Paris War Days | Page 3

tremendous patriotic pressure of the German emperor's impending onslaught upon France, the whole nation is united as one man. As M. Arthur Meyer, editor of the Gaulois, remarked: "France is now herself again! Not since a hundred years has the world seen 'France Debout!'"
At four o'clock this afternoon I was standing on the Place de la Bourse when the mobilization notices were posted. Paris seemed electrified. All cabs were immediately taken. I walked to the Place de l'Opéra and Rue de la Paix to note the effect of the mobilization call upon the people. Crowds of young men, with French flags, promenaded the streets, shouting "Vive La France!" Bevies of young sewing-girls, midinettes, collected at the open windows and on the balconies of the Rue de la Paix, cheering, waving their handkerchiefs at the youthful patriots, and throwing down upon them handfuls of flowers and garlands that had decked the fronts of the shops. The crowd was not particularly noisy or boisterous. No cries of "On to Berlin!" or "Down with the Germans!" were heard. The shouts that predominated were simply: "Vive La France!" "Vive l'Armée!" and "Vive l'Angleterre!" One or two British flags were also borne along beside the French tricolor.
I cabled the following message to Mr. Ogden Reid, editor of the _New York Tribune_:
Tribune, New York, Private for Mr. Reid. Suggest supreme importance event hostilities of Brussels as center of all war news. Also that Harry Lawson, Daily Telegraph, London, is open any propositions coming from you concerning Tribune sharing war news service with his paper. According best military information be useless expense sending special men to front with French owing absolute rigid censorship.
BARNARD.
I based this suggestion about the supreme importance of Brussels because it has for years been an open secret among military men that the only hope of the famous attaque brusquée of the German armies being successful would be by violating Belgian neutrality and swarming in like wasps near Liége and Namur, and surprising the French mobilization by sweeping by the lines of forts constructed by the foremost military engineer in Europe, the late Belgian general, De Brialmont.
I subsequently received a cable message from the editor of the Tribune expressing the wish to count upon my services during the present crisis. To this I promptly agreed.

Sunday, August 2.
This is the first day of mobilization. I looked out of the dining-room window of my apartment at Number 8 Rue Théodule-Ribot at four this morning. Already the streets resounded with the buzz, whirl, and horns of motor-cars speeding along the Boulevard de Courcelles, and the excited conversation of men and women gathered in groups on the sidewalks. It was warm, rather cloudy weather. Thermometer, 20 degrees centigrade, with light, southwesterly breezes. My servant, Félicien, summoned by the mobilization notices calling out the reservists, was getting ready to join his regiment, the Thirty-second Dragoons. His young wife and child had arrived the day before from Brittany. My housekeeper, Sophie, who was born in Baden-Baden and came to Paris with her mother when a girl of eight, is in great anxiety lest she be expelled, owing to her German nationality.
I walked to the chancellery of the American Embassy, Number 5 Rue de Chaillot, where fifty stranded Americans were vainly asking the clerks how they could get away from Paris and how they could have their letters of credit cashed. Three stray Americans drove up in a one-horse cab. I took the cab, after it had been discharged, and went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where I expected to find our Ambassador, Mr. Myron T. Herrick. M. Viviani, the President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs, was there awaiting the arrival of Baron de Schoen, the German Ambassador, who had made an appointment for eleven o'clock. It was now half-past eleven, and his German excellency had not yet come.
I watched the arrival of the St. Cyr cadets at the Gare d'Orsay station on their way to the Gare de l'Est. These young French "West Pointers" are sturdy, active, wiry little chaps, brimful of pluck, intelligence, and determination. They carried their bags and boxes in their hands, and their overcoats were neatly folded bandélière fashion from the right shoulder to the left hip. Then came a couple of hundred requisitioned horses led by cavalrymen. Driving by the Invalides, I noticed about five hundred requisitioned automobiles. I was very much impressed by the earnest, grave determination of the reservists, who were silently rejoining their posts. Some of them were accompanied by wives, sisters, or sweethearts, who concealed their tears with forced smiles. Now and then groups of young men escorted the reservists, singing the "Marseillaise" and waving French, British, and Russian flags. At the Place de la Concorde, near the statue of "Strasbourg," was a procession of