supportthemselves and those dependent upon them. There is Mlle. Thompson'sÉcole Feminine, for instance, and Madame Goujon's hundred and onepractical schemes which I will not reiterate here. 

Women of the industrial class in the United States need new laws, butlittle advice how to support themselves. They fall into their naturalplace almost automatically, for they are the creatures ofcircumstances, which are set in motion early enough to determine theirfate. If they do hesitate their minds are quickly made up for them byeither their parents or their social unit. The great problem to-day isfor the women of education, fastidiousness, a certain degree of ease, threatened with a loss of that male support upon which ancient custombred them to rely. Their children will be specialized; they will seeto that. But their own problem is acute and it behooves trained andsuccessful women to take it up, unless the war lasts so long thatevery woman will find her place as inevitably as the working girl. 

II

For a long time to come women will be forced to leave theadministering of the nation as well as of states and cities to men, for men are still too strong for them. The only sort of women that menwill spontaneously boost into public life are pretty, bright, womanly, spineless creatures who may be trusted to set the cause of woman backa few years at least, and gratify their own sense of humoroussuperiority. 

Women would save themselves much waste of energy and many humiliationsif they would devote themselves exclusively to helping and trainingtheir own sex. Thousands are at work on the problems of higher wageand shorter hours for women of the industrial class, but this problemof the carefully nurtured, wholly untrained, and insecurely protectedwoman they have so far ignored. To my mind this demands the firstconsideration and the application of composite woman's highestintelligence. The industrial woman has been trained to work, shelearns as she grows to maturity to protect herself and fight her ownbattles, and in nine cases out of ten she resents the interference ofthe leisure class in her affairs as much as she would charity. Theleaders of every class should be its own strong spirits. And the term"class consciousness" was not invented by fashionable society. 

There is another problem that women, forced imminently orprospectively to support themselves, must face before long, and thatis the heavy immigration from Europe. Of course some of thosecompetent women over there will keep the men's jobs they hold now, andamong the widows and the fatherless there will be a large number ofclerks and agriculturists. But many réformés will be able to fillthose positions satisfactorily, and, when sentiment has subsided, young women at least (who are also excellent workers) will begin tothink of husbands; and, unless the war goes on for many years andreduces our always available crop, American girls of the working classwill have to look to their laurels both ways. 

III

Here is the reverse of the picture, which possibly may save the tooprosperous and tempting United States from what in the end could notfail to be a further demoralization of her ancient ideals anddepletion of the old American stock:

No matter how many men are killed in a war there are more males whenpeace is declared than the dead and blasted, unless starvationliterally has sent the young folks back to the earth. During any warchildren grow up, and even in a war of three years' duration it isestimated that as against four million males killed there will be sixmillion young males to carry on the race as well as its commerce andindustries. For the business of the nation and high finance there arethe men whose age saved them from the dangers of the battlefield. 

There will therefore be many million marriageable men in Europe if thewar ends in 1917. But they will, for the most part, be of a verytender age indeed, and normal young women between twenty and thirty donot like spring chickens. They are beloved only by idealess girls oftheir own age, by a certain type of young women who are alluded toslightingly as "crazy about boys, " possibly either because men ofmature years find them uninteresting or because of a certain vampirequality in their natures, and by blasée elderly women who generallyfoot the bills. 

Dr. Talcott Williams pointed out to me not long since that after allgreat wars, and notably after our own Civil War, there has been anotable increase in the number of marriages in which the preponderanceof years was on the wrong side. Also that it was not until after ourown war that the heroine of fiction began to reverse the immemorialprocedure and marry a man her inferior in years. In other words, anything she could get. This would almost argue that fiction is notonly the historian of life but its apologist. 

It is quite true that young men coming to maturity during majesticperiods of the world's history are not likely to have the callowbrains and petty ideals which distinguished the average youth ofpeace. Even boys of fourteen these days talk intelligently of the warand the future. They read the newspapers, even subscribing for one ifat a boarding-school. In the best of the American universities the menhave been alive to the war from the first, and a large proportion ofthe young Americans who have done gallant service with the AmericanAmbulance Corps had recently graduated when the war broke out. Othersare serving during vacations, and are difficult to lure back to theirstudies. 

Some of the young Europeans of eighteen or twenty will come home fromthe trenches when peace is declared, and beyond a doubt will compelthe love if not the respect of damsels of twenty-five and upward. Butwill they care whether they fascinate spinsters of twenty-five andupward, or not? The fact is not to be overlooked that there will be asmany young girls as youths, and as these girls also have maturedduring their long apprenticeship to sorrow and duty, it is not to beimagined they will fail to interest young warriors of their ownage--nor fail to battle for their rights with every device known tothe sex. 

Temperament must be taken into consideration, of course, and a certainpercentage of men and women of unbalanced ages will be drawn together. That happens in times of peace. Moreover it is likely that a largenumber of young Germans in this country either will conceive it theirduty to return to Germany and marry there or import the forlorn inlarge numbers. If they have already taken to themselves American wivesit is on the cards that they will renounce them also. There is nothinga German cannot be made to believe is his duty to the Fatherland, andhe was brought up not to think. But if monarchy falls in Germany, anda republic, socialistic or merely democratic, rises on the ruins, thenit is more than likely that the superfluous women will be encouragedto transfer themselves and their maidenly dreams to the greatdumping-ground of the world. 

Unless we legislate meanwhile. 

V

FOUR OF THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED

There are four other ways in which women (exclusive of the artistclass) are enjoying remunerative careers: as social secretaries, playbrokers, librarians, and editors; and it seems to me that I cannot dobetter than to drop generalities in this final chapter and give fourof the most notable instances in which women have "made good" in thesehighly distinctive professions. I have selected four whom I happen toknow well enough to portray at length: Maria de Barril, Alice Kauser, Belle da Costa Greene, and Honoré Willsie. It is true that Mrs. Willsie, being a novelist, belongs to the artist class, but she isalso an editor, which to my mind makes her success in both spheres themore remarkable. To edit means hours daily of routine, details, contacts; mechanical work, business, that would drive most writers offiction quite mad. But Mrs. Willsie is exceptionally well balanced. 

I

MARIA DE BARRIL

A limited number of young women thrown abruptly upon their ownresources become social secretaries if their own social positionshave insensibly prepared them for the position, and if they live in acity large enough to warrant this fancy but by no means inactive post. In Washington they are much in demand by Senators' and Congressmen'swives suddenly translated from a small town where the banker's ladyhobnobbed with the prosperous undertaker's family, to a city where thelaws of social precedence are as rigid as at the court of theHapsburgs and a good deal more complicated. But these young women mustthemselves have lived in Washington for many years, or they will beforced to divide their salary with a native assistant. 

The most famous social secretary in the United States, if not in theworld, is Maria de Barril, and she is secretary not to one rich womanbut to New York society itself. Her position, entirely self-made, isunique and secure, and well worth telling. 

Pampered for the first twenty years of her life like a princess andwith all her blood derived from one of the oldest and most relaxednations in Europe, she was suddenly forced to choose between sinkingout of sight, the mere breath kept in her body, perhaps, on a pittancefrom distant relatives, or going to work. 

She did not hesitate an instant. Being of society she knew its needs, and although she was too young to look far ahead and foresee thestructure which was to rise upon these tentative foundations, sheshrewdly began by offering her services to certain friends oftenhopelessly bewildered with the mass of work they were obliged toleave to incompetent secretaries and housekeepers. One thing led toanother, as it always does with brave spirits, and to-day Miss deBarril has a position in life which, with its independence andfreedom, she would not exchange for that of any of her patrons. Sheconducted her economic venture with consummate tact from the first. Owing to a promise made her mother, the haughtiest of old Spanishdames as I remember her, she never has entered on business the housesof the society that employs her, and has retained her original socialposition apparently without effort. 

She has offices, which she calls her embassy, and there, with a staffof secretaries, she advises, dictates, revises lists, issues thousandsof invitations a week during the season, plans entertainments forpractically all of New York society that makes a business of pleasure. 

Some years ago a scion of one of those New York families so muchwritten about that they have become almost historical, married afterthe death of his mother, and wished to introduce his bride at adinner-dance in the large and ugly mansion whose portals in hismother's day opened only to the indisputably elect. 

The bridegroom found his mother's list, but, never having exercisedhis masculine faculties in this fashion before, and hazy as to whetherall on that list were still alive or within the pale, he wrote to thesocial ambassadress asking her to come to his house on a certainmorning and advise him. Miss de Barril replied that not even for amember of his family, devoted as she was to it, would she break herpromise to her mother, and he trotted down to her without furtherparley. Moreover, she was one of the guests at the dinner. 

Of course it goes without saying that Miss de Barril has not onlybrains and energy, but character, a quite remarkably fascinatingpersonality, and a thorough knowledge of the world. Many would havefailed where she succeeded. She must have had many diplomatists amongher ancestors, for her tact is incredible, although in her case Latinsubtlety never has degenerated into hypocrisy. No woman has moredevoted friends. Personally I know that I should have thrown them allout of the window the first month and then retired to a cave on amountain. She must have the social sense in the highest degree, combined with a real love of "the world. "

Her personal appearance may have something to do with her success. Descended on one side from the Incas of Peru, she looks like a Spanishgrandee, and is known variously to her friends as "Inca, " "Queen, " and"Doña Maria"--my own name for her. When I knew her first she found itfar too much of an effort to pull on her stockings and was as haughtyand arrogant a young girl as was to be found in the then cold andstately city of New York. She looks as haughty as ever because it isdifficult for a Spaniard of her blood to look otherwise; but hermanners are now as charming as her manner is imposing; and if thebottom suddenly fell out of Society her developed force of characterwould steer her straight into another lucrative position with nodisastrous loss of time. 

It remains to be pointed out that she would have failed in thisparticular sphere if New York Society had been as callous and devoidof loyalty even in those days, as the novel of fashion has won itslittle success by depicting it. The most socially eminent of herfriends were those that helped her from the first, and with them sheis as intimate as ever to-day. 

II

ALICE BERTA JOSEPHINE KAUSER

Credit must be given to Elisabeth Marbury for inventing the nowflourishing and even over-crowded business of play broker; but as shewas of a strongly masculine character and as surrounded by friends asMiss de Barril, her success is neither as remarkable nor asinteresting as that of Alice Kauser, who has won the top place in thisbusiness in a great city to which she came poor and a stranger. 

Not that she had; grown up in the idea that she must make her own wayin the world. Far from it. It is for that reason I have selected heras another example of what a girl may accomplish if she have characterand grit backed up with a thorough intellectual training. For, it mustnever be forgotten, unless one is a genius it is impossible to enterthe first ranks of the world's workers without a good education andsome experience of the world. Parents that realize this find nosacrifice too great to give their children the most essential of allstarts in life. But the extraordinary thing in the United States ofAmerica is how comparatively few parents do realize it. Moreover, howmany are weak enough, even when with a reasonable amount ofself-sacrifice they could send their children through college, toyield to the natural desire of youth to "get out and hustle. "

Miss Kauser was born in Buda Pest, in the United States ConsularAgency, for her father, although a Hungarian, was Consular Agent. Itwas an intellectual family and on her mother's side musically gifted. Miss Kauser's aunt, Etelka Gerster, when she came to this country as aprima donna had a brief but brilliant career, and the music-lovingpublic prostrated itself. But her wonderful voice was a fragilecoloratura, and her first baby demolished it. Berta Gerster, MissKauser's mother, was almost equally renowned for a while in Europe. 

Mr. Kauser himself was a pupil of Abel Blouet at the Beaux Arts, buthe fought in the Revolution of 1848 in Hungary, and later withGaribaldi in the Hungarian Legion in Italy. 

Miss Kauser, who must have been born well after these stirring events, was educated by French governesses and Polish tutors. Her friends tellthe story of her that she grew up with the determination to be themost beautiful woman in the world, and when she realized that, although handsome and imposing, she was not a great beauty accordingto accepted standards, she philosophically buried this callow ambitionand announced, "Very well; I shall be the most intellectual woman inthe world. "

There are no scales by which to make tests of these delicate degreesof the human mind, even in the case of authors who put forth fourbooks a year, but there is no question that Miss Kauser is a highlyaccomplished woman, with a deep knowledge of the literature of manylands, a passionate feeling for style, and a fine judgment that is theresult of years of hard intellectual work and an equally profoundstudy of the world. And who shall say that the wild ambitions of herextreme youth did not play their part in making her what she isto-day? I have heard "ambition" sneered at all my life, but never byany one who possessed the attribute itself, or the imaginative powerto appreciate what ambition has meant in the progress of the world. 

Miss Kauser studied for two years at the École Monceau in Paris, although she had been her father's housekeeper and a mother to theyounger children since the age of twelve. Both in Paris and Buda Pestshe was in constant association with friends of her father, whodeveloped her intellectual breadth. 

Financial reverses brought the family to America and they settled inPensacola, Florida. Here Miss Kauser thought it was high time to puther accomplishments to some use and help out the family exchequer. She began almost at once to teach French and music. When her brotherswere older she made up her mind to seek her fortune in New York andarrived with, a letter or two. For several months she taught music andliterature in private families. Then Mary Bisland introduced her toMiss Marbury, where she attended to the French correspondence of theoffice for a year. 

But these means of livelihood were mere makeshifts. Ambitious, imperious, and able, it was not in her to work for others for anygreat length of time. As soon as she felt that she "knew the ropes" inNew York she told certain friends she had made that she wished to gointo the play brokerage business for herself. As she inspiresconfidence--this is one of her assets--her friends staked her, and sheopened her office with the intention of promoting American plays only. Her trained mind rapidly adapted itself to business and in the courseof a few years she was handling the plays of many of the leadingdramatists for a proportionate number of leading producers. When thewar broke out, so successful was she that she had a house of her ownin the East Thirties, furnished with the beautiful things she hadcollected during her yearly visits to Europe--for long since she hadopened offices in Paris and London, her business outgrowing its firstlocal standard. 

The war hit her very hard. She had but recently left the hospitalafter a severe operation, which had followed several years ofprecarious health. She was quite a year reestablishing her formerstrength and full capacity for work. One of the most exuberantlyvital persons I had ever met, she looked as frail as a reed duringthat first terrible year of the war, but now seems to have recoveredher former energies. 

There was more than the common results of an operation to exasperateher nerves and keep her vitality at a low ebb. Some thirty of her malerelatives were at the Front, and the whole world of the theater wassmitten with a series of disastrous blows. Sixteen plays on the roadfailed in one day, expensive plays ran a week in New York. Managerswent into bankruptcy. It was a time of strain and uncertainty anddepression, and nobody suffered more than the play brokers. MissKauser as soon as the war broke out rented her house and went intorooms that she might send to Hungary all the money she could make overexpenses, and for a year this money was increasingly difficult tocollect, or even to make. But if she despaired no one heard of it. Shehung on. By and by the financial tide turned for the country at largeand she was one of the first to ride on the crest. Her business is nowgreater than ever, and her interest in life as keen. 

III

BELLE DA COSTA GREENE

This "live wire, " one of the outstanding personalities in New York, despite her youth, is the antithesis of the two previous examples ofsuccessful women in business, inasmuch as no judge on the bench norsurgeon at the Front ever had a severer training for his professionthan she. People who meet for the first time the young tutelar geniusof Mr. Morgan's Library, take for granted that any girl so fond ofsociety, so fashionable in dress and appointments, and with such acomet's tail of admirers, must owe her position with its large salaryto "pull, " and that it is probably a sinecure anyway. 

Little they know. 

Belle Greene, who arrests even the casual if astute observer with heroverflowing _joie de vivre_ and impresses him as having the best oftimes in this best of all possible worlds, is perhaps the "keenest onher job" of any girl in the city of New York. Let any of thesesuperficial admirers attempt to obtain entrance, if he can, to theLibrary, during the long hours of work, and with the natural masculineintention of clinching the favorable impression he made on the younglady the evening before, and he will depart in haste, moved to ahigher admiration or cursing the well-known caprice of woman, according to his own equipment. 

For Miss Greene's determination to be one of the great librarians ofthe world took form within her precocious brain at the age of thirteenand it has never fluctuated since. Special studies during both schooland recreation hours were pursued to the end in view: Latin, Greek, French, German, history--the rise and spread of civilization inparticular, and as demonstrated by the Arts, Sciences, and Literatureof the world. When she had absorbed all the schools could give her, she took an apprenticeship in the Public Library system in orderthoroughly to ground herself in the clerical and routine phases of thework. 

She took a special course in bibliography at the Amherst SummerLibrary School, and then entered the Princeton University Library onnominal pay at the foot of the ladder, and worked up through everydepartment in order to perfect herself for the position of UniversityLibrarian. 

While at Princeton she decided to specialize in early printing, rarebooks, and historical and illuminated manuscripts. She studied thehistory of printing from its inception in 1445 to the present day. Itwas after she had taken up the study of manuscripts from thestandpoint of their contents that she found that it was next toimpossible to progress further along that line in this country, as atthat time we had neither the material nor the scholars. She has oftenexpressed the wish that there had been in her day a Morgan Library forconsultation. 

When she had finished the course at Princeton she went abroad andstudied with the recognized authorities in England and Italy. Tenyears, in fact, were spent in unceasing application, what the collegeboy calls "grind, " without which Miss Greene is convinced it isimpossible for any one to succeed in any vocation or attain adistinguished position. To all demands for advice her answer is, "Work, work, and more work. "

She took hold of the Morgan Library in its raw state, when thevaluable books and MSS. Mr. Morgan had bought at sales in Europe werestill packed in cases; and out of that initial disorder Belle Greene, almost unaided, has built up one of the greatest libraries in theworld. Soon after her installation she began a systematic course inArt research. She visited the various museums and private collectionsof this country, and got in touch with the heads of the differentdepartments and their curators. She followed their methods until itwas borne in upon her that most of them were antiquated and befogging, whereupon she began another course in Europe during the summer monthsin order to study under the experts in the various fields of art;comparing the works of artists and artisans of successive periods, applying herself to the actual technique of painting in its manyphases, studying the influence of the various masters upon theircontemporaries and future disciples. 

By attending auction sales, visiting dealers constantly and allexhibitions, reading all art periodicals, she soon learned thecommercial value of art objects. 

Thus in time she was able and with authority to assist Mr. Morgan inthe purchase of his vast collections which embraced art in all itsforms. With the exception of that foundation of the library whichcaused Mr. Morgan to engage her services, she has purchased nearlyevery book and manuscript it contains. 

Another branch of the collectors' art that engaged Miss Greene'sattention was the clever forgery, a business in itself. She even wentso far as to buy more than one specimen, thus learning by actualhandling and examination to distinguish the spurious from the real. Now she knows the difference at a glance. She maintains there is evena difference in the smell Mr. Morgan bought nothing himself withoutconsulting her; if they were on opposite sides of the world he usedthe cable. 

Naturally Miss Greene to-day enjoys the entrée to that select andjealously guarded inner circle of authorities, who despise theamateur, but who recognize this American girl, who has worked as hardas a day laborer, as "one of them. " But she maintains that if she hadnot thoroughly equipped herself in the first place not even the greatadvantages she enjoyed as Mr. Morgan's librarian could have given herthe peculiar position she now enjoys, a position that is known to fewof the people she plays about with in her leisure hours. 

She has adopted the mottoes of the two contemporaries she has mostadmired: Mr. Morgan's "Onward and Upward" and Sarah Bernhardt's "QuandMême. "

IV

HONORÉ WILLSIE

Honoré Willsie, who comes of fine old New England stock, although shelooks like a Burne-Jones and would have made a furore in London in theEighties, was brought up in the idea that an American woman shouldfit herself for self-support no matter what her birth and conditions. Her mother, although the daughter of a rich man, was brought up on thesame principles, and taught school until she married. All her friends, no matter how well-off, made themselves useful and earned money. 

Therefore, Mrs. Willsie was thoroughly imbued while a very young girlwith the economic ideal, although her mother had planted with equalthoroughness the principle that it was every woman's primary duty tomarry and have a family. 

Mrs. Willsie was educated at Madison, Wisconsin, beginning with thepublic schools and graduating from the University. She marriedimmediately after leaving college, and, encouraged by her husband, ascientist, and as hard a student as herself, she began to write. Herfirst story followed the usual course; it was refused by everymagazine to which she sent it; but, undiscouraged, she rewrote it fora syndicate. For a year after this she used the newspapers as a sortof apprenticeship to literature and wrote story after story until shehad learned the craft of "plotting. " When she felt free in her newmedium she began writing for the better magazines; and, compared withmost authors, she has had little hard climbing in her upward course. Naturally, there were obstacles and setbacks, but she is not of thestuff that ten times the number could discourage. 

Then came the third stage. She wrote a novel. It was refused by manypublishers in New York, but finally accepted as a serial in the firstmagazine that had rejected it. 

This was _The Heart of the Desert_. After that followed _Still Jim_which established her and paved the way for an immediate reception forthat other fine novel of American ideals, _Lydia of the Pines_. 

It was about two years ago that she was asked to undertake theeditorship of the _Delineator_, and at first she hesitated, althoughthe "job" appealed to her; she had no reason to believe that shepossessed executive ability. The owner, who had "sized her up, "thought differently, and the event has justified him. She ranks to-dayas one of the most successful, courageous, and resourceful editors ofwoman's magazines in the country. The time must come, of course, whenshe no longer will be willing to give up her time to editorial work, now that there is a constant demand for the work she loves best; butthe experience with its contacts and its mental training must alwayshave its value. The remarkable part of it was that she could fill sucha position without having served some sort of an apprenticeship first. Nothing but the sound mental training she had received at home and atcollege, added to her own determined will, could have saved her fromfailure in spite of her mental gifts. 

Mrs. Willsie, like all women worth their salt, says that she never hasfelt there was the slightest discrimination made against her work bypublishers or editors because she was a woman. 

THE END

ADDENDUM

NOTE. --_Six months ago I wrote asking Madame d'Andigné to send menotes of her work before becoming the President of Le Bien--Être duBlessé. She promised, but no woman in France is busier. The followingarrived after the book was in press, so I can only give itverbatim. --G. A. _

At the time this gigantic struggle broke out I was in America. Myfirst thought was to get to France as soon as possible. I sailed onAugust 2nd for Cherbourg but as we were pursued by two German shipsour course was changed and I landed in England. After many trials andtribulations I reached Paris. The next day I went to the headquartersof the French Red Cross and offered my services. I showed the AmericanRed Cross certificate which had been given to me at the end of myservices at Camp Meade during the Spanish-American War. As I had hadpractically little surgical experience since the course I took at theRhode Island Hospital before the Spanish-American War I asked to takea course in modern surgery. I was told that my experience during thatwar and my Red Cross certificate was more than sufficient. Afterserious reflection I decided that I could render more service toFrance by getting in the immense crops that were standing in ourproperty in the south of France than by nursing the wounded soldiers. Far less glorious but of vital importance! So off I went to the southof France. By the middle of October thousands of kilos of cereals andhay and over 20, 000 hectoliters of wine were ready to supply the armyat the front. I then spent my time in various hospitals studying theup-to-date system of hospital war relief work. It was not difficultto see the deficiencies--the means of rapidly transporting the woundedfrom the "postes de secours" to an operating table out of the range ofcannons--in other words auto-ambulances--impossible to find in Franceat that time. So I cabled to America. The first was offered by myfather. It was not until January that this splendid spaciousmotor-ambulance arrived and was offered immediately to the French RedCross. Presently others arrived and were offered to the Service deSanté. These cars have never ceased to transport the wounded from theFront lines to hospitals in the War Zone. I heard of one in the northand another in the Somme. This work finished, I took up duty asassistant in an operating room in Paris to get my hand in. I next wentto a military hospital at Amiens. This hospital was partly closed soonafterward, and, anxious to have a great deal of work, I went to themilitary hospital at Versailles. 

The work in the operating room was very absorbing, as it was therethat that wonderful apparatus for locating a bullet by mathematicalcalculation was invented and first used. There, between those fourwhite walls I have seen bullets extracted from the brain, the lungs, the liver, the "vesicule biliaire, " etc. , etc. 

From there I was called to a large military hospital at the time ofthe attack in Champagne in September, 1915. Soon I was asked toorganize and superintend the Service of the Mussulman troops. At firstit was hard and unsatisfactory. I spoke only a few words of Arabic andthey spoke but little French. I had difficulty in overcoming thecontempt that the Mussulmans have for women. They were all severelywounded and horribly mutilated, but the moral work was more tiringthan the physical. 

However, little by little they got used to me and I to them. We becamethe best of friends and I never experienced more simple childlikegratitude than with these "Sidis. " I remember one incident worthquoting. I was suffering from a severe grippy cold--they saw that Iwas tired and felt miserable. I left the ward for a few moments. Onreturning I found that they had pushed a bed a little to one side in acorner and had turned down the bed-clothes and placed a hot-water jugin it (without hot water). The occupant was a Moroccan as black as theace of spades; he was trepanned but was allowed up a certain number ofhours a day. "Maman, "--they all called me Maman--"toi blessée, toiergut (lie down) nous tubibe (doctor) nous firmli (nurse). " And thisblack, so-called savage, Moroccan took up his post beside the bed as Ihad often done for him. I explained as best as I could that I wouldhave to have a permission signed by the Medecin-Chef, otherwise Iwould be punished; and the Medecin-Chef had left the hospital for thenight. He shook his wise black head, "Maman blessée, Maman blessée!"

One called me one day and asked me what my Allah was like. I told himI thought he was probably very much like his. Well! if my Allah wasnot good to me, theirs would take care of me, they would see to that. 

In May, 1916, I was asked to organize a war relief work[H] at therequest of the Service de Santé. This work was to provide the "grandsblessés et malades" with light nourishing food, in other words, invalid food. The rules and regulations of the French militaryhospitals are not sufficiently elastic to allow the administering ofsuch food. In time of war it would be easier almost to remove Mt. Blanc than to change these rules and regulations. There was just onesolution--private war relief work. 

 [H] Le Bien--Être du Blessé. 

So, with great regret, I bade good-bye to these children I never wouldhave consented to have left had it not been for the fact that I knewfrom experience how necessary was the war relief work which was forcedupon me, as I had seen many men die from want of light nourishingfood.