"Auprès de ces petits, je suis toujours heureux.Car je vois l'amitié pétiller dans leurs yeux,Et j'éprouve aussitôt, avec un charme extrême,Le plus doux des bonheurs: être aimé quand on aime."[E]
"Auprès de ces petits, je suis toujours heureux.Car je vois l'amitié pétiller dans leurs yeux,Et j'éprouve aussitôt, avec un charme extrême,Le plus doux des bonheurs: être aimé quand on aime."[E]
[E]"Among these little ones I am always happy.In their innocent eyes glows friendship,And with swelling heart I know the charmOf loving and of being loved."
[E]"Among these little ones I am always happy.In their innocent eyes glows friendship,And with swelling heart I know the charmOf loving and of being loved."
BIG BERTHA, or rather her successors, kept up a sporadic bombardment of Paris in April and May. A few shells fell again in June. But the effect of the bombardment, materially and morally, was nothing like that of the original Big Bertha. The culmination of horror and indignation was reached on Good Friday afternoon, when a hundred people were killed in the church of Saint-Gervais. After that the Germans made no other big killing. They came to realize that Big Bertha could not intimidate or demoralize Paris. Where the shells fell, however, we shall never forget.
I used to listen with awe (and a bit of envy) to the stories of people who passed through the siege of 1870. I remember well when I was a child being told by my father's friends, as we drove in the city, "A shell burst here in 1870 and tore the front out of a shop: I was sitting at a café near by"; or, "On that spot the Versailles troops stormed a barricade and lined its defenders against a wall—there was no quarter." Now I have my stories to tell! There is hardly a street between the Boulevard Montparnasse and the Seine that is notassociated in my mind with an aeroplane bomb or a Big Bertha shell. The compensation for having lived through these days will be the privilege of telling Americans who come to see us "all about it." As the years go by, I have no doubt that legends will form themselves in my mind and that I shall do my full share of innocent and unintentional lying. You want to impress your listener: so you must make things graphic.
But I shall never be eloquent enough to enhance upon or exaggerate the nervous tension through which we passed during the spring and early summer of 1918. From the moment we learned the news of the collapse of the Fifth British Army, which brought the Germans to Montdidier, until the tide of battle was definitely turned, we never had an easy moment. The strain was worse than in 1914. For it lasted months instead of weeks, and reverses after four years of fighting, with all the world against Germany, were more difficult to understand and to stand. The British were just recovering themselves when the Germans fell on the French, captured the entire Craonne plateau for which we had been struggling for three years, reoccupied Soissons, and started to advance once more from the Aisne to the Marne.
It was not easy to be an optimist. We had faith in the holding ability of the French and British armies; we believed that the Germans were shooting their last bolt; and we knew that the Americans were arrivingin large numbers. But we had been fooled so often about internal conditions in Germany! And Russia and the submarine warfare were factors concerning which we had no exact data. The people who recreate the past with the advantage of hindsight will tell that they never worried a minute. They knew things were coming out all right! To listen to them one would think that they expected all along to happen just what did happen in the way it did happen. When I hear this kind of talk now I know that it was either a case of
"Where ignorance is bliss’Tis folly to be wise,"
"Where ignorance is bliss’Tis folly to be wise,"
or hopeless bumptiousness. How strange it is that many of those who tell you now that the Germans never had a chance ran away from Paris in 1914 and again in 1918.
Parisians passed no fortnight in which there was more anxiety and uncertainty to their beloved city than the first two weeks of July. The Germans were widening their pocket. They occupied the right bank of the Marne from Château-Thierry to Dormans. They crossed the Marne. It was too late for Germany to hope to win the war. But would they get to Paris?
On July Fourth I was in reconquered Alsace and my husband was speaking at Tours. He telegraphed me to join him at Boulogne-Sur-Mer on July seventh. It took me three days to go in slow trains, with an occasionallift by motor, the entire length of the front. I saw everywhere reserves of troops and endless lines of motor-trucks and trains with cannon and ammunition. The American uniform was ubiquitous. All this gave me a hope and confidence I had not felt in Paris, where I knew that the Government was making more elaborate preparations than in 1914 to evacuate the city. Herbert and I returned to Paris from Etaples on July ninth. The direct route by Abbéville and Amiens was under the German cannon, so we had to make a wide detour by Tréport and Beauvais. We both had a raging fever and it was all we could do to get home from the Gare de Nord.
Doctor Charon came early in the morning and told us that we were down with thegrippe espagnole, the plague that was sweeping France and that had much to do with the general depression. Many a soldier who had gone through four years of battle unscathed succumbed to this mysterious disease. It hit one suddenly and the end came quickly. On the other hand, if the first forty-eight hours passed without complications, recovery was as rapid. Despite the protests of Doctor Charon, Herbert got out of bed on the morning of the thirteenth to go to Lyons to the inauguration of the Pont Président-Wilson. I was up to celebrate the Quatorze. After it was over, I was glad of the illness that came to keep me in Paris for this day when we whistled to keep up our courage. Had the Spanishgrip not interfered, I should have returned to my children in the Little Gray Home near Saint-Nazaire.
The military operations in July, 1918, were not critical from the standpoint of the safety of France and the success of the Allied cause. The size of the army America was sending to France put the Germans in such a hopeless inferiority of numbers that as soon as the table of the landing of the first million was published we knew that the Germans were doomedif the fighting continued. But we had a growing number of strikes and a wide-spread defeatist campaign in the rear to contend with. If Paris were taken, what would be the effect on French public opinion? This was the stake the Germans were fighting for, and they knew it was their only hope of salvation.
Never have I loved Paris more than on the Quatorze of testing. Music and dancing were lacking, of course: for since 1914 we had not danced in public out of respect to the dead and music had been barred in cafés. Military bands had other places to play than in Paris. But happen what might, Parisians were determined to celebrate the fête just as if the Germans had not crossed the Marne. I went out for the day with friends. We smiled and laughed and tried to have a good time. The relaxation helped all to bear the burden. Within limits hedonism has its merits. "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die" is the philosophy that wins out when a crisis is being faced.
I went to the review in the morning, and made a round of the streets and the Champs-Elysées Quarter that had been rebaptized in honor of our Allies. The Paris Municipal Council cannot be accused of lacking optimism in regard to persons as well as events. Belief in victory and in the permanent esteem for those who were bringing it to pass led to changes of names that may not in retrospect have popular approval. The Avenue du Trocadéro has become the Avenue du Président-Wilson; the Avenue d'Antin, the Avenue Victor-Emanuel III; the Avenue de l'Alma, the Avenue Georges V; the Quai Débilly, the Quai de Tokio; part of the Rue Pierre-Charron, the Rue Pierre I de Serbie; and the Place de l'Alma, the Place des Alliés.
When Herbert returned from the Quatorze at Lyons, we celebrated the Franco-American victory of the Marne with a dinner at Parc Montsouris. Whoever has been to the Pavillon du Lac becomes a regular client. We discovered this unpretentious little restaurant many years ago when we were exploring with Christine and the baby-carriage. Ever since Xavier has been our friend. Xavier does not need to be on the Grands Boulevards. He prepares the choicest dishes with utmost confidence that his friends will bring their friends to Montsouris. The Pavillon du Lac is nearly a mile from the nearest Métro station and no taxicabs are to be found out there by the fortifications. But difficulty of transportation is more than compensatedfor by the restfulness of the Pavillon du Lac, itscuisine—and Xavier, with his good humor and witticisms, waiting on the table. You eat on theterrassefacing the park, with its waterfall and lake, and you feel that it is all yours—park and restaurant. Frompatrontochef, everybody calls you by name, and most of the people at the tables are your friends. In the salon is a piano. You dance to your heart's content. Xavier dances with you.
When I try to write of the Pavillon du Lac, memories crowd in on me thick and fast. I could have put this restaurant in almost any chapter of my Paris vistas.
But what place could a dinner at Montsouris enter more appropriately than on the night of July 18, 1918? We were celebrating better than we knew. The afternooncommuniquébrought with it the certainty that the miracle of 1914 had been repeated and that Paris was saved again. Did we realize that the day's fighting was the turning point of the war? I think not. But we acted as if we did.
Around our table were gathered the American General commanding the troops in Paris, my husband's chief on the Committee of Public Information, a French editor, colleagues of the American and British press, and one of our dearest French friends, whose work for his country in the hour of trial was bearing splendid fruit. Xavier was at his best. Had I notrecently been in his beloved Alsace from which he had been an exile since childhood? Fromhors d'œuvrestoliqueurs, there was an uninterrupted flow of good cheer. The strain of years was passing away.
The climax came when Jim Kerney picked up his cordial glass, twirled it with his thumb, looked at it regretfully, and sighed,
"The fellow who blew this glass was certainly short of breath."
Old Paris is disappearingOld Paris is disappearing
FROM the Boulevard des Capucines to the Avenue de l'Opéra there is a convenient short-cut through the Rue Daunou. Newspaper men and other Americans do not always use the Rue Daunou for the short-cut. It is better known as the way to the Chatham bar. I ought to know nothing about the Chatham bar. My acquaintance with that corner should be limited to the Restaurant Volney and ladies' days at my husband's club opposite. But I do know the Chatham bar and for a perfectly respectable reason. It is where my old uncle used to be found when the clerk at his hotel said that he was not in. The uncle makes me think of a friend of his and a table with a little brass disk in the center of it to commemorate assiduous attendance through a long period of years in the Chatham bar. And the uncle's friend makes me think of the liberation of Lille. Association of ideas is a strange thing.
Herbert and I sat one evening in the autumn of 1915 before a big map with my uncle's friend. His fingerslay upon the Flanders portion of what we had come to call "the front." Bubbling over with excitement, he exclaimed,
"They have broken through here, I tell you, day before yesterday. I always knew that when Kitchener's army was ready the trick would be turned. Of course the censorship is holding up the news, but everybody knows it. A sharp bombardment that overwhelmed the Boches, and then the break through. The Boches were routed. Talk about not being able to storm trenches! The cavalry has passed Lille. At this moment Lille is liberated. The British must be there in force."
"But," objected my husband, "this is too good to be true. They could not hold back news like that, you know. If the British are in Lille, the war is over."
"Of course it is over," insisted my uncle's friend. "We shall have peace by Christmas."
Mr.—well I won't tell you his name—let us say Mr. Smith, was hardly to blame for taking the wish for the fact. The rumor of a big break through the Flanders front was everywhere in Paris. Fourteen months of war had been enough. The French had waited a year for the British to form an army. Why shouldn't it be true that now the end had come?
Alas! we were to wait three years more before the lines in Flanders were crossed; we were to have many costly disappointments like that of Neuve-Chapelle.But when the moment finally did come, the liberation of Lille was to mean the beginning of the end.
In October, 1919, when I came back to Paris from the Little Gray Home, I returned to a city where there was a feeling of victory in the air. The most conservative had lost their habitual pessimism. The most resigned, who had come to accept the war as a fatality that would never end as long as there were men to fight, began to revise their opinions. The most suspicious, who wagged their heads overcommuniquésno matter what the authorities said, felt that after all we were making "some progress." Each day the list of liberated communes grew longer. But until some big city was abandoned, Parisians were afraid of having to pay too big a price to break down the Boche resistance. After all, they had proved themselves stubborn fighters. They might elect to make a long "last ditch" combat on lines of which we did not know the existence. But if they abandoned Lille, that would mean the intention of falling back to the Meuse. Genuine optimism is as hard to instil as it is to dispel. In retrospect, many writers are now asserting that Parisians knew the Boches were beaten after the failure of their last July offensive from the Vesle to the Marne. But this is not true. Relief over the failure to reach Paris did not mean certainty of the imminent collapse of Ludendorf's war machine.
When summertime was over, and darkness came suddenly from one day to the next, Herbert and I resumed our walks at nightfall. During the war we had lost our interest in buildings as memorials of the past. Contemporary history had crowded out ante-bellum associations. The Eiffel Tower was not a gigantic monstrosity, a relic of the Exposition. It was a wireless-telegraphy station, the ear, the eye, the voice of Paris. Tramping by the Champs de Mars, we saw the sentinels in their faded blue coats of the fifth year and felt sorry for the men up there always listening in the pitiless cold. Crossing the Pont Alexandre III, we forgot the splendor of the Czars and thought of Nicholas in the hands of the Bolsheviki. The Grand Palais no longer recalled brilliant Salons. We thought of the blind in the hospital there and of the re-education of mutilatedpoilus. The picture inside was a one-armed soldier learning to run a typewriter, and a man with both legs amputated sitting on a low bench, the light of renewed hope in his eyes: for he had found out that he could still do a man's work in the world by becoming a cobbler. The newspaper building, whose cellar windows used to fascinate us, was the place where we waited for the posting of thecommuniqué. The Invalides was no longer just Napoleon's tomb. It was the place where you went to see your friends decorated and where you strolled about the central court to show your children aeroplanes and cannon captured from the Germans. And you were saddened by thethought that when the last veterans of the Crimea and Soixante-Dix and colonial wars disappeared, there would be thousands of others to take the vacant places.
October is chestnut month. From some mysterious source the venders drew their supply of charcoal when we could not get it. But we were glad of their luck. Autumn walks would not be complete without the bag of roasted chestnuts which I could fish out of Herbert's overcoat pocket.
We were going down the Rue de Rennes one night and stopped to get our chestnuts from the man at the corner of the Rue Sainte-Placide. Herbert was fumbling for coppers. A boy thrust a newspaper under his nose.
"The Liberation of Lille!" he cried.
We hailed a taxi and made for the Chatham bar. Everything comes to him who waits. Uncle Alex's friend was waiting.
ON the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour, Paris heard the news. The big guns of Mont Valérian and the forts of Ivry roared. The anti-aircraft cannon of the Buttes-Chaumont, Issy-les-Moulineaux, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de la Bastille took up the message. The submarine moored by the Pont de la Concorde spoke for the navy. And then the church bells began to ring. We had heard the tocsin sounded by those same bells at four o'clock on the afternoon of August 1, 1914. France to arms! We had heard those same cannon during more than four years announcing the arrival of Tauben and Zeppelins and Gothas over Paris. But Paris kept the faith and never doubted that this day would come. The armistice was signed. The war was over. The victory was ours.
In the Rue Campagne-Première artists' studios are in the buildings with workingmen's lodgings. House painter and canvas painter work side by side; writer and printer and book-binder, sculptor, cobbler, and mattress maker live in the same court. Our little community could exist by itself, for we have within a fewhundred feet all that we need, tailor and laundress, baker and butcher, restaurant and milk woman, the stationer who sells newspapers and notions, and the hardware shop where artists' materials can be had. During these years of danger and discouragement and depression we have exchanged hopes and fears as we have bought and sold and worked. We have welcomed thepermissionniares, we have shared in the bereavements of almost every family, and we have greeted the birth of each baby as if it were our own. I was in my studio when the message of victory arrived. Windows in the large court opened instantly, and then we hurried down the staircase to pour forth, hand in hand, arm in arm, into the street. We kissed each other. Flags appeared in every window and on every vehicle.
The Boulevard du Montparnasse was ablaze with flags and bunting, and processions were forming. Hands reached out to force me into line. I managed to break away when I got to the door of my home for the crowd paused to salute the huge American flag. Herbert, who had reached the apartment first, was hanging from our balcony. My four children were in the hall when the elevator stopped. School had been dismissed. They danced around me. Mimi the five-year-old cried: "No more Gothas, no more submarines, we can go home to see grandma, and the Americans finished the war!"
"It is peace, Mimi, peace!" I said.
"What is peace?" asked Mimi bewildered.
I tried to explain. She could not understand. The world since she began to talk and receive ideas had been air raids and bombardments, and life was the mighty effort to kill Germans, who were responsible for all that, and also for the fact that there was not enough butter and milk and sugar. Mimi knew no more about peace than she did about cake and boxes of candy and white bread. Questioning my seven year old, I found that his notions of a world in which men would not fight were as vague as Mimi's. Lloyd was frankly puzzled. Like Mimi, he believed that the armistice meant no more Gothas and no more submarines, but he thought surely that we would go on fighting the Germans. Had not they always been fighting us? And if we weren't going to fight them any longer, chasing them back to their own country, what in the world would we do? And how could Uncle Clem and all the other soldier friends be happy without any work?
The Artist dropped in for lunch. Together we had seen the war suddenly come upon France. Together we were to see it as suddenly end. "Do you know," he said, "everyone in the quarter is going to the Grands Boulevards. Taxis have disappeared. The Métro and Nord-Sud are jammed. We may have to foot it, like most people, but if we want to see the big celebration, we must get over to the Rive Droite this afternoon."
The Artist was right. As Lester and Herbert and I went down the Boulevard Raspail and the Boulevard Saint-Germain, we seemed to be following the entire population of the Rive Gauche. To cross the bridge was the work of half an hour. We kept near the coping, and had time to see the crew of the submarineMontgolfierengaged in more strenuous work than sailing under the seas. TheMontgolfierwas brought up to the center of Paris a fortnight before to stimulate subscriptions to the Victory Loan. The Parisians had been allowed to subscribe on board. To-day the crew was busy trying to keep people off without pushing them into the river. The crowd in the Place de la Concorde overflowed to the Champs-Elysées and the Tuileries. Boys were climbing over the German tanks. They sat astride the big cannon trophies and invaded the captured aeroplanes parked on the terrace of the Tuileries. Only its steep sides saved the obelisk.
For many months the horses of Marly, guarding the entrance to the Champs-Elysées, had been protected by sand-bags and boxed up. A crowd was tearing off the boards and punching holes in the bags. Air raids were a thing of the past, and these hidden treasures were a painful memory which Paris wanted to efface immediately. A gendarme interfered only to point out the danger of the long nails in the ends of the boards. He insisted that the nails should be taken out, and then the boards were given to those who had torn them off.This kindly interference appealed to the good sense of the crowd. Men were putting the boards across their shoulders to parade thepoilustriumphantly around the Place. The gendarme was awarded by the honor of a high seat, too.
The statues of the cities of France formed splendid vantage-points, and they were crowded with the agile and venturesome. Lille and Strasbourg, however, were respected. When Lille was delivered last month, the statue had been covered with flowers and wreaths and flags. As it symbolized all the invaded regions, new offerings had been coming each day from the cities and towns that were being freed. In the midst of the joy of the armistice, this tangible evidence of victory was receiving more offerings each hour. We could see people moving towards Lille with arms aloft, in order that flowers should not be crushed in the jam. There was something sublimely pagan about the offerings to the huge statue. And Strasbourg! After nearly half a century, this was Strasbourg's day. The first instinct of the crowd was to tear off the crepe. But the government had taken precautions. Strasbourg was to be unveiled on the day Marshal Foch and his army enter the city. So Strasbourg was protected by acordonof the Garde Municipale.
On the Rue Royale side of the Hôtel de Coislin, which the American Red Cross occupied since our entry into the war, the proclamation of the mobilization was coveredby some thoughtful person with glass. It has remained through these years, defying wind and rain and souvenir-hunters, a constant reminder in the busy thoroughfare of Paris's last Great Day. This afternoon a fresh poster had been put beside it. We read:
INHABITANTS OF PARISIt is the victory, the triumphal victory! On all the fronts the conquered enemy has laid down his arms. Blood is going to cease flowing.Let Paris come forth from the proud reserve which has won for her the admiration of the world.Let us give free course to our joy, to our enthusiasm, and let us keep back our tears.To witness to our great soldiers and to their incomparable chiefs our infinite gratitude, let us display from all our houses the French colors and those of our Allies.Our dead can sleep in peace. The sublime sacrifice which they have made of their life for the future of the race and for the safety of France will not be sterile.For them as for us "the day of glory has arrived."Vive la République!Vive la France Immortelle!THEMUNICIPALCOUNCIL.
INHABITANTS OF PARIS
It is the victory, the triumphal victory! On all the fronts the conquered enemy has laid down his arms. Blood is going to cease flowing.
Let Paris come forth from the proud reserve which has won for her the admiration of the world.
Let us give free course to our joy, to our enthusiasm, and let us keep back our tears.
To witness to our great soldiers and to their incomparable chiefs our infinite gratitude, let us display from all our houses the French colors and those of our Allies.
Our dead can sleep in peace. The sublime sacrifice which they have made of their life for the future of the race and for the safety of France will not be sterile.
For them as for us "the day of glory has arrived."
Vive la République!
Vive la France Immortelle!
THEMUNICIPALCOUNCIL.
Paris had anticipated the advice of the City Fathers. Printers and bill posters were not quick enough. But the proclamation was read with enthusiasm. "Ça y est cette fois-ci!" cried a girl who had just come out of Maxim's.
The cry was taken up immediately by all who were gathered around the poster, and we heard it passingfrom mouth to mouth as we worked our way toward the Madeleine. Nothing could express more appropriately and concisely the feeling of the Parisians than this short sentence.Cette fois-ci! This time!There had been other times when rejoicing was not in order. There had been false hopes, just as there had been false fears. The certitude of victorycette fois-ci—a certitude coming so miraculously a few months after incertitude and doubt—was the explanation of the fierce mad joy expressed in the pandemonium around us.
After a mile on the Grand Boulevards, a mile that reminded us of football days, the Artist said, "This is great stuff now, and will be greater stuff tonight. I wonder if we had not better try to get around to other places before dark just to see, you know." Beyond theMatinoffice, in a side street near Marguéry's, we saw a taxi. The chauffeur was shaking a five franc note, and heaping curses on a man who lost himself in the boulevard crowd. We ran to the chauffeur and told him we would make it up to him for thecochonwho had not been good to him.
"Double fare, and a goodpourboirebeside," Herbert insisted. The Artist opened the door and started to help me in.
"By all the virgins in France, No! A thousand times no!" growled the chauffeur, trying to keep us out.
"We meant triple fare," said Lester. I disappeared inside the cab.
"Where doMessieurs-Damewant to go?" asked the chauffeur despairingly.
"Rue Lafayette, Boulevard Haussmann, Etoile, Avenue des Champs-Elysées, Invalides, and then we'll leave you at the Opéra," I suggested hopefully.
"What you want is an aeroplane," he remonstrated. But triple fare is triple fare. With a show of reluctance, he cranked and we rattled off. An hour later, after we had escaped being taken by assault a dozen times, resisted attempts to pull us out and put us out, promised to pay for a broken window and a stolen lamp, and used cigarettes and persuasive French on the man upon whose goodwill our happiness depended, we found ourselves on the Avenue de l'Opéra. By this time the chauffeur was resigned, so resigned that he tried to cross the Place de l'Opéra. We were tied up in a mass of other rashly-guided vehicles until the taxi's tires flattened out under the weight of a dozen Australians who had climbed on our roof. We were cheerful about it, and the chauffeur seemed to gather equanimity with misfortune. November 11, 1918, comes only once in a lifetime. We abandoned our taxi and our money, and tried it afoot again.
Fortune was with us. We arrived at the moment when Mademoiselle Chénal appeared on the balcony of the Opéra and sang the "Marseillaise." There was the stillness of death during the verse. But the prima donna's voice was heard only in the first word of the chorus.When the crowd took up the chorus, Paris lived one of the greatest moments of her history. Over and over again Mademoiselle Chénal waved her flag, and the chorus was repeated. Then she withdrew. Another verse would have been an anti-climax. We were carried along the Boulevard des Italiens as far as Appenrodt's. As Herbert and Lester were talking about the night, more than four years ago, when they watched the crowd break the windows of this and other German or supposedly German places, the arc lights along the middle of the boulevard flashed on. Paris of peace days reappeared.
In the midst of it all, my maternal instinct set me worrying. What if Alice, thegouvernante, had taken the children out into the crowd? I had gone off without thinking of my chicks. We tried to telephone. On the last day of the war that proved as impossible as on the first. My escorts were quite willing to return to the Rive Gauche. There was no reason why the celebration would not be just as interesting on the Boul' Miche. I left Herbert and Lester on the terrace of the Café Soufflet, and hurried back to the Boulevard du Montparnasse. When I reappeared half an hour later, Christine was with me. She had begged so hard to be taken to the Grands Boulevards. After all, why not? Christine had lived through all the war in France. It was her right to be in on the rejoicing. And I confess that I wanted to hear what she would say when she sawthe lights. She was so young when the war started that she had forgotten what lighted streets were.
The two men were delighted with the idea of dining across the river. Despite its reputation for making the most of a celebration, five long years of the absence of youth had atrophied the Boul' Miche. It was interesting, of course, but not what we thought it would be.
We dined at the Grand Café. We went early, fearing that even being in the good graces of the head waiter might not secure a table. But having a table was not guarantee of the possibility of ordering a meal worthy of the occasion. The run on food had been too severe for the past two days. And the market people of the Halles Centrales, so the waiter said, began their celebration on Saturday, when the German delegates appeared to demand the armistice. They would withhold their produce for several days, and get higher prices. The cellars held out nobly, however, so food could be dispensed with.
During the first hour, mostly waiting for dishes which did not come, there was a lull. The effort of the afternoon had been exhausting. Some groups were just about to leave for the theatre when a young American officer jumped on his chair, holding a slipper in his hand. Pouring into it champagne, he proposed the health of Marshal Foch, with the warning that other toasts would follow. Immediately there was a bending under tables, and other slippers appeared. Thefun was on. Cosmopolitans have seen New Year's Everéveillonsthat were "going some," but the drinking of the health of Foch, Petain, Haig and Pershing will live in the memory of all who were in the Grand Café on the night of November 11th. Tables were pushed together and pyramided. One after the other the highest officer in rank in each of the Allied armies was dragged from his place and lifted up between the chandeliers. Over the revolving doors at the entrance a young lieutenant led the singing of the national anthems, using flag after flag as they were handed up to him. The affair was decidedlyà l'américaine, as a beaming Frenchman at the next table said. There was no rowdyness, no drunkenness. It was merrymaking into which everyone entered. The owner of the first slipper was an American head nurse, and the first Frenchwoman to jump up on a table had twin sons in the Class of 1919. During years of anguish we had been subjected to a severe nervous strain and to repressing our feelings. The French bubbled over and the English, too, and they were willing to follow the lead of the Americans, because we have a genius for celebrating audibly and in public.
The Grand PalaisThe Grand Palais
Once more out in the night air, following and watching the night crowd, and joining in or being drawn into the fun, we were struck by the ubiquity of American soldiers and their leadership in every stunt which drew the crowd. We felt, too, the spirit of goodcamaraderieamong the merrymakers. Not a disagreeable incident did we see. The stars of a cloudless sky looked down on Paris frolicking. But they saw nothing that Paris, emerging from her noble dignity of suffering and anxiety, need be ashamed of. Policemen and M.P.'s were part of the celebration.
Lines of girls andpoilusdanced along arm in arm. The girls wore kepis, and thepoilushats and veils. No soldier's hat and buttons and collar insignia were safe. The price of the theft was a chase and a kiss. Processions crisscrossed and collided. Mad parades of youngsters not yet called out for military service bumped into ring-around-a-rosy groups which held captive American and British and Italian soldiers.
The officers and sergeants in charge of American garages were either taking the day off or had been disregarded. For in the midst of the throngs our huge army trucks moved slowly, carrying the full limit of their three tons, Sammies andmidinettes, waving flags and shouting.
The trophies of the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Elysées and the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville were raided. Big cannon could not be moved, and pushing far the tanks was too exhausting to be fun. But the smaller cannon on wheels and the caissons took the route of the Grands Boulevards. Minenwerfer and A.D.C. (anti-aircraft cannon) disappeared during the afternoon. Why should the Government have all thetrophies? The aspirations of souvenir-hunters were not always limited to the possible. We saw a group ofpoiluspulling a 155-cm. cannon on the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, some distance from the Rue Royale. They were actually making off with it! A policeman watched them with an indulgent smile.
"It's too big," he said. "They'll get tired before the night is over, and they couldn't hide it anyway. It is good for them to work off their alcohol. To-morrow the authorities will pick up that cannon somewhere."
The clocks on the Boulevard "islands" were stopped at eight o'clock. This was not a night to think what time it was, and whether the Métro had ceased running. Every lamp-post had its cheer-leader or orator.
Confetti and streamers of uncelebrated Mardi Gras and Mi-Carêmes had their use this night, when four years of postponed festivals were made up for in few wild and joyous hours. What had begun as a patriotic demonstration was ending in a carnival. The "Marseillaise" gave place to "Madelon," favorite doggerel of barracks and streets.
The most dignified had to unbend. A British staff officer, captured by a bunch of girls, was made to march before them as they held his Burberry rain-coat like maids of honor carrying a bride's train. He was a good sport, and reconciled himself to leading a dancing procession, beating time with his bamboo cane. Allthe Tommies spieden routewere pressed into line. A French General, who had unwisely come out in uniform, was mobbed by the crowd. The girls kissed him, and older people asked to shake his hand. He submitted to their grateful joy with warm-hearted and gracious dignity. But when a band ofpoiluscame along, brandishing wicker chairs stolen from a café and asked him to lead them in a charge, that was too much even for November Eleventh. The General retired to the safety of a darkened doorway.
There were no bands. It was the people's night, not the army's night, and tin cans, horns, flags, flowers, voices and kisses were enough for the people's celebration. You could not have enjoyed it yourself if you had not the spirit of a child. Children need no elaborate toys to express themselves, and they don't like to have their games managed for them, or to have the amusement provided when they are "just playing."
Some Americans rigged up a skeleton with a German cap. They followed it singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers." The song was as novel as the skeleton. Where all the Americans came from only Heaven and the Provost-Marshal knew, and there is a strong probability that the latter had no official knowledge of the presence of most of them in Paris! Our soldiers were disconsolate over the fact that they could not buy all the flags they wanted. The shops were completely sold out, and the hawkers were reduced to offeringcocardes. We heard one boy say: "If I can't get a flag soon, I'll climb one of them buildin's."
"Gee! better not," advised his comrade; "they'd shoot you!"
"Naw! Shootin' 's finished."
The shooting was finished. That is what the signing of the armistice meant to Paris. And, as it meant the same to the whole world, every city in the Allied countries must have had its November Eleventh.
ONE night the future King of Siam came to dine with us. I took him into the nursery to see the children. Mimi sat bolt upright in her crib. She eyed the young stranger and frowned.
"Hello, king," she said, "where's your crown?"
I confessed to a similar feeling when from the balcony of a friend's home in the Avenue du Bois de Bologne I saw the King of England riding into Paris for the first of the welcomes we were giving Allied sovereigns. It was natural that Great Britain should come ahead of other nations. England had been the comrade-in-arms from the first days and aided powerfully in preventing the Germans from reaching Paris in the fierce onslaught of 1914. But it is a pity that the King was not accompanied by Marshal French or Sir Douglas Haig. Parisians are peculiarly sensitive to personality. George V has none. There was nothing in the rôle he had played during the war to make the crowd feel that he personified the valiant armies of the greatest and most faithful ally. If only Beatty or Jellicoe had ridden with him through the Avenue du Bois and down the Champs-Elysées. The war had notdeepened the enthusiasm of the French for a monarch simply because he was a monarch. A crown and a royal robe might have helped George with the Paris crowd. I am not sure even then. As my concierge put it when I told her that I was going to cheer the royal visitor,
"Voyons, what has that king done in the war besides falling off his horse?"
And then the weather was against our British guest. I do not care what the occasion is, rain and enthusiasm do not go together in a Paris crowd.
The King of the Belgians had good weather and received cheers that came from the heart. We thought of him not as a royal personage but as the man who had saved Paris at the beginning of the war because he put honor and his country ahead of personal interest and blood. The French saw in him also a soldier who had lived the life of the camp sharing the hardships and dangers of his little army in the corner of Belgium the Germans were never able to conquer. From the first day of the war to the signing of the armistice, Albert I did not doff his uniform. He never asked of his soldiers what he himself was not ready to do. And he came to Paris with his queen, who had been idolized by the French. No woman in the world was so popular in France as Elizabeth despite her German origin.
The protocol for the royal visits was as elaborate as the ceremony proved to be simple. The guests were receivedby President and Madame Poincaré at the little Ceinture station at the Porte Dauphine. Headed and followed by a single row ofgardes républicaineson horse, they rode in open carriages down the Avenue du Bois de Bologne and the Champs-Elysées and across the Pont de la Concorde to the Palais d'Orsay where they were lodged. Infantry regiments, lining the route, aided the police in keeping order. There was no parade and no music. The attention and the acclamation of the crowd were concentrated on the visitors. As state carriages are swung high, every one was able to see the king. The Avenue du Bois is ideal for a procession. The park slopes up on either side, affording a clear view for hundreds of thousands. And there are innumerable trees for boys.
Those who were unable to get to the Avenue du Bois or the Champs-Elysées at the time the visitors came had a chance to see them in the streets afterward. For visits were exchanged between the royal visitors and President Poincaré, and on the second day of the visit they rode in state down the Rue de Rivoli to receive the freedom of Paris at the Hôtel de Ville. The return from the Hôtel de Ville was made by the Grands Boulevards and the Rue Royale. Then on the first evening was the state dinner at the Elysée and on the second evening the gala performance at the Opéra. If any one in Paris did not see the sovereigns, it was not because of lack of opportunity.
The evening before we were to receive President Wilson, Rosalie burst into my room in great excitement.
"Hush, hush!" I whispered. "I have just put the baby to bed."
But my pretty little cook did not hear me. She hurried to the window and bounced out on the balcony. I followed.
"What is the matter?" I asked.
"Madame has only to listen: every church bell in Paris is ringing. What is it, Madame? In my Brittany village the bells rang that way only when they posted the mobilization order at themairie. Is it the tocsin? Is the war going to begin again?"
"Of course not," I answered. "It's a whole month since the armistice. Cheer up, Rosalie, perhaps the Kaiser is dead."
The older children and Elisa and Alice were now with us. The bells continued ringing, and we heard cannon, one boom after another. It was the salute that had been given for the royal visitors by the guns of Mont Valérian. Now we realized that the special train from Brest had arrived.
"It is thePrésident-Vilsonne!" said Alice in the reverent tone, that she had been taught to use in speaking of "l'Eternel." If you have heard a French Protestant reciting a psalm, and pronouncing the beautiful French word for Jehovah, you will understand what I mean.
My young governess struck the note of the Wilsonian greeting. All that has happened since that memorable December day has dispelled little by little the legend of the Wilson who was to deliver the world from the bondage of war. The French quickly discovered that their idol had feet of clay. Whether they expected too much from what President Wilson had said in his speeches or whether his failure to make good his promises was due to circumstances beyond his power to control is not for us to judge. We do not know the facts and we have no perspective. But at the moment we did not foresee the disappointment in store for us. A merciful providence, veiling the future, allows us the joy of entertaining hopes without realizing that they are illusions. Legends are beautiful and touching. But they are most precious when you think they are true, and nothing can rob one of the memory of moments on the mountain top.
Fearing that the Métro to the Place de l'Etoile would be crowded, we got up very early that Saturday morning. The day of President Wilson's coming—whatever day the great event would happen—had been declared beforehand a holiday. So we could take the children with us. We were none too soon. All Paris of our quarter was going in the same direction. Without a grown person for each child, the Métro would have been difficult. When we came up at Kléber station the aspect of the streets around the Etoile assuredus that the Wilson welcome would break all records. We passed through side streets to the Avenue du Bois—by the corner of the Etoile it was already impossible, and thanked our stars that the friends who invited us to see the royal visits from their apartment lived on the near side of the street. To cross the Avenue du Bois would have been a problem.
Lloyd struck against going up to the wonderful vantage point on a fourth floor. The good things Aunt Eleanor and Aunt Caroline would certainly have for him to eat meant nothing when he saw boys in trees. Having no good reason to deny him, his father yielded. My son climbed a tree near the side-walk with Herbert standing guardian below while the rest of us were high above.
I shall not attempt to describe the welcome given to President Wilson. After the carriages passed and the crowd broke, the children went home. Herbert and I followed the current of enthusiastic, delirious Parisians down the Champs-Elysées, up the Rue Royale and the Avenue Malesherbes. Wilson beamed and responded to the greeting of Paris. He did not grasp what that greeting meant. Clemenceau, Parisian himself, knew that the power to change the world was in the hands of the man riding ahead of him. But this is retrospect! I did not realize then that one of the greatest tragedies of history was being enacted under my eyes. Perhaps I am wrong in thinking so now. Who knows?
More significant in its potentiality than the initial greeting to President Wilson was the acclamation that greeted him when he went to the Hôtel de Ville. Belleville turned out. From the heart of the common people came the cry, "Vive la paix Wilsonienne!" It was taken up and re-echoed with frenzy when the guest of Paris appeared on the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville.
The coming of the King of Italy was an anti-climax. Paris, of course, responded with her customary politeness to the duty of welcoming the sovereign of France's Latin ally. But heart was lacking in the reception to Victor Emanuel III. The comparative coolness was not intentional. I am sure of that. It was simply that we were coming down from the mountain top to earth.
And when the Peace Conference assembled, Paris very quickly realized that the hope of a new world was an illusion. Our royal visitors came at the right moment. Paris will give enthusiastic welcome to other rulers in future days. But not in our generation! A famous saying of Abraham Lincoln's comes into my mind. There is no need to quote it.
"PEACE on earth: good-will towards men!" For five years the motto of Christmas had seemed a mockery to us. Our city was the goal of the German armies. They reached it sometimes with their aeroplanes, and before the end of the war they reached it with their cannon. Scarcely fifty miles away from us—within hearing distance when the bombardment was violent—fathers and sons, brothers and sweethearts were fighting through the weary years in constant danger of death. Each Christmas brought more vacant places to mourn. Of course we celebrated Christmas all through the war. There was little heart in it for grown-ups. But we had the children to think of. The war must not be allowed to rob them of childhood Christmas memories.
In 1918, we were looking forward to a Christmas that would be Christmas. All around us the Christmas spirit was accumulating. The war was over: we had won. Ever since Armistice Night we had been saying to ourselves—"And now for Christmas!" We might have to wait for a revival of the second part of theChrist Child's message. But at least the first part was once more a reality.
Three days before Christmas I sent a telegram. I took my brother's enigmatic military address and put two words in front of it, Commanding Officer. I begged the gentleman to have a heart and send me my brother for Christmas Day. I told him that I had not seen my family for five years, that four little children born abroad wanted their uncle, and that we would welcome the C. O., too, if Christmas in Paris tempted him. On the morning of December 24 brother appeared, and before lunch many others I had invited "to stay over Christmas" turned up or telephoned that they would be with us. I had to plan hastily how the studios in the Rue Campagne-Première could be turned into dormitories for a colonel of infantry, a major of the General Staff, captains of aviation and engineers and the Spa Armistice Commission, lieutenants and sergeants and privates of all branches. Last year few of the invitations to men in the field were accepted. This year all came—some all the way from the Rhine. Bless my soul, we'd tuck them in somewhere. And on Christmas Eve we were going to have open house for the A. E. F., welfare workers, peace delegates and specialists, and fellow-craftsmen of our own.
As each house guest arrived, I gave him a job. His "But can't I do anything to help?" was scarcely finished before he was commissioned to blankets, armycots,candles, nuts, fruits, bon-bons, drinks, or sandwiches. "Just that one thing. I rely onyoufor that," I would say. None failed me, and the evening came with everything arranged as if by magic. I have never found it hard to entertain, and the more the merrier: but when you have American men to deal with, it is the easiest thing in the world to have a party—in Paris or anywhere else.
Of course I went shopping myself. Herbert and I would not miss that day before Christmas last minute rush for anything. And even if I risk seeming to talk against the sane and humane "shop early for Christmas" propaganda, I am going to say that the fun and joy of Christmas shopping is doing it on the twenty-fourth. Avoid the crowds? I don't want to! I want to get right in the midst of them. I want to shove my way up to counters. I want to buy things that catch my eye and that I never thought of buying and wouldn't buy on any other day in the year than December 24th. I want to spend more money than I can afford. I want to experience that sweet panicky feeling that I really haven't enough things and to worry over whether my purchases can be divided fairly among my quartette. I want to go home after dark, revelling in the flare of lamps on hawkers' carts lighting up mistletoe, holly wreaths and Christmas trees, stopping here and there to buy another pound of candy or box of dates or foolish bauble for the tree. I want toshove bundle after bundle into the arms of my protesting husband and remind him that Christmas comes but once a year until he becomes profane. And, once home, on what other winter evening than December 24th, would you find pleasure in dumping the whole lot on your bed, adding the jumble of toys and books already purchased or sent by friends, and calmly making the children's piles with puckered brow and all other thoughts banished, despite aching back and legs, impatient husband, cross servants and a dozen dinner guests waiting in the drawing-room?
Paris is the ideal city for afternoon-before-Christmas shopping. Much of the Christmas trading is on the streets. It gets dark early enough to enjoy the effect of the lights for a couple of hours before you have to go home. You have crowds to your heart's content. And Paris is the department-store citypar excellence. Scrooge would not have needed a ghost in Paris. If you have no Christmas spirit, go to the Bazar de la Rue de Rennes, the Bon Marché, the Trois-Quartiers, the Printemps, the Galeries Lafayette, Dufayel, the Louvre, the Belle Jardinière and the Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville. Do not miss any of these, especially the first and the last. At the Bazar de la Rue de Rennes the Christmas toys are on counters according to price. Woolworth only tells you what you can get for five or ten cents. The range of prices on the Rue de Rennes is adjusted to all pocketbooks. At the Hôtel de Villeyou do not have to wait for a saleswoman at the outsiderayons. You hold up the article you want and catch the cashier's eye. He pokes out to you a box on the end of a pole such as they used to use in churches before we became honest enough to be trusted with a plate. You put your money in. If there is change, he thrusts it back immediately.
On the Grands Boulevards and in our own Montparnasse Quarter, the Christmas crowds were like those of the happy days before we entered into the valley of the shadow. As we did our rounds, falling back into peace habits and the old frame of mind, I realized how hollow was our celebration of the war Christmases, how we pretended and made the effort for our children's sakes. The nightmare was finished! Really, I suppose, we had less money than ever to spend and everything was dear. But everybody was buying in a lavish way that was natural after the repression of years. Bargaining—a practise in street buying before the war—would have been bad taste. We paid cheerfully what was asked.
I was hurrying home along the Rue de Rennes with one of my soldier guests. Herbert and my brother had left us on the Boulevards to get ham and tongue at Appenrodt's and peanuts and sweet potatoes at Hédiard's. A vender, recognizing the American uniform, accosted my companion with a grin, as she held out an armful of mimosa blossoms.
"Fresh from Nice this morning,mon capitaine—only fifty francs for all this!"
"Come, Keith," I cried, "she wants to rob you!"
The woman understood the intent if not the words. Barring our way, she reached over to her cart and added another bunch, observing, "It's Christmas and I give our allies good measure." Keith took it all, saying, "Don't stop me; I haven't spent any money for months—and Mother always made such a wonderful Christmas. I've got to spend money—a lot of money." He patted his pocket. "Two months' pay here that I haven't touched yet!"
Christine arranged the mimosa in tall brass shell cases from Château-Thierry. "See my flowers!" she exclaimed. "This is better than war!"
The Consul-General (always a Christmas Eve guest in our home); the colonel commanding the hospital in the Rue de Chevreuse; a New York editor and his wife; aconfrèreof the French press and his wife; a Peace Delegate; and the head of a New York publishing firm, who looked in to see if we were really working; sat down with us to dinner, squeezed in with our A. E. F. guests. When the last flicker of plum-pudding sauce died down, we set to work for the Christmas Eve preparations. There was no question of rank or age! Each one fell to the task at hand. Dishes, glasses, bottles, doilies disappeared into the kitchen. The table was set for the big party, piles of plates with knives andforks on each corner, sandwiches and rolls, a cold boiled ham, a tongueécarlateas tongues come in Paris, turkeys roasted by our baker, olives, salted almonds, army graham crackers, candy, a tall glass jar of golden honey worth its weight in gold, and the fruit cake with sprigs of holly that comes across the Atlantic every Christmas from a dear American friend. People could help themselves. How and when—I never worry about that. My only care is to have enough for all comers.
We sent out no invitations. The news simply passed by word of mouth that friends and friends' friends were welcome on Christmas Eve. In a corner of the drawing-room the engineers of the party made the Christmas tree stand up. The trimmings were on the floor. Whoever wanted to could decorate. With the trenches of five years between us and Germany, Christmas tree trimmings were pitiful if judged by ante-bellum standards. I wonder what my children are going to think when they see this Christmas a full-grown tree with the wealth of balls and stars and tinsel Americans have to use. In Paris we had so few baubles and pieced out with colored string and cotton and flags and ribbon. But the effect was not bad with the brains of half a hundred trimmers contributing to work out ideas on a tree that did not come up to my chin.
We started the victrola—"Minuit, Chrétien," "It Came upon a Midnight Clear," "Adeste Fideles," and—whisper it softly—"Heilige Nacht." Then ourguests began to come until salons and hall and dining-room overflowed into bed-rooms. Never again can I hope to have under my roof a party like that, representing many of the nations that had fought together on the soil of France, but with homesick Americans, Christmas hungry, predominating. The first to arrive were patients from the American Hospital in the Rue de Chevreuse who had been unable to forget the nightmare of war when the armistice came.
Crutches and the music, the tree and my children, an American home—the first reaction was not merriment. I felt instinctively that something had to be done. "Heilige Nacht" brought a hush. Someone turned off the phonograph. Bill took in the situation. Everyone in America who reads knows Bill. He backed up into a corner by the bookcase, took off his glasses, and began to make a speech.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am an unregenerate soul. There is not a respectable bone in my body. I am going to sing you a little ditty, the national anthem of California." Here Bill winked his eyes and opened his mouth wide to sing: