The Living Present

Living Present, by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

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Title: The Living Present
Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14197]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE LIVING PRESENT
BY
GERTRUDE ATHERTON
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS
[Illustration: THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGN�� President Le Bien--��tre du Bless��]
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 ��CLOP��S
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'ANDIGN��
XII MADAME CAMILLE LYON
XIII BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK: THE DUCHESSE D'UZ��S; 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; HONOR�� WILLSIE
ADDENDUM
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Marquise d'Andign��, President Le Bien--��tre du Bless��
Madame Balli, President R��confort du Soldat
Delivering the Milk in Rheims
Making the Shells
Soci��t�� 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 study of conditions, my excuse is that I remained too long in France and was too much with the people whose work most interested me, to be capable, for a long while, at any rate, of writing a detached statistical account of their remarkable work.
In the first place, although it was my friend Owen Johnson who suggested this visit to France and personal investigation of the work of her women, I went with a certain enthusiasm, and the longer I remained the more enthusiastic I became. My idea in going was not to gratify my curiosity but to do what I could for the cause of France as well as for my own country by studying specifically the war-time work of its women and to make them better known to the women of America.
The average American woman who never has traveled in Europe, or only as a flitting tourist, is firm in the belief that all Frenchwomen are permanently occupied with fashions or intrigue. If it is impossible to eradicate this impression, at least the new impression I hope to create by a recital at first hand of what a number of Frenchwomen (who are merely carefully selected types) are doing for their country in its present ordeal, should be all the deeper.
American women were not in the least astonished at the daily accounts which reached them through the medium of press and magazine of the magnificent war services of the British women. That was no more than was to have been expected. Were they not, then, Anglo-Saxons, of our own blood, still closer to the fountain-source of a nation that has, with whatever reluctance, risen to every crisis in her fate with a grim, stolid, capable tenacity that means the inevitable defeat of any nation so incredibly stupid as to defy her?
If word had come over that the British women were quite indifferent to the war, were idle and frivolous and insensible to the clarion voice of their indomitable country's needs, that, if you like, would have made a sensation. But knowing the race as they did--and it is the only race of which the genuine American does know anything--he, or she, accepted the leaping bill of Britain's indebtedness to her brave and easily expert women without comment, although, no doubt, with a glow of vicarious pride.
But quite otherwise with the women of France. In the first place there was little interest. They were, after all, foreigners. Your honest dyed-in-the-wool American has about the same contemptuous tolerance for foreigners that foreigners have for him. They are not Americans (even after they immigrate and become naturalized), they do not speak the same language in the same way, and all accents, save perhaps a brogue, are offensive to an ear tuned to nasal rhythms and to the rich divergencies from the normal standards of their own tongue that distinguish different sections of this vast United States of America.
But the American mind is, after all, an open mind. Such generalities as, "The Frenchwomen are quite wonderful," "are doing marvelous things for their country during this war," that floated across the expensive cable now