The Living Present | Page 4

States of America.
To the student of French history and character nothing the French have

done in this war is surprising; nevertheless it seemed to me that I had a
fresh revelation every day during my sojourn in France in the summer
of 1916. Every woman of every class (with a few notable exceptions
seen for the most part in the Ritz Hotel) was working at something or
other: either in self-support, to relieve distress, or to supplement the
efforts and expenditures of the Government (two billion francs a
month); and it seemed that I never should see the last of those relief
organizations of infinite variety known as "oeuvres."
Some of this work is positively creative, much is original, and all is
practical and indispensable. As the most interesting of it centers in and
radiates from certain personalities whom I had the good fortune to meet
and to know as well as their days and mine would permit, it has seemed
to me that the surest way of vivifying any account of the work itself is
to make its pivot the central figure of the story. So I will begin with
Madame Balli.
II
To be strictly accurate, Madame Balli was born in Smyrna, of Greek
blood; but Paris can show no purer type of Parisian, and she has never
willingly passed a day out of France. During her childhood her brother
(who must have been many years older than herself) was sent to Paris
as Minister from Greece, filling the post for thirty years; and his mother
followed with her family. Madame Balli not only was brought up in
France, but has spent only five hours of her life in Greece; after her
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 hotel while
the steamer on which they were journeying to Constantinople was
detained in the harbor of Athens.
Up to the outbreak of the war she was a woman of the world, a woman
of fashion to her finger-tips, a reigning beauty always dressed with a
costly and exquisite simplicity. Some idea of the personal loveliness
which, united to her intelligence and charm, made her one of the
conspicuous figures of the capital, may be inferred from the fact that
her British husband, an art connoisseur and notable collector, was
currently reported deliberately to have picked out the most beautiful

girl 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 she
was far too absorbed in the delights of the world--the Paris world,
which has more votaries than all the capitals of all the world--the
changing fashions and her social popularity, to have heard so much as a
murmur of the serious tides of her nature. Although no one disputed her
intelligence--a social asset in France, odd as that may appear to
Americans--she was generally put down as a mere femme du monde,
self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, dependent--what our more strident
feminists call parasitic. It is doubtful if she belonged to charitable
organizations, although, generous by nature, it is safe to say that she
gave freely.
[Illustration: MADAME BALLI President Réconfort du Soldat]
In that terrible September week of 1914 when the Germans were
driving like a hurricane on Paris and its inhabitants were fleeing in
droves to the South, Madame Balli's husband was in England; her
sister-in-law, an infirmière major (nurse major) of the First Division of
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 practically
alone in Paris. Terrified of the struggling hordes about the railway
stations even more than of the advancing Germans, deprived of her
motor cars, which had been commandeered by the Government, she did
not know which way to turn or even how to get into communication
with her one possible protector.
But her brother-in-law suddenly bethought himself of this too lovely
creature who would be exposed to the final horrors of recrudescent
barbarism if the Germans entered Paris; he determined to put public
demands 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 certain hour
that afternoon, and with as little luggage as possible, as they must travel
by automobile. "And mark you," he added, "no dogs!" Madame Balli

had seven little Pekinese to which she was devoted (her only child was
at school in England). She protested bitterly at leaving her pets behind,
but her brother was inexorable, and when he called for her it was with
the understanding