Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I [1 ed.] 9781782388296, 9781571811325
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Copyright © 2000. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Under Siege
Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
Copyright © 2000. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
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France (General)
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UNDER SIEGE Portraits of Civilian Life in France during World War I
Edited by
Copyright © 2000. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Robert J.Young
Berghahn Books New York • Oxford
Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
Published in 2000 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2000 Robert Young All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2000. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Under siege : portraits of civilian life in France during World War I / edited by Robert J.Young. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 978-1-57181-132-5 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-57181-133-2 (paperback) -- ISBN 978-1-78238-829-6 (ebook) 1. World War, 1939-1945--France. 2. France--History--German occupation, 1940-1945. 3. France--Social life and customs--20th century. I. Young, Robert J., 1942. D802.F8U45 1999 99-30593 940.53'44--dc21 CIP British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed on acid-free paper.
ISBN: 978-1-57181-132-5 hardback ISBN: 978-1-57181-133-2 paperback ISBN: 978-1-78238-829-6 ebook
Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000. ProQuest
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Copyright © 2000. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
For John Cairns
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CONTENTS
List of Maps
xiv
Acknowledgements
xv
Introduction
xvi
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Chapter 1 1914 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
2 August,“France Orders Army Mobilized” 5 August,“War Ends Paris Work and Play” 7 August,“Meat and Vegetable Prices…” 7 August,“Gay Paris Hears the Curfew Bell…” 19 August,“Lid is Tight on Paris” 23 August,“Paris Provides Work” 24 August,“Woman Writer in Paris…” 26 August,“Paris Women Doing the Work…” 27 August,“Paris Prays in Notre Dame…” 31 August,“People … Victims of Censorship”
1 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 9 10
11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
3 September,“Government … Moving to Bordeaux” 4 September,“Paris Quiet and Orderly…” 6 September,“Paris Forts…” 6 September,“Suburbs of Paris a Vast Ruin” 16 September,“War Zone Geography” 20 September,“France … Is Fighting for Life…”
12 12 13 14 15 17
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17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
7 October,“France Settles Down…” 12 October,“Paris Gay Garb Gone…” 13 October,“All Parisiennes Knitting” 21 October,“Paris Quiet as Population Waits…” 24 October,“Women Spies Shot…”
18 19 20 21 21
22. 23. 24.
16 November,“Paris Mourning…” 19 November,“Les Parents à la Guerre” 22 November,“The Saddest Day France Ever Had”
22 23 25
25. 26. 27. 28.
10 December,“Paris Again Capital” 13 December,“Regiment of Cut-Throats…” 6 December, “The Greatest Sculptor of Our Time” 13 December,“Songs They Sing in Paris…”
26 26 27 28
Chapter 2 1915
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29. 30.
7 February,“Paris after the War Storm” 14 February,“A Dramatic Scene … at Opera Comique”
33
31. 32.
5 April,“French Civilians Recount Horrors” 18 April,“French Army is Gaining…”
35 37
33. 34. 35. 36.
2 May,“Every French Family Has Kin at Front” 9 May,“Effects of the War” 15 May,“Paris Trembles. Fears Epidemic…” 16 May,“Nightly Air Raids…”
38 39 40 41
37 38. 39.
11 July,“The Face of Paris” 11 July,“When the Great German Army…” 21 July,“Meat Prices Soar…”
42 44 46
40. 41.
1 August,“The Graves” 15, 22 August,“Bombarded Reims/ Reims Again”
47 48
42.
19 September,“France Bravely Faces … Sacrifice…”
50
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43. 44.
3 October,“Seeks Our Aid for French Artists…” 31 October,“France, Sobered, Consecrated to War to End”
51 53
45.
28 November,“War Prefect of Police Proud…”
55
46. 47. 48. 49.
5 December,“Vouziers’Truce with Invaders” 10 December,“Paris Opera Open after 18 Months” 12 December,“Arras an Unburied City” 25 December,“War and Hate Fill the Hearts of France”
56 57 58 59
Chapter 3 1916 50. 51.
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52. 53. 54. 55. 56.
6 February,“French War Orphans To Be Made Good Citizens” 6 February,“Cathedral at Reims Scene of Desolation” 12 February,“French Youths Happy as They Leave for War” 13 February,“Loti Tells Gas Horrors” 17 February,“The New European Desert” 20 February,“The Kaiser’s Throat” 24 February,“Citizens … Not Alarmed by [Zeppelin] Raids”
61 63 64 65 67 67 68
57.
5 March,“A Zeppelin Raid”
70
58. 59.
1 April,“War in Parisian ‘Revues’ ” 13 April,“Les Femmes Françaises”
71 71
60. 61.
1 July,“French Farmers” 23 July,“French Fields of Calm and Quiet”
73 74
62. 63.
12 August,“How Paris Kept National Holiday” 17 August,“French Forced to Quit Homes”
74 76
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64.
20 August,“War May Eliminate French Money Marriage”
78
17 September,“War Wiping Out Old Religious Feud in France”
79
66.
19 October,“The Woman and War”
80
67. 68.
12 November,“Cambrai Calmly Sips Absinthe…” 12 November,“A Visit to One of France’s Aircraft Factories” 16 November,“French Prepare for Lean Days” 20 November,“Rheims Cathedral Liable to Collapse” 21 November,“France Copies German System in Trade Plans” 24 November,“White Plague Is Called … Greatest Peril”
81
65.
69. 70. 71. 72.
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73. 74. 75. 76.
9 December,“Cripples Make of ‘Gay Paree’ a Sorrowing City” 17 December,“American Work in France” 29 December,“France Censors Mail to Guard Its Own” 31 December,“Within the Lines”
82 84 85 86 88
89 90 91 92
Chapter 4 1917 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.
25 January,“Ravished by Germans, She May Kill Child” 30 January,“Does Miracles with Soldiers” 17 February,“France Lists Every Man for Service” 17 February,“Gay Paree Now War Worn City” 18 February,“France in Grip of Coal Famine” 18 February,“Stricter Food Control Promised in France” –x–
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94 95 96 97 98 99
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83.
19 February,“French Depend on ‘Système D’ to Win the War”
102
84. 85.
11 March,“France Prepares for Tourists” 18, 25 March,“After the Peace/ The Helping Hand”
102 104
86.
17 June,“Prices in Paris”
105
87. 88. 89.
3 July,“France’s Rail Problems” 15 July,“The Mothers” 21 July,“France Must Eat War Bread or None”
106 107 109
90.
20 August,“Babes of France…”
110
91.
2 September,“War Cripples Everywhere at Work in Paris” 3 September,“France Mother to Its Orphans under New Law” 16 September,“France Turns to Bread Card to Save Wheat”
92.
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93.
94. 95.
96. 97. 98. 99. 100.
7 October,“Slang and Slogans of War in France” 28 October,“France Will Adopt Her ‘Boche Babies’” 13 November,“Paris Worries over Shortage of Sugar Crop” 25 November,“Food Crops in France Worst in Fifty Years” 18 November,“Clemenceau Again Premier of France” 30 November,“A Desert of Bricks and Dust” 30 December,“French Pluck”
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111 113 114
114 116
118 119 120 123 123
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Chapter 5 1918
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101. 102.
126
103.
7 January,“Food Economy Sweeps France” 18 January,“Quaint Ypres in the Middle Ages and Now” 25 January,“Price Fixing in France Difficult”
104. 105. 106.
1 February,“Les Mesfaits Des Avions” 22 February,“A Defeatist Organization” 28 February,“The Price France Pays”
129 130 131
107. 108. 109. 110.
132 133 134
111.
6 March,“Paris Will Lose All Luxuries” 11 March,“France Placed on Bread Rations” 22 March,“Paris Tastily [sic] Guards Itself ” 25 March,“Paris Shelled by … Gun 76 Miles Away” 30 March,“Injuries in Church”
135 135
112. 113.
1 April,“Sheer Murder at Long Range” 17 April,“Bombing Paris Now a Habit”
136 137
114. 115.
4 May,“L’Affaire Brion Tried in Paris” 6 May,“France Bears Awful Burden: Shall Her Children Die?”
138
14 June,“Paris Consumes 300 Horses a Day” 23 June,“A Changed World for the Women of France”
140 141
4 July,“Big Share of France’s Work Is Now Done by Women” 7 July,“People, Not Things, Count in France” 15 July,“France Cheers Allied Heroes,” 21 July,“Pitiful Incidents of French Life” 29 July,“French People Choke Roads”
144 146 148 149 150
116. 117.
118. 119. 120. 121. 122.
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126 128
139
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Contents
123. 124. 125.
2 September,“Business Revives in the Paris Shops” 12 September,“French Prices Rise Skyward”
151 153
7 October,“Unconditional Surrender Trend of Paris Journals” 11 October,“France Will Never Forget” 16 October,“Lens Coal Mines Ruined for Years” 22 October,“Paris Rejoices at News Coast Has Been Freed”
156
129.
12 November,“Paris Gives Rein to Enthusiasm”
157
130.
29 December,“Women in France Seek New Status”
158
126 127. 128.
154 155 156
162
Suggested Readings
168
Appendix
174
Subject Index
181
Geographical Index
184
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Epilogue
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LIST OF MAPS
Frontispiece
France (General)
Map 1.1
Paris-Château-Thierry-Châlons-Verdun
16
2.1
Paris-Compiègne-Soissons
41
2.2
Paris-Gerbéviller
45
2.3
Paris-Vitry-le-François
47
2.4
Paris-Reims
49
2.5
Paris-Vouziers
56
2.6
Paris-Arras
58
3.1
Paris-Cambrai
82
3.2
Paris-Soissons
92
4.1
Paris-Amiens
110
5.1
Paris-Lens-Courrières
156
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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I
n some respects this volume is a tribute to the men and women of the press world whose testimony reappears after an interlude of some eighty years. All of them are gone, many of them forgotten; however, by retrieving their writing from World War One and by recalling some of their lives in the form of a biographical Appendix, I have done what I could to revive their memory. In this connection, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the archival services of the The Chicago Tribune and The New York Times. I am similarly indebted to my peerless research assistant, Elizabeth Beazley. She has spent many hours working on these press materials, and has done so with her customary energy and cheerfulness. It was appropriate, of course, that she receive some form of financial compensation for her labours; and it is for this essential aid that I express my thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and to the University of Winnipeg. The latter helped in another way. Its cartographer, Weldon Hiebert, is responsible for the twelve original maps contained in this volume. Thanks are also owing to the family which has sustained my work as writer and editor, sustaining me in countless ways. And it is a tradition of some standing, going back to my grandparents, the Youngs and the MacDonalds, whose children were born during the years recalled here. Finally, I dedicate this volume to Professor John Cairns, discerning scholar and gracious friend.
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INTRODUCTION
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B
etween these covers you will find a series of black and white snapshots, from a time that is now on the edge of living memory. And age is but one of their qualities. Not only are these pictures of some bygone era, but they were taken in a society whose culture is many paces removed from that of anglophone readers in the twentyfirst century. Together, these two qualities of temporal and cultural distance often complicate the task of amateur and professional historians alike. Certainly the challenge of teaching the history of World War One, of articulating contemporary perceptions, becomes greater and greater the further time removes us from the early twentieth century. When one adds to that the challenge of teaching those entirely unfamiliar with the culture of the tutoiement, the sixième année, and the grande levée, the size of the task comes into even clearer focus.1 Photo albums can help us address that task, even when the shots are verbal rather than visual. For that is what this volume offers, a collection of word pictures of French civilian life between 1914 and 1918. The intent here is merely to describe, a lesser goal than the interpretive objective set by the most able 1. The first refers to the French distinction between the intimate and formal forms of address—for which the pronoun “you” serves both functions in English. The second is a reference to the critical first year of secondary school in France, following which, traditionally, students have been separated into academic and non-academic streams.The third evokes the general sense of a full-blown national war effort, and the specific sense of conscription into the armed forces. – xvi –
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Copyright © 2000. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Introduction
historians, but a description which should facilitate subsequent interpretation. Otherwise put, these portraits of French life during the War do much to heighten our understanding of that life and of those times—an understanding from which more refined interpretation may well come. At the very least, therefore, they will help narrow the perceptual gap between the age of bustles and the age of blue jeans. But what are “they”? The pictures collected here are the work of journalists, most of them American, and most employed by one of four major newspapers: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and The Christian Science Monitor. Occasionally, I have included pieces from two Canadian newspapers, the Toronto Globe and Le Devoir of Montreal. Most of these reports emanate from France, the majority from Paris; and a large number were filed by men and women who were actually based in the French capital. In other words, not only are these contemporary accounts, but many of them are eye-witness reports prepared by professional observers and writers. To be sure, these are not principally the impressions of Frenchmen or Frenchwomen, and for that reason they often betray perspectives that have been shaped on the far side of the Atlantic. Sometimes those perspectives imply criticism, whether it be of France’s turbulent political scene or of her citizens’ alleged proclivities for too much alcohol and pornography. Sometimes, indeed often, those perspectives imply praise, whether of France’s dominance in the Fine Arts or of the indomitable character of a citizenry resolved on war jusqu’au bout, to the end. The bias, in other words, indeed if it can be called that, is relatively balanced. And if bias is the word, there is certainly no reason to believe that it is any more or less pronounced than it would be in the case of French writers observing themselves. Addressed more positively, there are definite advantages to be drawn from these essentially foreign observations. For one, these are literate watchers and listeners, people often very skilled at capturing mood as well as detail. For another, a number of them, people like Carolyn Wilson, Robert Herrick, Wythe Williams and Richard Harding Davis, turned their “beat” into a field of consider– xvii –
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Introduction
able expertise.2 For yet another, whatever their sympathies for a besieged people and an Allied cause, these foreign observers are able to maintain some distance from the embrace of French propagandists. They may be dependent on what the state information agencies will release and on what the state censorship boards will allow to be despatched, but they are not themselves creatures of the French government. Finally, precisely because they are foreign watchers writing for foreign readers, they comment on the peculiarities of French culture rather than take them for granted. That in itself is a significant asset for another generation of foreign readers, removed from France not only by the English Channel or the Atlantic, but by some eight decades. Which takes me to the matter of a reading audience. This volume has been prepared for the enjoyment and instruction of students—by whom I really mean any reader who has an interest in the past. Happily, we have long since passed the day when “student” meant youths in classrooms and short pants. Today the word embraces any age, any venue, and either gender. That is why this volume is intended to serve the needs and interests of general readers who simply want to add to their knowledge through the medium of the well written, printed page. For this reason, I have included a list of suggested readings at the end of the volume, as well as an assortment of maps which may acquaint the reader with the geography of northern France. That said, I am a teacher by profession and am always mindful of materials which would facilitate my task in the classroom. This, I believe, is such an example, partly for the reasons discussed earlier. In particular, I think it useful, not to say imperative, to give students something enjoyable to read—in this instance, students as defined by term papers and final examinations. Additionally, however, volumes such as this testify to the exceptionally rich resource base located in the world of newspapers. Too many teacher-scholars overlook this in their quest for unpublished papers in public or private archives; and as a result, their students are less attentive to a resource which is usually easily accessible and inexpensive to use. 2. Again, I draw the reader’s attention to the biographical data assembled in the Appendix. – xviii –
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Introduction
There is one other word to be said about the utility of such a volume for more conventional classroom purposes. If its principal raison d’être is a collection of primary documents to be read, analysed and discussed, the volume also speaks directly to current trends within the historical practice. Although set in wartime France, the selections offered here say very little about military operations or about life among the political decision-makers. Instead, the focus is on the so-called “ordinary” civilian. That is why, for example, there is a good deal on the condition of women: the mother, wife and widow, the factory worker and nurse, the transportation worker, the entertainer. The latter, in turn, speaks to another principle. If Social history must extend itself to include the glitter as well as the grime, so too it must combine studies of the urban workplace with those of the art museums, those of the rural economy with those of the writers’ academies and the opera houses. All this I have tried to represent in the selections offered here. Speaking of selections, it is worth reminding readers of the editor’s role in such productions. First, these are indeed selections, and as such represent only a tiny portion of the materials which these newspapers carried on France between 1914 and 1918. Second, the vast majority of them have been abbreviated; which is to say that I have eliminated passages, sometimes because they were redundant or tangential, sometimes only for reasons of space. Third, sometimes I have added explanatory notes to identify someone mentioned in the text, to explain some event to which the journalist has referred, or to clarify the original sentence.3 Fourth, in those instances of selections from Montreal’s Le Devoir, I have added to my editorial functions that of translator.4 Finally, in order to set the stage for these wartime reports, I offer the following brief essay on one pre-war society which found itself at war early in August 1914. * * * 3. In the latter instance I have used square brackets [ ] to distinguish my alteration. 4. On the matter of accents, for instance whether or not to include the circumflex on Rhône, I have simply reproduced the original text.The same is true on matters of spelling, for example Rheims or Reims. – xix –
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Introduction
While it would be difficult to exaggerate the horrendous effects which World War One had on French wartime and postwar society, it is also too easy to exaggerate the width of the gorge between prewar and postwar society. By that I do not wish to under-estimate the many changes occasioned by the passage from peace to war, for indeed these changes are very much at the heart of this volume. Rather I mean that in our bid to make this war the threshold of the modern age we are at risk of underplaying many of the “modern” qualities of prewar society. For instance, in the early months of 1914 these newspapers were full of stories about the latest developments in aviation and automotive technology, about the trend away from ladies’ corsets, and about the tango craze in Paris. The controversy over Expressionism in art was already full-blown, as was the debate over whether or not to allow women to vote. Medical circles were as engaged then as now in the subject of cancer, its causes and treatments; and social reformers were already deeply into the arguments over the phenomenon of youth violence. In some respects, at least, a review of these pages at a distance of eighty years is bound to moderate the differences between then and now. In other respects, however, a reading of these newspapers evokes a world too old to survive intact the carnage created by the War. If horse-drawn carriages had all but abandoned the streets of Paris in favour of the automobile, one could still read about duels between feuding celebrities, fought at some not-too-remote location with sword or pistol. Graphic accounts were still to be found of the efficiency of the guillotine, an instrument which in 1913 had despatched three murderers in less than two and a half minutes. In January 1914 the papers covered the death of Colonel Georges Picquart, one of the key figures in the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s; and in July attention was momentarily drawn to the visit to Fontainebleau of the octogenerian Empress Eugénie after a forty-three year exile in England.5 High society was still the preserve of the aristoc5. Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish staff officer in the French army who was wrongly convicted of treason. For twenty years, the “Affair” exposed the complex fault lines which divided Frenchmen over matters of race, religion, political affil– xx –
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Introduction
racy, old or recent, an elite still successful in setting the standards for fashion and good taste. The French army was still attired in colorful red trousers, the bustle was still in evidence, and the prevalent fashion style of 1914 was in fact a reprise to the form and fabrics of the 1880s. Despite efforts in education and direct action, women reformers remained largely unsatisfied, advocates for a gender left inferior in law and impotent in politics. These, in fact, were the burning issues of the day. Or rather some of them. While it is true that international issues were casting ever darker clouds during the final passage to war, and true that much attention was being paid to the government’s efforts to both avert and prepare for war, it was also true that the country was distracted by a surfeit of these other issues. Some of them were inspiring, like those addressed to the boxing success of Georges Carpentier, the tennis victories of Suzanne Lenglen, or the exploits of France’s aviation pioneers. Some were depressing, those for instance which recalled the sale to America of some of the country’s famous cultural artifacts, those which reported with alarm the growth of the country’s gambling facilities or its addiction to alcohol, those which recounted the tragic assassination of the great socialist leader, Jean Jaurès, on the very eve of France’s entry into war. Some were merely sordid, those which evoked in lurid detail life in the Parisian underworld, or those which covered the extraordinary trial of Madame Caillaux—a member of the political elite who was acquitted for a murder to which she had truthfully confessed. It took a great war to make this appear an age of innocence, and yet there is no denying that the mood of 1914 was never regained after 1918. The twenties, it is true, had moments of high optimism, but they were never without the intense, concentrated anxiety born of the war. 1914 was ambivalent, but not that ambivalent. Neither its optimism nor its despair was inspired by the desperate quality that infected postwar France. It is this lower grade of prewar ambivalence which one needs to recapture, that mix of old and new world, of confidence and uncertainty. This was the mood which changed so abruptly when war came that summer. iation and national security. Eugénie was the consort of Napoleon III, the emperor who had been deposed in 1870 following Prussia’s military victory over France. – xxi –
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Introduction
Certainly that mood was not one of undiluted despair, however often we are tempted to read backward from war to peace and find in one the makings of the other. In truth, the people of France had reasons for optimism. Although it was about to turn on them with unimagined brutality, technology was still a benefactor in the early months of 1914. Take for example the appearance of the “ondophone” in February of that year. An early version of the “walkman,” this little marvel allowed the proud possessor to pick up radio signals broadcast from the Eiffel Tower. It consisted of a pocket-sized telephone receiver, a detector made of lead-platinum crystals, and two six foot wires each of which ended with a clamp.
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To receive signals …, it is sufficient to attach one of the wires to a gas or water-pipe, thus securing a ground connection, the other wire being fastened to the antenna. This varies in size with the distance. In the environs of Paris, a metallic mass suffices—a balcony railing, the wire of an electric bell, or the gilded metal frame of a mirror.6
Speaking of mirrors, also on the market that February was another French contrivance, this one for the man who preferred to shave himself. It was an electrically illuminated shaving mirror, a free standing device that lit up the face without casting a glare into the eyes. Another selling feature was its ability to “light up the interior of the mouth and upper throat.” Another health-related innovation was Professor Richet’s germ filter, also electrically driven, which purported to extract germs from the air and deposit them in a special dish.7 More dramatic, to be sure, was Monsier de Pulseux’s invention of an early “ski-do,” that is to say a pedal-operated, propeller-driven ice-craft, or the even more peculiar looking invention of Messieurs Papin and Rouilly—the “gyropter,” a “flying machine that is neither aeroplane, balloon, helicopter nor ornithopter.” Indeed, to a journalist, it looked more like a boomerang, or a flying “banjo.”8
6. Washington Post, 8 February 1914, p.1. 7. Washington Post, 22 February 1914, p.14; 12 July 1914, p.4. 8. Washington Post, 5 April 1914, p.2; 28 June 1914, p.21. – xxii –
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More promising, or so it seemed at the time, was a series of medical breakthroughs, advances which promised relief to thousands of sufferers. Female cancer victims were told that the application of gold seemed to be lessening internal hemorrhaging, while mothers-to-be were assured that a new anesthetic guaranteed painless childbirth. The obese could take heart from the prospect of platinum injections, a lesser evil than the “loss of time, fatiguing exercises and alimentary privations.” For rheumatics there was Dr. Barthe’s cerotherapy treatment, which is to say an application of hot wax.9 Bright, too, was the assurance of one Dr. Ambialet to the effect that the simple mixing of tobacco with a common plant called “ass’s foot” entirely removed any hazard of cigarette smoking—at least up to fifty a day. And on a lesser but related plane, at least one fashion expert raised spirits with his confident assertion that sugar consumption was the key to the retention, even the restoration, of dimples. Dimples, which Jacques La Tour described as “a priceless gift of the gods,” owed their appearance to sugar, since sugar was “the greatest builder of tissue.”10 Such were some of the visionary ideas which buoyed up readers in 1914, most of which attracted the attention of French newspapers and French readers as well as that of the foreign press and readership. But some of this buoyancy had a more peculiarly French cast, especially when it came to areas of creativity in the arts. To be sure, some of the experiments were deservedly ephemeral—as in Mme de SaintPoint’s new “métachorie” dance. A descendant of Lamartine,11 and in January 1914 the star performer at Gabriel Astruc’s theatre on the Champs Elysées, this adventurous lady performed some arrestingly modern dance maneuvers to the music of Claude Debussy, while in the background her own mystic poems were read aloud—“in hopeless confusion as if written down by a maniac.”12 Some promised to
9. Washington Post, 1 February 1914, p.18; 15 June 1914, p.4; Chicago Tribune, 18 January 1914, part 2, p.1 and 19 April 1914, part 2, p.2. 10. New York Times, 31 May 1914, iii, p.2; Washington Post, 31 May 1914, p.17. 11. Alphonse-Marie Lamartine (1790-1869) was one of the most prominent French poets of the Romantic Movement. 12. Washington Post, 18 January 1914, p.10. – xxiii –
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be much more enduring. The stolen-but-recovered Mona Lisa was awaiting new security arrangements before being reinstalled at the Louvre; the composer Gustave Charpentier was ready to take his opera Julien to the Metropolitan in New York; the government announced its intention to create a Rodin Museum in honor of the country’s greatest living sculptor, as well as to erect a statue to the satirist Victorien Sardou in the Place de la Madeleine; the Grand Palais opened yet another season of the Salon des Artistes Français; and authorities at the Versailles palace placed on public display a newly discovered clock that had once been the property of that hapless eighteen century monarch, Marie Antoinette.13 Fashion, too, was an area of activity in which the French were undisputed masters, women’s fashion in particular. By 1914 it was already a well-established, world-famous industry, responsible for very considerable export earnings. That year saw the revival of the winter-wear pleated skirt and the draped skirt so prominent in the early 1880s, as well as the growing popularity of the Orient-associated “harem underskirt.” Hats were tall and prominent, while at the other extremity ladies were encouraged to buy fur ankle muffs.14 The bustle threatened a revival, but faded, while the nuisance, buttons-up-back design rebounded in the form of stylish bolero dresses. On the accessory side, high heeled, half boots of patent leather were storming the market by the spring of 1914, as were hats trimmed with long pink and white ibis feathers; and beneath the hat were hair colours of remarkable hue—wigged or powdered coiffure in tints of “crushed strawberry” or “electric blue.”15 It was not the garb of working women, to be sure, not that of peasants or urban workers, not even that of most bourgeoise; but it was seen to be French, and celebrated throughout the world as
13. New York Times, 4 January 1914, iii, p.2; 14 June 1914, iii, p.2; Chicago Tribune, 15 February 1914, part 2, p.3; 22 February 1914, part 2, p.1; 8 March 1914, part 2, p.1; 16 May 1914, part 2, p.6. 14. Washington Post, 4 January 1914, Magazine, p.6; 31 January 1914, p.4; 8 February 1914, p.10. 15. Washington Post, 7 June 1914, p.12; Magazine, 26 April 1914, p.6; Chicago Tribune, 4 February 1914, p.16. – xxiv –
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French. As such, even what some will consider frivolous was in fact an advertisement of the extremities in French taste—from the cleancut lines of tailored suits to the extravagances executed on evening gowns and hair styling. Which takes us to the nether side of the buoyant mood which was so much in evidence throughout the first seven months of 1914. Near the surface there were little signs of irritation and distress, some of which still have a resonance today. The Academy of Sciences expressed some concern about the noise factor in Paris, convinced as it was that “every pulsation and noise causes a nervous shock, comparable to a blow with a hammer.” Animal rights activists were unhappy with the slaughter of numerous species of birds solely for the decoration of ladies’ hats; and voices within and near the fashion industry were calling for the restoration of some mesure [moderation] in matters of taste—offended as they had been by the public appearance of a gown cut nearly to the waist at front and back, and held to the shoulders by a collection of pearls and a “light swathing of very transparent gauze.” In March of 1914 a manifesto prepared by one duchess, one countess, one viscountess, and three marquisses—all of them executive members of the French Women’s Patriotic League—called for an end to skirts “slit in an outrageous manner and bodices … indecently exposed.”16 There were other patriots who also shared the suspicion that exposure concealed something more sinister. In March, state prosecutor Théodore Lescouvé announced his intention to crack down on any salacious scenes staged by the cabarets and music halls of the city; and in July the French Senate discussed possible measures for curbing public indecency. That same month, however, an outspoken correspondent for the Chicago Tribune made it clear that enough had been done. The manager of the Moulin Rouge had been ordered to spend more on costumes, the manager of the Olympia ordered to find and eliminate the draft which nightly toyed with the flimsy costume worn by the star of “Orgy in Babylon.” Nevertheless, nudity on stage, Burns Mantle reported, was so common as to have 16. Chicago Tribune, 8 March 1914, part 2, p.2; 1 February 1914, part 2, p.2; Washington Post, 3 May 1914, Magazine, p.6. – xxv –
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become utterly boring. Far from exciting spectators, it merely caused them to yawn.17 Deeper down, however, there was more agitation. If public nudity did not disturb everyone, it was difficult to say how many shared Dr. Brocq’s observation that women were suffering from a general physical deterioration—or his conclusion that their hollow chests and stooped shoulders were the product of too much intellectual effort.18 Not everyone was concerned with the four fold increase in public gambling since 1907, the year in which the state had cut itself into a share of the revenues. Alcoholism drew still other critics, including opponents in parliament who pointed out that France consumed more alcohol than any nation in the world, and that new drinking establishments were opening at the rate of six per day. Absinthe was a particular target of their efforts, a liquor the consumption of which had increased from seven thousand liters in 1874 to twenty-eight million in 1910, and which was said to be responsible for much of the nation’s crime and instances of insanity.19 And further down still, more basic, alarming, and related, was the concern over the population figures. It was more than the fact that suicide was up, treble what it had been in the mid-nineteenth century. It was the fact that the national birthrate was barely holding its own, significantly trailing that of powers like Germany and Great Britain.20 Why this was so was a subject of intense speculation, but certainly many theories had in common an epidemic of selfindulgence, of the sort reflected in the upsurge of drinking, gambling and generally licentious behavior. Further down still, and above, and around, was that other source of anxiety—the relentless approach of war. Once again, to give that apprehension the quality of what later returned in 1939 would be misleading. Close as they were to this war, and all it
17. Chicago Tribune, 8 February 1914, part 2, p.1; 12 July 1914, part 2, p.2; 26 July 1914, part 2, p.2; New York Times, 7 July 1914, p.8. 18. New York Times, 7 June 1914, iv, p.3. 19. Chicago Tribune, 22 March 1914, part 2, p.1; 8 March 1914, part 2, p.2; San Francisco Examiner, 19 July 1914, Magazine, p.6. 20. Chicago Tribune, 29 March 1914, part 2, p.1. – xxvi –
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would stand for, in July of 1914 the French were as yet innocent of the long war, the war of the trenches, the barbed wire, the days-long artillery bombardment, the carnage left by a single machinegun in the space of an hour, the life sacrifice of nearly a million and a half French soldiers. The cathedral at Reims still stood in all its glory, as did that of Arras. But even then, there is very little evidence to suggest that, characteristically, they watched its approach with anything like enthusiasm.21 They would defend the patrie if it came to that. The men would answer their call-up notices, the women would resign themselves to doing the work of two, and the children would do as they were told. None had yet learned to hate the German as thoroughly as their grandparents had after 1870, however much their patriotism had been enflamed by the rising international tensions of the summer. What they knew, typically, was simple and straightforward. Another foreign crisis was looming, again in the Balkans, again between the Kingdom of Serbia and the Empire of Austria-Hungary. But again, there were grounds for optimism, given the fact that previous crises ultimately had been defused by diplomatic process. That process had proven possible before because saner heads always had prevailed, whether in the capital cities of the Triple Alliance—Berlin, Vienna, Rome—or in those of the Triple Entente— Paris, London, St. Petersburg. There was reason to believe, therefore, that these alignments actually worked in favor of peace, as two of the three partners on one side had exerted a braking effect on the impulses of the third. At least so it seemed when observers recalled how Germany and Italy had restrained Austrian ambitions in the Balkans, how the Austrians and Italians had moderated dangerous German initiatives in Morocco, how the British and French had counselled restraint upon Russian designs on the Slav lands of the Austrian empire. A succession of storms thus had been weathered in this way, in 1908 and 1913 in the Balkans, in 1905 and 1911 over North Africa. 21. See Jean Jacques Becker’s classic Comment les Français sont entrés dans la guerre (Paris: Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1977) and The Great War and the French People (New York: St. Martin’s, 1986). – xxvii –
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But in 1914 the mood steadily darkened. There seemed less of an inclination to negotiate, to bend before the threats of one’s enemies. What was more apparent was the determination to hold one’s ground, perhaps because self-seen victors of previous crises believed that firmness had paid off, perhaps because the self-seen losers had resolved against further compromise. In any event, the final months before the outbreak of war in early August were enough to make some think that this was a world gone mad. At home, mental health specialists were addressing the problem of periodic attacks of apoplexy among Parisian drivers—what the 1990s called “road rage”—as well as the larger problem of inflating murder statistics involving husbands, wives and lovers, and the lesser if more peculiar problem of a man driven insane by the tango.22 The Futurists added to the impression by storming the world of cuisine. One publicized recipe for the cooking of sole included flambéing the rum-soaked filets, sprinkling what was left with finely ground head-bone, garnishing the dish with cream Chantilly seasoned with tomato juice, and—for a final flourish—a few drops of one’s favourite perfume.23 Governments seemed similarly besotted. This time, the Austrians declared war on Serbia, and prepared to mobilize against Russia. Czar Nicholas responded by threatening Austria with war, and commencing the mobilization of his armies against Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm declared war on Russia, and authorized an offensive against France, via the neutral territory of Belgium. The Italians, who had several times renewed their membership in the Triple Alliance, declined the call to war and resumed their drift toward the Triple Entente. The British, who had long nourished the idea of a rapprochement with Berlin and had feared entanglements
22. New York Times, 15 March 1914, iv, p.2; Chicago Tribune, 22 February 1914, part 2, p.1; 8 February 1914, part 2, p.1. 23. New York Times, 8 February 1914, iii, p.2. Launched in 1909, Futurism was originally a poetic movement “which tried to reproduce the disorderly, confused, and tumultous noises of the machine age, and ... glorif [y] danger, war, and destruction.” See The Oxford Companion to French Literature, edited by Sir Paul Harvey and J.E.Heseltine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984): 296. – xxviii –
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with Paris, now joined the French in a military coalition to confront Germany. That confrontation is now called World War One; and this is the experience, from August 1914 to November 1918, which provides the context for the lives and circumstances recalled in this volume.
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1914 August
Germany invades Belgium French impose martial law British expeditionary force arrives in France Allied retreat to the Somme 2nd Viviani Cabinet 1st aerial bombardment of Paris
September
Reims taken by German army Germans come within 30 miles of Paris Government leaves for Bordeaux First Battle of the Marne German retreat to river Aisne German bombardment of Reims’ cathedral Trench warfare begins
November
Front established between Channel and Swiss border
December
Government returns to Paris Theatres reopen
1. “FRANCE ORDERS ARMY MOBILIZED. ACT DECLARED DEFENSIVE,” Washington Post, 2 August 1914, p.1,8. Paris,Aug.1.An official decree orders a general mobilization of the French army, beginning tomorrow… [The government] has not terminated diplomatic relations between France and Germany. Conversations –1–
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between the powers, notably between Russia and Austria, and between France and Germany, continued this evening. President Poincaré and the members of the French cabinet later issued a joint proclamation to the French nation, in which was the phrase, “Mobilization is not war.”The text of the joint proclamation follows: For some days past the states of Europe have been considerably aggravated, and notwithstanding the efforts of diplomacy, the horizon has darkened. At the present hour a great part of the nations have mobilized their forces… The powers whose constitutional or military legislation differs from ours have, without issuing a decree of mobilization, begun and carried on preparations which in reality are equivalent to mobilization, and are but the anticipated execution of it.
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France, who always affirmed her desire for peace, who on many a tragic day has given to Europe counsels of moderation and a living example of decorum, and who has multiplied her efforts to maintain the peace of the world, has now prepared herself for all eventualities, and has taken from henceforth her first indispensable dispositions for the safeguard of her territory… [T]he government has signed the decree. Mobilization is not war. Under the present circumstances it would appear on the contrary to be the best means of assuring peace with honor… The government … counts upon the coolness of the people not to give itself up to unjustified emotion. It counts upon the patriotism of every Frenchman, and it knows that there is not a single one who is not ready to do his duty at this hour. There are no longer any parties.There is an eternal France—a France peaceful and resolute.There is a fatherland of peace and justice, all united in calm vigilance and dignity.
2. “WAR ENDS PARIS WORK AND PLAY,” by C.F. Bertelli, San Francisco Examiner, 5 August 1914, p.2. Paris, Aug.5. No business was transacted in Paris today. Every shop except those where provisions are sold is closed because the assistants have gone to war. How newspaper staffs have been depleted is best shown by the fact that the Matin, with normally 700 employees, is now left with only 300. All café terraces have been suppressed. Automobiles and taxicabs are employed almost exclusively to carry reservists to the railroad stations. Ordinary citizens are bound to walk wherever they want to go, although –2–
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the tram cars run occasionally and there are still some underground trains working… The Bourse of Commerce remains open, but payments are suspended. Many banks are temporarily closed. The biggest institutions have warned their depositors that they can draw up to $50, but on any deposits they draw on over this sum 5 per cent must be paid. Food prices remain steady, with no abnormal rise.The water supply is fully assured, and measures have been taken to insure an undiminished gas supply for a long time. Every indication is that while 10,000,000 men are now being feverishly armed, the great clash is still several days off…
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3. “MEAT AND VEGETABLE PRICES GO UP IN PARIS,” San Francisco Examiner, 7 August 1914, p.4. Paris, Aug.6. Food remains plentiful in Paris and prices have increased only very slightly since the outbreak of war. Meat and vegetables are the principal commodities affected, as retailers find difficulty in bringing them from the central depots because all delivery wagons have been requisitioned for military purposes. In the great central markets there were large quantities of vegetables today, and push cart dealers reaped a rich harvest, as they had the advantage over shopkeepers whose vehicles have been taken by the military.The principal wholesale prices today for sacks containing 220 pounds were: potatoes and string beans, $6; dried beans, $4; spinach, $8; onions, $4. Fruit and poultry sold at less than the usual price, while butter was abundant, but the price had increased, as the public, fearing a shortage, had been buying quantities of twenty pounds.The authorities today forbade retailers to sell more than one pound to each customer and fixed the maximum price at 44 cents a pound. Eggs also must be sold according to an official tariff; new laid eggs costing 4 cents each, fresh French eggs, 3 cents each, while other eggs are marketed at 32 cents a dozen. The problem of getting in the harvest has given much cause for thought to the French ministry of agriculture, which is considering a scheme for replacing the men who have joined the army, by training all children from 10 to 14 years of age in field work. –3– Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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4. “GAY PARIS HEARS THE CURFEW BELL AT EIGHT NIGHTLY,” Chicago Tribune, 7 August 1914, p.5. Paris.Aug.5. Martial law has been in force since last night for the first time since 1870, when Paris was in a state of siege.A visitor unaware of the situation would find himself in the midst of a national festival… The whole city is beflagged; the streets are a mass of color; hardly a building is there that is not gay with bunting.The English flag is conspicuous everywhere. In the streets, hawkers do a roaring trade selling little flags for the buttonhole, one the national tri-color, another the combined colors of the triple entente. Horse and motor traffic are almost non-existent. Luckily the weather keeps fine. Immense crowds line the boulevards and chief thoroughfares… Tonight the new law comes into force; all citizens are expected to be indoors at 8 p.m.The curfew bell warns all at 8, when the cafés close and the streets are deserted. The theaters follow suit. The receipts at the Comédie Française on Monday were under $90. Twelve of the leading artists have gone to the front… A few minor cafés chantants still try to draw, but the Moulin Rouge is closed…1 The police continue to be on the alert for spies. Many arrests have been made. Foreign residents have to apply to the police stations for permits to remain in the city.The gates are closed all around the fortifications at 8 p.m. Late arrivals by automobile have to run close examination. Carrier pigeons are the particular objects of suspicion to the police.The law of 1896 forbidding the importation of carrier pigeons has been renewed. All the gun shops in Paris have been requisitioned to deposit their stock in warehouses to be held till martial law is abolished. Special municipal nurseries have been organised for the care of infants whose mothers have volunteered for the Red Cross or other work. The third day of mobilization is the big departure day. Men from 28 to 30 leave by the northern and eastern stations, which are barricaded to all but the military. Five hundred train loads left today. All was 1. The Comédie Française was the first state theater of France, dating from the 17th century. Since the late 18th century it has been on the rue Richelieu in what is called the Théâtre Français. The Moulin Rouge, which opened in 1889 in the Parisian quarter of Montmartre, offered more popular musical entertainment. –4– Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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done in good order. Many husbands break down when bidding wives and children adieu… A correspondent was approached by an officer in uniform and asked to witness the civil marriage of one of his men. Soldier Delaporte, Jean Marie, was united with Chomel Caux. Kissing his bride and shaking hands he hastens off to fight for his country, leaving the bride sobbing convulsively.
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5. “LID IS TIGHT ON PARIS,” Washington Post, 19 August 1914, p.3. Paris,Aug.18.The military law as it is administered in Paris is much more severe in its ethical judgments than is customary in the gay city.The military censors, besides supervising the sale of drinks in bars, have also issued an order against gambling, while the programs of the moving picture theaters must be submitted in advance and pictures of doubtful morals are carefully excised. The governor of the city has reiterated his instructions to the effect that no one may keep a stock of absinthe in his residence.Any one suspected of drinking absinthe in secret is liable to have his domicile searched…2 While there is still little excitement on the streets after dark, conditions in this respect are improving. Some of the subway lines are now permitted to run up to 8:30 p.m. and the tramways up to 10 p.m. In the daytime the streets of the capital are quieter [than before the war]; such tranquility has not been known … for years.The reason is that more than one-half of the vehicular traffic has disappeared. Elderly people are no longer so apprehensive on the city streets; they can now make the crossings without endangering their lives…
2. Absinthe is a greenish, licorice-flavored, high-proof alcoholic drink made from wine and oil of wormwood.Associated with alcoholism and dementia, it was banned in 1915. –5–
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6. “PARIS PROVIDES WORK,” Washington Post, 23 August 1914, p.11. Paris.Aug.22.A warning issued by the French government says that while one great struggle is in progress on the frontiers, another fight must be fought in the interior of the country against the misery which follows the disorder in its economic life. The prefecture of police in Paris estimates that there are 600,000 out of work in the French capital and its suburbs, or nearly one-sixth of the total population of the department of the Seine. Those who have savings find difficulty in getting hold of them, as they could draw only 5 per cent during the first two weeks of the war, but beginning today they may draw ten per cent; and it is likely the government will further liberate the deposits in the banks. The labor leaders are cooperating with the utmost energy with the government commission, of which Marcel Sembat is president, to reopen opportunities for work.All the old men and youths in the building trades are to be put to work finishing buildings under construction. Factories will be reopened, and will employ limited forces. Far-reaching charitable work, supported by the government, is being organized.There has been almost complete cessation of orders in the dressmaking, millinery, artificial flower, lace, and embroidery and related industries which under ordinary circumstances employ over 4 per cent of the laborers of France… Many of the larger dressmaking establishments are giving work to their staffs in the making of plain hospital garments for the wounded. This is done at their own expense. The labor unions in the department of the Seine and elsewhere in France have opened vast soup kitchens where those who can pay have a meal for 4 cents.Those who cannot pay are fed for nothing…
7. “WOMAN WRITER IN PARIS TELLS EFFECTS OF THE WAR,” by Carolyn Wilson, 24 August 1914, Chicago Tribune, p.3. Paris, Aug.2. [Note that the date is prior to the outbreak of the war.] On the eve of the most tremendous war the world has ever known, Paris is –6–
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1914
radiantly, steadfastly calm… I can’t explain it—this atmosphere of France… It is something almost spiritual—very delicate, very sincere… Paris has been the most awesomely tranquil place I have ever seen during these terrible tense days of suspense… And there will not be a man left in Paris who is over 18 or under 40. The effect of this on business is stupendous.Already … most of the buses and trams have stopped—their drivers have gone.The gas and electricity will be turned off tonight.There is no one to attend to the power houses. Milk will be delivered at the Mairie only to those registering for sick persons or children.3 All the green produce of the markets, which comes from the suburbs, is shut off. In front of the big stores for days there has been a line of half a mile in length. All the shutters are up, all the doors are locked but one, and they let in ten people at a time and limit their buying… All the taxis have been either put in the garage or requisitioned for the war, and no more petrol can be bought except by the government. Except for the half hourly trains on the subways there is no mode of transportation in Paris, unless one includes the infrequent cabs, which are charging scandalous prices… The stations are filled with thousands and thousands of people—foreigners and Frenchmen—getting out of Paris, where they think they stand a very poor show in the case of famine.There were easily 5,000 men and women and children standing and sitting on their trunks and lying on the mattresses they brought with them at the Gare [Station] Montparnasse last night, all waiting for the morning to take the train out…
8. “PARIS WOMEN DOING THE WORK OF MEN GONE TO MEET THE ENEMY,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 26 August 1914, p.3. Paris. Aug.10. The queen of cities is desolate. The shops are closed, the streets are empty, the traffic has ceased. Only in front of the banks long
3. Mairie is a city hall, of which there is one for every arrondissement, or quarter, of Paris. –7–
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hopeless lines wait seven and eight hours to change a paper note, and only the stations are crowded… You see [the working women of Paris] in the little corner grocery gathered around a dirty fly specked map of Europe and each in turn points to the place her man or her son or her brother has gone and explains to the attentively quiet crowds his particular march and the particular military maneuvers he had told her he thought would be carried out. They trace the French coast and they make little drawings in red of the parts guarded by the English fleet, and they talk fluently and correctly of treaties and agreements and alliances. Perhaps they knew it all before, for above everything else the European is schooled in history. One woman, who wasn’t sure what seven times five made, nevertheless gave a lucid account of the Luxemburg frontier and the century old battle of Sedan…4 As I was coming home the other night I saw a procession stealing away from the Ecole Militaire which should be on a Rembrandt canvas. Mounted on softly stepping cavalry horses, the youth of the Paris military life was creeping slowly away from the school, trying to avoid the demonstration that the knowledge of their departure would arouse. Their grey steel breastplates gleamed in the dim light of that chestnut bordered street and the fine narrow edge of their helmets caught the light and held it in myriads of thin flashes all down the line, and as they drew abreast of me I saw the gorgeous color of their uniforms and the long plumes hanging from their helmets, the creamy whiteness of their gloves and the flash of their sheathed swords. I looked up in their young, earnest faces and wished there might be some way to salute them, for the spirit of loyalty and service brought a beauty into their faces that eclipsed the beauty of their pageantry. I turned and followed them with my eyes as the lights wavered on the helmets and the horses struck sparks from the pavement… There was a demonstration on the boulevards of the men and boys left here who had not yet been called to mobilization. They marched under Russian and French and English flags, and here and there was an Italian or a Belgian or a Portuguese standard.They … seemed to be a per4. Sedan is a French frontier town and site of Prussia’s military victory over France in 1870—not quite the century-old battle referred to in the text. –8–
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fectly orderly crowd, when some fool … called three times from a four story window:“Vive l’Allemagne!”5 Now Germany is no safe place to mention even in a derogatory conversation and to cheer it is to court death.The crowd of two or three hundred men surged to the house… They battered and shook the heavy door … [but it] held. If they had ever gotten inside that house they would have killed every person they met with their bare hands. That was their wolf spirit. It was the ravenous hunger of hatred. I have never seen anything like the expression of ferocious hate on that sea of faces turned up to mine, nor anything like the unrelenting savagery of their eyes…
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9. “PARIS PRAYS IN NOTRE DAME FOR VICTORY IN FRENCH ARMS,” by Alphonse Courlander, Chicago Tribune, 27 August 1914, p.5.6 Within Notre Dame there is peace and an exquisite beauty and calm. Paris passes in to pray in the serenity of cool and lofty aisles, where the sunlight, striking through the windows of stained glass, spreads their colors over the gray and rose tinted stone of the walls. No tourists come there today. No idle visitors tread the pavement into startling echoes, with guides to tell them all the dates, and all the deeds that have taken place within the cathedral. Here in Notre Dame is the sanctuary from the hot Paris beyond the wide open gates where Charlemagne lords it by the Seine on his bronze horse… The saints in their chaplets, as silent as eternal tombs, kneel in stone attitudes of prayer as though they were praying night and day perpetually for victory for France… The candles burn about them like star points, twinkling in the vastness beneath the roof that dwarfs the figure of man; and the music rises like incense out of invisible depths. Now comes a woman of the markets, corpulent and ruddy faced, fresh from her bartering. She has a son and a husband somewhere on the eastern frontier, living today, perhaps dead tomorrow. She kneels before the virgin and burns a little candle and prays, and even as she prays 5. “Long Live Germany!” 6. Alphonse Courlander was Paris correspondent for the London Express. –9– Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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another figure creeps silently up and kneels beside her—a young girl of the middle class, daintly dressed, as all are. Her lips do not move, but she kneels with clapsed hands, and never takes her eyes from the merciful, pitiful face of the virgin with her babe. She is praying with her heart, praying for the safety of someone she loves and the victory of France. One by one the people come inside to the calm of the cathedral— people of all classes—and they fling themselves down with a sigh of relief before the saints… These are the days of guns and steel, submarines striking through sea depths, and aeroplanes threatening from the skies, yet faith lives eternally in the hearts of these people, and there is a sweet solace in prayer… Women kneel on the bare stones before the chapel, old women who must remember the last war and the terrors of the commune,7 and old men who have given the best of their sons to France. Here and there I see a young couple, the girl with wet and tearful eyes, the man with set lips, as if he were keeping back his tears until he is alone, kneeling and praying hand in hand.They are to be separated tomorrow. She will remain behind. He has his card in his pocket, telling him to join his regiment.Who knows when they will meet again—who but Ste. Clotilde before whom the candles burn like steadfast hopes that cannot be put out? The solemn chant of the Miserere rolls in waves of music through the cathedral, and the people bow their heads as the priest lifts the Host— then the candles are dimmed for a moment, and priests and choir move in a procession toward the sacristy, where the door closes on them. But the people remain and pray; and so it is in all the churches of France…
10. “PEOPLE OF PARIS ARE VICTIMS OF CENSORSHIP,” by Carolyn Wilson, 31 August 1914, Chicago Tribune, p.5. Paris,Aug.15.The most serious and the most disheartening thing about this war … is the strict censorship which will lie in the face of overwhelming 7. A reference to a bloody, urban uprising in 1871 immediately following the months-long Prussian siege of Paris. – 10 –
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defeat as well as exaggerate the importance of a minor victory… The papers print only what the ministry dictates, and they all print the same thing… The public is forbidden under penalty of arrest to repeat anything which is not in the papers. So that one is wary of imparting news received in a letter from the front. Today, for instance, I heard on good authority that the losses of the French soldiers had been terrific… “But don’t repeat that to anyone,” my informant cautioned me,“or it will land you in prison.” The papers, on the contrary, announce that the Germans were defeated with heavy losses, while the French suffered only slight punishment. And the strange thing is that all the Parisians seem to believe it. I suppose it is because they are so willing to be convinced that no harm has happened to their men… Another form of censorship which is hard on Americans is the law that only French shall be spoken over the telephone and that cables and telegrams may be written only in French… It comes hard on the poor man who has painfully memorized a number to shout at the French central [switchboard], to hear her say at his first relieved gasp of English: “Veuillez parler Français!”8 If the speech is not immediately changed, central shuts off the connection.And most of the “Europe-in-six-weeks” tourists are not equal to the emergency… The city is doing everything in its power to promote peace, order and discipline. Prices have been fixed for meat and vegetables, prices which have not been reached in any of the shops; depots have been arranged for free distribution of pasteurized milk for babies. Rioting and looting is punished with death in many cases.Twentyseven men are to be shot tomorrow for this offense. All public buildings that are at all suitable are being turned into hospitals or nurseries. The Comédie Française, most celebrated of all the Paris theaters, is a day nursery where mothers who are obliged to work may leave their children to be fed and cared for. The Salon, home of art … has been turned into a military stable, and where famous pictures have hung, horses now nibble their hay. Sopranos and tenors and baritones, favorites of many nations, are putting in a short
8. “Kindly speak French!” – 11 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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season, now that the Grand Opera is to be closed this winter, singing in the court yards for the benefit of the Red Cross… One of the most popular pastimes … is getting married. There has been a steady rush on all the mairies in town, and the number of marriages per day has been trebled. They come in their simple clothes, these men and women who will be separated in a few days, and their only form of decoration or finery is flags and colored buttons of French and English and Russian standards…
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11. “GOVERNMENT OF FRANCE MOVING TO BORDEAUX,” Washington Post, 3 September 1914, p.1. Paris, Sept.3 (Thursday).—A proclamation has just been issued by the government announcing that the government departments will be transferred temporarily to Bordeaux. The proclamation was issued by the minister of the Interior, who said the decision had been taken solely upon the demand of the military authorities because the fortified places of Paris, while not necessarily likely to be attacked, would become the pivot of the field operations of the two armies.
12. “PARIS QUIET AND ORDERLY UNDER WAR RESTRICTIONS,” Christian Science Monitor, 4 September 1914, p.2. One is grateful for martial law in Paris, for the quietness, and law and order which it enforces. There is no excitement, no café is open after 8 p.m. The shops are beginning to reopen, and with the gay array of flags everywhere the city looks en fete… The women are splendid, they wait for news as quietly as they let their men go to the front. The cars are running regularly on a good many lines, and the Metro and Nord-Sud, both subways, run up to 9 at night.Women serve on some of the cars and in some of the subways also.The omnibuses—“autobus” as they are called—were all taken off as soon as the mobilization order was – 12 –
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out, and they quickly changed their aspect and now, painted in sober gray, serve to carry provisions and so on for the troops. The bakers’ shops look strange indeed for, by order of the government, only one kind of bread is being made and in one kind of loaf, no rolls, no cakes, just sober “pain de ménage”! …9 The lovely gardens of the Champs de Mars all around the Eiffel tower have been fenced and made a military zone, and all the shrubs and flower beds have been ruthlessly burnt up… Measures for relief work are everywhere in evidence. “Ouvroirs” [workshops] are being opened where materials are provided for soldiers’ shirts, etc. and the poorer women are engaged to make them, at a low wage it is true, but at a wage that will enable them to have necessities till the men come back.The river boats have started running again and it is pleasant to go up to St. Cloud or Suresnes and have a quiet stroll in the woods, all of which shows that Paris is quiet and orderly and calmly cheerful, and that there is no need to rush away in a hurry. There is an abundance of fresh vegetables and fruit, and no shortage of milk or butter; it was only that for the first few days of the mobilization, there were no trains available to bring the supplies into the city.
13. “PARIS FORTS, POWERFULLY EQUIPPED FOR CITY’S DEFENSE,” Washington Post, 6 September 1914, i, p.13. Should the German army succeed in investing Paris, an army of at least 270,000 would be required to defend the French capital… The forts that defend Paris are said to be the most formidable fortifications in the world. Certainly they are the most costly. They have cost the French nation something more than $300,000,000… The forts about Paris are in a circle with a circumference of about 60 miles.The seventeen great fortresses [are linked by] military belt line railroad which connects with all the forts and which has spurs extending to all the places where it might be necessary to plant big guns in the event of an investment by the Germans.With such a railroad, heavy artillery and ammunition may be speedily moved from one place to another. The railroad is 9. Ordinary “household” bread. – 13 –
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concealed from the enemy by a system of tunnels and sunken roadbeds, where the lie of the ground does not afford natural concealment… The modern type of forts at Paris are shallow from front to rear, with two fronts facing the enemy and meeting at an obtuse angle.The walls are of concrete, reinforced with steel.The heavy guns inside are working from disappearing turrets, being loaded from behind the walls, and then elevated and discharged.These guns are aimed by officers in armored turrets, which rise long enough for them to take their observations, and then descend to safety, while the gunners elevate the guns to the desired angle… Search lights are similarly worked from disappearing turrets… The primary use of such forts is to keep the long-range guns of the enemy at bay. It is not expected to repel an infantry charge, except with the aid of the heavy artillery and infantry of its own force in the intervals… [The forts] are as a rule protected by barbed wire entanglements… After the barbed wire has been cut or blown up by land torpedoes, built especially to smash such obstructions, the charging columns have to pass over mined ground.The usual mines are those that can be fired electrically from within the fort, which throw tons of rock and other missiles into the air. If these barriers are surmounted, the charging infantry must overcome a counter charge from the infantry of the defenders, intrenched immediately before the forts. If the enemy’s attackers finally get at close quarters with the fort, they find it surrounded by a deep ditch, 30 feet wide and filled with water, defended by machine guns trained lengthwise along the ditch and by infantry fire from ramparts within the fort…
14. “SUBURBS OF PARIS A VAST RUIN,” by George Dufresne, Washington Post, 6 September 1914, Miscellany section, p.4. Paris, Sept.5. Like a lovely woman shorn of her tresses, Paris today stands alone, a city without suburbs. Gone are the little villages where lived some of the city’s laboring people. Gone are the houses and barns of the market gardeners. Gone, too, are some of the handsome villas, the country homes of well-to-do Parisians. – 14 –
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The military wreckers have finished their work of razing all the environs of Paris, and the capital has a distinctly “bob-tailed” look.The suburbs were demolished against the dreaded German advance. It was deemed necessary by the war office that the country for many miles around Paris be cleared of the houses in order that the enemy might have no shelter to aid their advance. The order to raze homes, surrendering without compensation the fruits of their years of toil, was perhaps the first thing that brought Frenchmen of the younger generations a realization of all that war and martial law means… But there was little complaint and lamentation heard as the result of the destruction of the suburbs. Save for the tears of some old women, weeping for the loss of their homes, … there was no protest… It is the youth … who are learning new things now.At first, the war was more or less of a frolic, intermixed with bitter denunciations of Germany… Then came the shortage of money… And then came martial law. Its rigid provisions convinced even the most buoyant and volatile that war was real, that in its dire effects, it touched the whole people, women and children as well as fighting men… These fortifications of Paris … are receiving careful attention… [They] consist of three distinct circles sweeping around the city. First, the solid wall of masonry, 18 feet high, extending for 22 miles around the old section of Paris; second, the system of seventeen detached forts, arranged at intervals, 2 miles beyond the wall and making a circuit of the city 34 miles long; and third, an outer girdle of forts, 75 miles long, on the heights commanding the valley of the Seine… The magnitude of the system is shown by its area, which exceeds 400 square miles…
15. “WAR ZONE GEOGRAPHY,” San Francisco Examiner, 16 September 1914, p.18. Paris to Chalons-sur-Marne. The country over which the contending armies have been fighting to the east of Paris is full of interest. Eight miles out is the town of La Raincy built in the park of the chateau which belonged to the Orleans family and was pillaged in 1848… Eleven miles out of Paris, at Chelles, was the village of the Merovingian kings… The town was celebrated for its abbey, destroyed after 1790… Seventeen miles – 15 –
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out of Paris is the town of Lagny, with a population of about 6,000. Here is found the early Gothic church of St. Pierre… Twentyeight miles from Paris is Meaux, with a population of 15,000, which carries on an active trade in grain and brie cheese. The cathedral of St. Etienne is a Gothic edifice begun in the twelfth century, Map 1.1 Paris-Château-Thierry-Châlonswhose south tower is still unfinVerdun ished. Thirteen miles farther up the Marne is Ferté-sous-Jouarre, a small town famous for its millstone quarries… Eighteen miles farther east is Chateau Thierry, famous for its manufacture of mathematical and wind instruments.The castle here is said to have been built by Charles Martel.10 At this point begin the beautiful vineyards of Champagne. Eighty-eight miles out of Paris is the town of Epernay, the center of the champagne trade… Chalons to Verdun.The country lying between Chalons-sur Marne and Verdun, which is now being fought over by the allies and the Germans, is full of interest. Eleven miles north of Chalons is St. Hillaire-auTemple, the junction point between Rheims and Verdun. [Six] miles farther on … is a great circular intrenchment known as Atilla’s camp. It was near here that Atilla, the Hun, was defeated in the [5th century] battle of Chalons.Thirty-three miles beyond Chalons is the town of Valmy, where the allies under the Duke of Brunswick were defeated by the French in 1792… A pyramid on the battlefield contains the heart of Kellermann, one of the French generals in that battle. Beyond this place lies the picturesque country which contains the famous forest of Argonne, well known from the campaign of 1792.After passing through this forest Verdun is reached, 174 miles from Paris.
10. An early 8th century French ruler. – 16 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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16. “FRANCE, PREPARED, IS FIGHTING FOR LIFE AS A NATION,” New York Times, 20 September 1914, iv, p.2. Frederick R. Coudert, just home from Paris, … is counsel for the American embassy in France… France, says Mr. Coudert, was ready for war.The whole nation has gone into this conflict with absolute calm, almost, indeed, with absolute silence. Its army is well disciplined and perfectly organized… Its people go about their wartime occupation with quiet thought and sober cheerfulness… [Speaking of the mobilization, Coudert said] “This became immediately a new and different nation. It was marvellous to see the change overnight. In the days preceding the proclamation, there was tenseness everywhere. No one knew just what was going to happen. There were signs of excitement. But with the moment of the posting of the proclamation itself there came a sense of relief, and calm fell upon France. “From that moment—5 in the afternoon of Aug.1—order reigned. I am not speaking figuratively when I say that the French received the call in silence.The Americans talked.The foreigners were excited.There was absolutely no excitement among the French. “One had the feeling of their calmness and readiness. Nothing in my life has ever impressed me so much as the order and quiet efficiency with which France received the call to arms… “Again and again I asked the soldiers and peasants what they thought of it all. And again and again I was told the same thing—that it was the “life of the nation”.That was the phrase they used—always the same.They added, invariably, that they were fighting the battles of justice, and that the cause of France was the cause of civilization. But in summing up their own attitude toward the war, they never failed—not one of them—to tell me that they were defending their nation’s existence… “I talked with some of the soldiers on the night that the German Army seemed almost about to attack Paris.The Germans were [less than 25 miles from Paris] at Pontoise. There were no lights allowed on the Champs Elysées that night, for fear of bombs. I groped my way home in the darkness. And even then I found the same calm determination, the same firm hope.There was no cocksureness, but there was a calm cheer. I shall never forget it…” – 17 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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17. “FRANCE SETTLES DOWN TO STRIFE IN DEAD EARNEST,” by Henry J. Reilly, Chicago Tribune, 7 October 1914, p.2. Paris. Sept.20. Arriving at Marseilles, … I found the city stirred by military events and crowded with military men.The talk was nothing but the war… The city was full of Belgian refugees and wounded French sent down there to be got out of the way… The most noticeable thing about the French people in Marseilles was how sober they all seemed by comparison with their usual attitude in peace. Everywhere in France the seriousness with which the people take the war is striking.There is no wild talk; there is no café fighting enthusiasm… Everyone is quiet and anxious to perform any service his or her country may demand… The train from Marseilles to Paris … was made up of crowded coaches. Not only were all the seats taken but the passageways were crowded also… There were no sleepers nor dining cars and no certainty of being able to get food at the stations… From Marseilles to the point somewhat south of Lyons where it became too dark to see, the country looked beautiful.The harvest seemed to have been gathered everywhere. At all the bridges and culverts were guards made up of the older men of the territorial army.All were armed. Many had complete uniforms, but most had to content themselves with the infantry cap… As Paris was approached the number of wounded in the stations increased. At all the more important stations they had beds placed in the waiting rooms and staffs of doctors and nurses.They also had hot beef tea and mutton broth waiting… The Gare de Lyon reached, everybody got off the train with his baggage as best he could. Paris, as is proper, is taking the war seriously.With the exception of a few cinematograph halls all places of amusement are closed. All cafés close at 9:30 promptly. The street railways stop running early in the evening. The race-courses at Longchamps and Auteuil have been turned into huge cattle and sheep ranches… Nearly all the hotels, especially the big ones, have been closed. Many of them have been turned into hospitals. More than 40 per cent of the regular population of Paris has left, so that many houses are vacant and shut up. – 18 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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Except along the Grands boulevards the street traffic amounts to almost nothing… By ten o’clock at night the streets are deserted, except for the police and an occasional newspaperman going to the telegraph office to send such scraps as the vigilance of the censor … may have permitted him to gather. The only other signs of life are the searchlights busily sweeping the heavens looking for German airships.
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18. “PARIS GAY GARB GONE. FRENCH WOMEN ALL BUSY,” Washington Post, 12 October 1914, p.4. This is the time when, generally, gay crowds of elegant French women invade the dressmaking establishments and the milliners’ stores. But how different this year is the aspect of the shopping center in the Rue de la Paix and other not quite so select but just as popular districts! The fair shoppers are many.The women are there. But they are not gay any more… You can read this is in the women’s eyes. Follow them into one of the big stores.You see at once that the new creations … have lost their attraction.The women are buying indispensable winter garments… What they are discussing so earnestly is … the most practical shape to give to sweaters, socks, mufflers, and other underwear that they are themselves making for the soldiers… Their delicate hands … are now expertly feeling whether wools and flannels are soft and warm enough, and the needles are of the right size for making the warm clothes that will preserve the efficiency of [the] men in the field, and save them from the cold of the coming winter. When they have found what seems most suitable they go home contentedly, carrying their own parcels, for no delay is allowed.They are better pleased with the prospect of having soon another pair of comfortable socks knitted, than ever they were with the wonderful gown that was to give an evening’s success. So everywhere hands are busy… During the long watches of the night beside the wounded, in street cars and trains, behind counters in stores and market places waiting for customers, in the living room at home while in the evening the children prepare their lessons, needles and crochet pins are flying. Even little girls use them deftly, abandoning their dolls. – 19 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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And every day, thanks to private enterprise and with the help of the newspapers, whose proprietors provide automobiles, thousands of packages containing warm blankets, sweaters, a muffler, two pairs of socks and a change of flannel underwear, with a little tobacco, are being carried to the front bringing to [the] soldiers in the trenches comfort and health, with the thoughts and love of the women of France.
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19. “ALL PARISIENNES KNITTING,” New York Times, 13 October 1914, p.4. Of all Parisian metamorphoses brought about by the war no greater change is noticeable than that which has occurred in the last few days in the city’s most beautiful throroughfare, the Avenue des Champs Elysées. While khaki has taken the place of silks and satins at Maxim’s, that restaurant now being patronized by officers of the headquarters staff instead of by chorus girls, and while the Montmartre resorts have long since closed, such changes were to be expected when the entire nation shouldered arms. But the change in the Champs Elysées was slower, more indefinite, subtle, and surprising. This street, where the fashionable set were rivals in glorious display, continues to be the parade ground of the city. But instead of a procession of motors [automobiles] containing dainty Parisiennes wrapped in costly furs and moving slowly, so that the world might envy and admire, there is now another but swift procession of motor vehicles.They fly two kinds of flags—one the pennant of the service militaire, the other the Red Cross… At first the fashionable folk still occupied chairs under the trees lining the walks, always in beautiful toilets—last year’s styles not nearly worn out. But … one can now see them in scores sitting under the trees busily bending over their hands, for they are knitting. All feminine Paris is knitting, from the Champs Elysées through the big department stores, where half the clerks are thus employed, to the heights of the workmen’s quarter in Belleville. Shirts, socks, and mufflers are being prepared for the soldiers in the trenches. All the output when delivered at headquarters is promised to be delivered within the next twenty-four hours. – 20 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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20. “PARIS QUIET AS POPULATION WAITS…,” Christian Science Monitor, 21 October 1914, p.3. Paris, France.There is little to note in Paris at the present moment. All is very quiet—the quiet of waiting.There was a great exodus when the Germans were so near, but now some are coming back; most of the houses, however, are shut up and nearly all the shops are closed and bear the sign upon the shutters, “Appelés sous les drapeaux”;11 and if the shops bear a name that is not French, especially if it be German or Austrian, they hang out French flags and show a tricolor strip of paper with the words “Maison française” [French establishment] on it.These precautions were taken after the first few days of mobilization when the mob began destroying all the German houses it came upon.Then martial law was proclaimed, and since then order has reigned. Buildings are constantly being fitted out as hospitals, [as are] many of the great hotels, including the Meurice, Elysée Palace, Majestic, Astoria, the new Claridges in the Champs Elyseés, part of the Louvre store, as well as all the schools… Fruit and vegetables continue to be plentiful and cheap, even strawberries and raspberries are still to be had, and an abundance of pears, peaches and grapes. News is very scarce, the briefest communiqués are received, and the news that a place has fallen is received about a week or two after it has happened, but of course the news is often brought in by the refugees. The neighborhood of the Place de l’Etoile and the Eiffel tower is still in darkness, no lights being allowed.The French aeroplanes continue to fly daily round and over Paris to watch for German Taubes or Zeppelins, as many as four at one time being seen occasionally.
21. “WOMEN SPIES SHOT; A TERRIBLE TASK,” Toronto Globe, 24 October 1914, p.1. North France. No list or even figures are officially discussed, but the shooting of batches of spies takes place daily in this and other towns of the 11. “Called to service,” [literally,“to the flag”] – 21 –
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district, and in these last three days there have been nearly as many women shot as men. It is most hard for the veteran who loathes the task of shooting women but, according to the laws of war, it must be done.They are lined up with men, often young girls or women of refinement, at the zenith of their charm and beauty; and so, according to their lights, they give their lives for their country, and meet their death as bravely as any man. So many spies have been caught in France recently that the possession of papers, apparently in good order, avails a man or woman nothing, once an accusation has been made or a suspicion levelled. It is claimed that no German tongue can ever pronounce certain French words without betraying their Teuton origin. It is failure to pass tests of this kind which condemn.The papers may have been stolen and the signature on the passport learned so that the holder can produce a passable imitation of it at will. Spies even have been caught with their own photographs superimposed upon others on the passports and the official stamp on the photograph counterfeited. I saw a woman challenged in the street yesterday, seized and hauled to the gendarmerie. She was well dressed, and the last type the ordinary home-staying British people would suspect of espionage, apparently a prosperous widow of about thirty, leading a little boy by the hand; but I have heard since that it was a clear case. She had evaded the war regulations of the local authorities, that strangers must not remain more than twenty-four hours in any town in this part of France without reporting personally to the police, by changing her lodgings literally every day of the week. Her plan apparently was to take a Folkestone boat as soon as she was ready.12
22. “PARIS MOURNING; AND WHAT A PARIS!,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 16 November 1914, p.2. Paris. Oct.23 … Have you turned away your eyes, caught with the embarrassment of Anglo-Saxon reserve to have looked on a friend who was suffering with grief? Have you noticed the looks in the eyes of the women, 12. An anticipated Channel crossing from the Calais area of France to the British port of Folkestone. – 22 –
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dark with sorrow? That is Paris—one vast Calvary. Everywhere is black. Everywhere are pale faces that tell of sleepless nights. Everywhere are eyes, dark circled, that burn with spent tears… O you people at home, who read the morning paper in a hurried rush between breakfast and the office, … how deeply has it penetrated into your heart … that every family in France goes daily to its Gethsemane; that every morning hearts beat wildly at the ring of a doorbell—it might be a telegram; that every evening a mother is trying to be loyal to her country though she has that moment learned that her 20 year old son lies unburied on a Belgian battlefield…? This is a million times greater than the Titanic… There is no one who escapes. Every old man and every woman and every little babe is going to lose one of the things that we all hold dearest—friends and family. Every man is seeing his friend perish and knows that in the distance a brother is dying…
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23. “LES PARENTS À LA GUERRE,” by René Bazin of the Académie Française, Le Devoir, 19 November 1914, p.5.13 We also do our war service, we the parents, we with children at the front— those to whom we have devoted so much effort, time, hope and fear. Our blood is at risk, something we are reminded of every day, like our daily bread that is bitter and sweet.They are where they should be, and we, left behind, keep their memory alive.I speak of families where there are no dodgers.They are the ones who have said their goodbyes without tears, or rather without too many tears, goodbyes to the early ones called to the colors; and they were proud—a pride mixed with real pain—when their youngest, the youngest son, the youngest brother, or nephew, returned from the recruiting office: “I’ve enlisted! It wasn’t easy, but they took me!”“When do you leave?”“The day after tomorrow.”And those present looked at each other and the new soldier, and what they felt most was a sense of family honor, a sense that their young man now belonged to an elite, and that France was grateful to them. 13. René Bazin (1853-1952) was a popular novelist whose works typically combined sentimentality and patriotism. – 23 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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And then silence descended, people drawing into themselves, until the evening meal, when they saw the missing place, or two, or three; and every time they enter the dining room that is what they see every day. The mother turns to letter writing, putting aside her customary visits and conversations with friends and neighbors, and becoming like a single cell set on one objective.What of worldly celebrations? Idle promenades in the city, the theater? … What of the preoccupation with luxury and selfindulgence? What even of thoughts about the future? Only one thing remains, a dream, and one direction, the frontier of France! That is where we are, and have been for the past two and half months, growing and shrinking with it, trembling on its behalf, looking for any news—from the press, from officers, from the wounded, from the letters which arrive so slowly… I will not tell you more than I myself feel; and I will not lie to you. At night, when I retire, my thoughts seek in the shadows my loved ones and their comrades.Where are they? Asleep in their overcoats on rough soil, in a trench, … in a roofless stable somewhere on a pile of hay…? I also worry about them at daybreak. I think of the fog, the sunshine, the rain, and I give to our children over there the weather I have in Paris. Do you recall the heat last August? Since then we have had some bad storms, and in early October cool early morning hours which gave way to delightfully bright days and then to nights lit by a full moon. Now the weather is colder, it’s starting to freeze, and we are lighting the fire.What new worries are upon us? And the ever present question: when will our own offensive begin? Where and when will the Germans be pushed out of France? … We are suffering, and we will continue to suffer; we will do again what we have done, and give again what we have given—which is to say “Them,” our children.Which is to say, Ourselves… Fathers and Mothers to whom I write, do not be embarrassed by your anxieties, or by the pain you feel when you dream of seeing your child again. Let us try to contain our emotions and our tears, and struggle for self control. I try to do so myself, not always successfully… Whatever your condition, however poor and uneducated you may be, you are among the nobility, and your reward will be found in the greatness of our race…
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24. “THE SADDEST DAY FRANCE EVER HAD,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 22 November 1914, ii, p.5. Paris. Nov.1. Today has been the saddest day of my life. I have thought these many weeks past that I had seen the accumulation of sorrow, that no more external suffering could bring me more pain than I have already experienced in watching these men and women of France. But today! Today it seemed as if all the suffering and all the grief, all the sorrow and heartaches and tenderness and thwarted motherhood, all the wistful courage and trusting faith of the world was in the cemeteries of Paris. It was All Saints’ day.A day set apart piously each year by Parisians to go to the graves of their dead… But this year instead of the little children going to put flowers on the tomb of the grandmother they have almost forgotten, it was the old men and the old women who came to put flowers on the graves of the young. O, if I could only make you see it! Thousands and thousands and thousands of men and women, their arms filled with flowers, their faces grave, their steps slow, their voices hushed, moving about the vast cemeteries, banking flowers by the little black crosses and kneeling on the flower covered mounds in desperate prayer. It seemed to me that they prayed for faith—the faith to still believe. But no tears—almost none. Under their long black veils the widows’ eyes were dry… They moved in silent crowds through the narrow alleys—bending to read the few words on the black wooden crosses—“Twenty-two years old—thirty years old—nineteen years old.” Two soldiers of the Twenty-ninth regiment, their arms in slings and one limping badly, held little awkwardly tied bunches of asters in their hands.They went down the narrow lines until they came to a grave at the end of an avenue.They placed the flowers man-fashion upright against the cross, and giving a stiff military salute turned away. “A comrade of arms, messieurs?” asked an old man with a medal of the Franco-Prussian war pinned on his coat. “Oui, monsieur, a comrade—and more—our brother.The littlest one.”
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Separated only by a narrow trench from the French and the Belgian and the English soldiers is a line of double crosses—simple black ones like the French. And under them lie the German soldiers who have died in our hospitals. And tender, gracious, forgiving women have covered their graves with flowers, too. In death there is no enemy. The early dusk was falling, and already the cemeteries were emptying. Of the 600,000 who this day have left a flower, said a prayer over their dead, only a few were left by the flower banked graves. Night fell and left them there, a few straggling members of Paris’ army, the great army of mourners.
25. “PARIS AGAIN CAPITAL,” Washington Post, 10 December 1914, p.3.
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Paris, Dec.9. President Poincaré and Premier Viviani arrived in Paris today from Bordeaux.14 Foreign Minister Delcassé and members of the diplomatic corps followed them later in the day. The return of President Poincaré to Paris from Bordeaux marks the reestablishment of the seat of French government in that city after an absence of nearly three months.
26. “REGIMENT OF CUT-THROATS FROM WORST PARIS SLUMS PROVE DAUNTLESS…,” Washington Post, 13 December 1914, Magazine, p.8. The French government has recruited an entire regiment of soldiers from the cutthroats and criminals of the worst slums of Paris. Some surprise has been expressed at the absence during this time of war and civic disorganization of the daring crimes for which Paris has been notorious. The explanation is out now. All the criminals are away fighting with the army, and fighting bravely, too. They consist mainly of the class of Parisian desperadoes known as “Apaches,” and partly of anar14. A month later, on 8 January 1915, the premier and his wife received official confirmation of the death of their youngest son, Jean, age 21, a non-commissioned officer with the 131st infantry regiment. – 26 –
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chists. It was necessary to organize them into a regiment consisting exclusively of their own class, because ordinary respectable soldiers would have objected to their company.As colonel they have a marquis of historic family, who fell into criminal ways through dissipation and extravagance. The problem of dealing with the numerous criminals of Paris became a serious one for the government at the outbreak of the war.After due consideration the government instructed the police to round up the chief criminals and suspects of military age and give them the choice of serving in the army or going to prison.All the criminals not only volunteered eagerly to serve, but offered to assist in raising one or more regiments among their friends. Psychologists say that many criminals are men of fine qualities, who have been forced to become enemies of society because civilized life has not given them the opportunities for daring adventure and physical activity that their impulsive natures demanded.The experience of the Apache regiment seems to confirm this. They have shown amazing daring, bravery, endurance, and resourcefulness.What is still more remarkable, they have shown very good conduct as soldiers.They have been obedient to discipline and have refrained from pillage and other acts forbidden to good soldiers… When it comes to lying out in the rain-filled, shot-stormed trenches day and night without food, there are no soldiers who stand the ordeal as cheerfully as the Apaches…
27. “THE GREATEST SCULPTOR OF OUR TIME … GIVES TWENTY OF HIS FINEST WORKS TO ENGLAND…,” Washington Post, 6 December 1914, Magazine, p.8. The amazing spirit of patriotism that inspires France in the present conflict has been strikingly illustrated by the great French sculptor,Auguste Rodin. He has presented to the British nation twenty of his finest pieces of sculpture as a mark of his gratitude for the help that England has given to France. This splendid collection of statuary is estimated to be worth in marble, bronze, material, and workmanship alone about $200,000.When the labor of the artist, the most distinguished sculptor of the day, is added, their value reaches an enormous figure… – 27 –
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In presenting the collection to the British, Rodin said:“The English and French are brothers.Your soldiers are fighting side by side with ours. As a little token of my admiration for your heroes I decided to present the collection to England…” The Rodin statues are in the South Kensington Museum in London. They represent all the principal periods of the artist’s long life. Among them are two of his largest works, “The Burghers of Calais” and “The Thinker”… “The Burghers of Calais” is a peculiarly interesting work to give to England at this time. It recalls the fact that England and France were long at war, but have now become friends… History tells us that the English King Edward III besieged Calais and was infuriated by the long resistance of the town… This savage king said that he would burn the whole place down and kill men, women, and children unless they sent to him their six richest citizens bearing the keys of the city and having ropes round their necks with which they were to be hanged. The six citizens heroically offered themselves for the sacrifice and went out dressed only in sacks with ropes round their necks. Then, says the story, the English queen, touched with pity, went down on her knees and begged the king to spare them, which he did… Many people have been shocked by Rodin’s tendency to depict the horrible as in the figures of the starving “Burghers of Calais” or the extraordinary exhibition of female wretchedness in “The Old Courtesan”.To this Rodin replies: “There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.When an artist, trying to improve nature, softens the grimace of pain, the shapelessness of age, the hideousness of perversion, when he arranges nature—veiling, disguising, tempering it to please the ignorant public—then he is creating ugliness because he fears the truth.”
28. “SONGS THEY SING IN PARIS WHILE THE GREAT WAR RAGES,” New York Times, 13 December 1914, vi, p.5. Paris has the habit of indulging itself in the “chanson d’actualité,” a song of the streets written to fit a particular occasion or event, and sold along – 28 –
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the boulevards for a few cents. Any topic that excites general popular interest among the Parisians serves as the inspiration for these songs… It might be expected, therefore, that an event like the European war … would bring an avalanche of these street ballads. Hundreds of them have been written, sold and sung… They shed an interesting light on one phase of France’s war psychology. Coming as directly as they do from the people, … they go a long way to showing what the Frenchman of the rank and file is thinking about his army and his enemies, and how his nature reveals itself under stern conditions. In keeping with the almost extemporaneous nature of these ballads, they are totally lacking in literary quality. For the most part they are doggerel, put together to express a patriotic or derisive sentiment as it will best go adapted to some well-known air. They are also full of the latest Parisian slang and hopeless abbreviations, so that the task of him who would attempt to render them metrically into English would be thankless. The street ballads are published on sheets of paper about eleven inches long, folded once, with the printing and music, when the latter is given, on the outside pages. Sometimes the paper is colored, but always it is of cheap, flimsy quality. Some of the more elaborate ones have on the cover page a rude cartoon advertising the particular degree of Prussian hatred in the contents… One can see groups of the ballad sellers about the streets at almost any time… From some corner will come the sound of a voice raised in song. Sometimes the voice is unaccompanied, at other times there is the strumming of a guitar, or perhaps the reedy notes of a barrel organ which happens to contain in its répertoire the popular tune to which the words of some new ballad have been fitted. A crowd forms about the singer. Generally the singer is a man … but sometimes it is a girl who has been selected as the artist by her associates who assist in gathering the crowd and helping things along in the ways best known to the craft of street hawkers. Occasionally it is an old woman, who sings in quavering voice into which she puts the fervor born of the sentiments expressed. Sometimes, even, it is a child. The crowd listens intently.Then some particularly telling point will be made against the Germans, and a wave of approbation will sweep through the crowd… In the meantime those who sell the ballads move through the crowd, and at a sign of general favor they thrust their leaflets – 29 –
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into the faces of the auditors, … roaring the line that has caught the popular fancy. Money changes hands rapidly. Then the singer gets up on a box, perhaps, and chants the refrain, beating his hands in time, and soon everybody is singing… The singers move on to the nearest café, attended by most of the patrons they have gathered. Soon somebody is standing on a chair singing the words of the song, while the sellers move about among the tables, and before long the café patrons are united with Parisian fervor in singing the ballad. If it contains some particularly stinging insult to Emperor William or his forces, woe unto the glassware of the establishment…! Outside the songs which are purely patriotic and laud the deeds of the French soldiers and the allies, the keynote of most of the ballads seems to be either the défi [insult] direct or the défi derisive to Emperor William… Apparently the Parisians of the boulevards took much to heart his rumoured boast that he would eat dinner in Paris shortly after the war started… If he still thinks of coming, say the ballads, he will find the principal item in his bill of fare—pruneaux (prunes)—by which they mean bullets. In the case of the derisive songs, a few of the titles will suggest the general trend of their sentiment. Among them are “William Never Thought,” “The Embarrassments of William II,” “Jump, William,” “The Intimate Thoughts of William,” and “The Crowned Bandit…” When we come to the patriotic and sentimental ballads, we find purer French but hardly less naïveté. In these songs the French fighting man is called “p’tit plouplou,” a slang term that corresponds somewhat to the English personification of “Tommy” in its use.They are also referred to often as “our little soldiers” and, although descriptive adjectives like “glorious” and “conquering” are not wanting, there is at the same time a psychological significance in the familarity of these diminutives that are affectionately employed. Some of the titles in this class of ballads are “Weep Not,Women of France,”“The Last Dream of the Plouplou,”“Thy Life for France” [and] “The March of the Little Soldiers…”
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1915 January
French prohibit sale of alcohol French retreat back across river Aisne
March
Battle of Neuve-Chapelle French gains near Arras
April-May
2nd Battle of Ypres; German gas attacks More French gains near Arras Zeppelin night attacks on Paris
September
Anglo-French financial commission to New York Allied gains and losses in Champagne
October
German offensives repulsed French advances near Arras Formation of Briand Cabinet
November
Successful German counter-offensives French class of 1917 to be called in Spring 1916
December
German gains in Champagne War costing France $420,000,000 a month Paris Opera reopens
29. “PARIS AFTER THE WAR STORM,” Letter to the Editor by C.K. Austin, M.D., New York Times, 7 February 1915, iii, p.2. Paris. In spite of the unpleasant material fact that the enemy’s lines are still not over fifty miles from Paris at one point and that they hold fully ten – 31 –
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French departments in a grip of iron, … the Government is displaying a degree of freedom and confidence in its actions that indicates it must be in possession of favorable imformation to which the public has not yet access. Not only have the President and the various departments moved back to Paris and resumed work at the usual Ministries, but a variety of changes have been introduced into the citizens’ routine life here for which the latter have not been slow to show their appreciation. The Government’s return took place without any bustle whatever— scarcely a mention in the newspapers. Their departure had, it will be remembered, given rise to a certain amount of lukewarm comment… Nothing could have looked more ominous than the general situation in the first days of September.The Germans could have entered Paris at any moment they chose to, and it would have been absolute folly for the Ministers to remain in Paris… But since about the first of the year the [official] demeanor has been one of complete confidence as to the outcome of the present European conflict… Railroads only just behind the line of hostilities are being put in order, temporary bridges erected, and fast expresses to the east and south started running again; … money has been apportioned to the rebuilding of dwellings and farms, as well as to enable the peasants to effect a start toward the crops that will be so much needed in the Summer and Autumn; and in Paris quite a number of regulations of the stateof-siege have been rescinded. It is now possible to converse over the telephone from house to house in town in English, without committing high treason; a first step has been taken toward the reintroduction of a higher class of bread; the huge flashlights are extinguished that for five months without interruption peered up into the starry black of heaven to spot the sneaking and dastardly Zeppelins, whose arrival was so loudly trumpeted, but that never showed up… It is now a secret to no one that when the storm first burst, the real defenses of Paris were in such a state of unpreparedness that at one moment the course was under consideration of abandoning all idea of defense and declaring the capital an open city; this idea, however, was not adopted and an attempt was made to get the fortifications into some kind of shape… To our utter amazement we saw the entries to Paris [for instance, the Porte Dauphine] taken possession of by gangs of sturdy workmen who, in a few days, turned them into exact reproductions of the – 32 –
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types of earthwork defenses in use in the days of muzzle-loaders; a stockade of 3-inch planks was erected, with loopholes at regular intervals; beyond that a shallow fossé [ditch] with redoubt, heavy chains and chevaux-de-frise [iron spikes set in timber]; and still further forward, a line of fallen trees interwoven with barbed wire and with limbs directed toward the approaching foe and hacked to sharp points… The theatres have … opened up, in a certain sense, as also the concerts, and restaurant hours have been lengthened a little. But the theatres are severely hampered, in a variety of ways. To begin with, many of the actors are off on military duty, naturally… Again, the theatres have had to take into account the heavy price and relative scarcity of coal—all supplies from the usual sources, Belgium and the North of France, being, of course, interrupted for the while. Also, … the entire omnibus system of Paris had been transformed into motor traction …; every one of these motors was whisked off at once to the army… The way in which this affects the theatregoer is that when the play lets out he has no way to get home! The underground is running, but stops at 10 o’clock, I believe, whereas the Paris theatre is seldom over before midnight…
30. “A DRAMATIC SCENE … AT OPERA COMIQUE,” by Wythe Williams, New York Times, 14 February 1915, vi, p.7. I went to the Opéra Comique the other day to hear Marthe Chenal sing the “Marseillaise.”1 For several weeks previous I had heard a story … that if one wanted a regular thrill he should really go … on a day when Mlle Chenal closed the performance… I was rather skeptical… I had already heard the “Marseillaise” sung under the best possible circumstances to produce thrills. One of the first nights after mobilization 10,000 Frenchmen filled the streets beneath the windows of The New York Times office, where I was at work.They sang the “Marseillaise” for two hours… 1. The Opéra-Comique of Paris, which combines spoken dialogue and music, had its origins in the early 18th century. It moved into the Salle Favart on the boulevard des Italiens at the end of that century. – 33 –
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Then one day a sedate friend went to the Opéra Comique and came away in a raving condition… This induced me to go. I never want to go again… I want always to remember that ten minutes while Chenal was on the stage just as I remember it now. So I will not go again. The first part of the perfomance was Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment,” beautifully sung by members of the regular company. But somehow the spectacle of a fat soprano nearing forty in the role of the twelve-year-old vivandière,2 although impressive, was not sublime. A third of the audience were soldiers. In the front row of the top balcony were a number of wounded.Their bandaged heads rested against the rail. Several of them yawned… After the intermission there was not even available standing space. The majority of the women were in black—the prevailing color in these days.The only touches of brightness and light were in the uniforms of the officers liberally sprinkled through the orchestra and boxes. Then came the “Le Chant du Départ,” the famous song of the revolution.The scene was a little country village.The principals were the officer, the soldier, the wife, the mother, the daughter, and the drummer-boy. There was a magnificent soldier chorus and the fanfare of drums and trumpets. The audience then became honestly enthusiastic. I concluded that the best Chenal could do with the “Marseillaise,” which was next on the programme, would be an anti-climax. Thr orchestra played the opening bars of the martial music.With the first notes the vast audience rose… Then the curtain lifted. I do not remember what was the stage setting. I do not believe I saw it.All I remember was Chenal standing at the top of a short flight of steps, in the centre near the back drop. I indistinctly remember that the rest of the stage was filled with the soldier chorus and that near the footlights on either side were clusters of little children… Chenal swept down to the footlights. The words of the song swept over the audience like a bugle call. The singer wore a white silk gown draped in perfect Grecian folds. She wore the large black Alsatian head dress, in one corner of which was pinned a small tri-colored cockade. She has often been called the most beautiful woman in Paris.The description 2. A private provisioner attached to an army regiment. – 34 –
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was too limited.With the next lines she threw her arms apart, drawing out the folds of the gown into the tricolor of France—heavy folds of red silk draped over one arm and blue over the other. Her head was thrown back. Her tall, slender figure simply vibrated with the feeling of the words that poured forth from her lips. She was noble. She was glorious. She was sublime.With the “March on, March on” of the chorus, her voice arose high and fine over the full orchestra… I looked up at the row of wounded. One man held his bandaged head between his hands and was crying. An officer in a box, wearing the gorgeous uniform of the headquarters staff, held a handkerchief over his eyes. Through the second verse the audience alternately cheered and stamped their feet and wept.Then came the wonderful “Amour sacré de la patrie”—sacred love of home and country—verse.The crashing of the orchestra ceased, dying away to a whisper. Chenal drew the folds of the tricolor cloak about her.Then she bent her head and, drawing the flag to her lips, kissed it reverently… At the very end [she] drew a short jeweled sword from the folds of the gown and stood silent and superb … while the curtain rang slowly down… And as I came out of the theatre with the silent audience I said to myself that a nation with a song and a patriotism such as I had just witnessed could not vanish from the earth—nor again be vanquished.
31. “FRENCH CIVILIANS RECOUNT HORRORS,” New York Times, 5 April 1915, p.3. The second report of the French Commission appointed last September to investigate the treatment of French citizens and the violations of their rights by the Germans has just reached [New York].The report, addressed to the French Council of Ministers, was submitted on March 11, and is in part as follows … : About ten thousand of our compatriots [from the Departments of Isère, Savoie, and Haute-Savoie] were sent back to France previous to Feb.28.They were women, children, youths of under 17, and old men over 60… We saw a large number and interrogated nearly three hundred of them, after having put them under oath to tell nothing but the truth… Some persons were arrested under the false pretext that their fellow-citizens had fired upon – 35 –
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the German troops; others were apprehended without any explanation, along the roads, in the fields, or in their homes… What is particularly revolting is that the German military authorities … had no scruples in separating members of a family, and sending them to different camps.Young children were sent in one convoy, their mothers in another, and women are still unaware of their husbands’ whereabouts. All the prisoners were at first forced to make a long and more or less painful journey on foot… Then they were made to get into cattle cars to be transferred into Germany. During this journey, in general, they received no food… If the civil prisoners had many privations and sufferings to bear during their transference, they had scarcely less in the concentration places in which they were interned in Germany.They were usually lodged in … bare sheds on pine boards, covered with varnished cardboard. At Gustrow some of them were piled into tents, resembling store rooms, having neither light nor heat, and where the greater number slept on straw laid directly on the earth…
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Food was about alike, everywhere. It was composed of a decoction of barley, without sugar, for breakfast; at noon a portion of rice or macaroni, or turnips, sometimes of hard sauerkraut, and less often, potatoes mashed in their skins, or chestnuts. In the evening sometimes a kind of farinacious soup, sometimes vegetables, or oatmeal, sometimes a herring, generally spoiled, or a little very bad cheese… In some of the camps they did not make the prisoners work; in others, on the contrary, they were forced to more or less painful labor.At Altengrabow they were set to building roads and to work in the fields, or they were put at the disposition of contractors, who paid them nothing for their services… At Wahn they manoeuvred the rollers for breaking stones.When they could no longer work they were deprived of the mass. At Parchim some were set to work at making straw mats and braids; others unloaded cars and dragged wagons by means of a rope, to which twenty-four men or thereabouts were harnessed… In several camps, notably at Gardelegen, and at Altengrabow, the prisoners were subjected to great cruelty. At Holzminden, a young man, almost dying of hunger, and asking for food, was instantly beaten by a guard, then put into a cell for six hours.At Darmstadt, there was a Corporal … [who] was seen to strike a prisoner on the head with his sabre because the prisoner had not saluted him. We saw numerous young men, in whom gayety seemed dead, and whose emaciated and pale visages disclosed the physical damage which already, perhaps, is irremediable… Nor were we less deeply moved on seeing women weep at their deserted firesides, their husbands, their children, disappeared, or still detained in captivity… Our impressions have exaggerated nothing, – 36 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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and yet we visited our repatriated citizens at a time when their undermined health had already become somewhat re-established upon the benificent soil of France…
32. “FRENCH ARMY IS GAINING…,” by Gabriel Alphaud, General Secretary of Le Temps, in New York Times, 18 April 1915, v, p.9.
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… The Financial Resources of France. In the present war, what is the situation in France? … The war costs France about 1,300,000,000 francs per month… Where and how does France find the necessary money for facing this expense? For the most part in the “woolen sock” of the French Nation. At the beginning of the war the French had not been educated to their duty. In the eyes of the peasant, of the workman, of every thrifty merchant, of every honest and shrewd father of a family, … war is the greatest of catastrophes. On Aug.2, 1914, this catastrophe befell them; everybody immediately hid his gold and silver. Some concealed it in their cellars, others in some corner of their gardens.They did this with all the more reason on account of three phemonena occurring in France… 1. In the Government savings banks depositors cannot withdraw … the deposits intrusted by them to the Government. 2. In private institutions, such as the Crédit Lyonnais, the Comptoir d’Escompte, etc., depositors also cannot withdraw … their deposits. 3. The Government issues paper money in denominations of 20, 10, and 5 francs in order to offset the disappearance of gold and silver and prevent disturbance of normal life. But this paper money … recalls to the peasant the famous “assignats” of the French revolution, a hundred years ago… Given this state of mind, the French Government cannot [raise] … the quantity of Treasury and National Defense Bonds necessary to meet all expenses, and therefore must turn to foreign countries… But one month later, in November, there was a most fortunate change in the mind of the French peasant.The battle of the Marne … is – 37 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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beginning to have its deserved effect on French opinion. The French peasant knows not only that the French army won on the Marne, but that that army is so organized that the Germans can never reach Paris nor acquire one more inch of territory… In a word, the French peasant knows that French victory is assured. At the same time, in the rural districts, people are beginning to understand Treasury and National Defense bonds. The peasant has had time to go into town and consult his notary… At the beginning of the war he was quite content to hide his gold and silver … in order to always have it close at hand, but he was also much annoyed because this gold and silver brought him in nothing. Now,Treasury and National Defense bonds bring in good interest… To invest in them is, in his eyes, a doubly good investment, because it means both profit and the sure defeat of Germany… [By] the beginning of March [1915] this “woolen sock” alone had provided more than two billion and a half francs for National Defense bonds.This influx of French gold and silver into the coffers of the Government of the French Republic … is bound to continue…
33. “EVERY FRENCH FAMILY HAS KIN AT FRONT,” by Henry J. Reilly, Chicago Tribune, 2 May 1915, part 2, p.3. The first point, and the most important point of what the war means to the French people, is that it is everybody’s war, without exception… To hear a woman or a child say:“My father, two uncles, my two brothers, and three cousins are in the army” is nothing uncommon… No casualty lists are issued in France. However, any relative of a soldier may, by filling out a blank, which is furnished by the government, make inquiries as to what has become of him.This blank returns, filled out with the information that the soldier was killed in action on a certain date, at a certain place; or that he is in a certain hospital wounded; or that he was last seen at a certain place on a certain date, and probably is a prisoner… Every wife of a soldier who is dependent for her support upon what he earned is allowed 1 franc 25 centimes per day for herself, and 50 centimes per day for every child 16 or under.Widows are entitled to the same allowance for themselves and their children… – 38 –
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The people in the towns just off the battlefield suffer various vicissitudes. In the first place, due to the presence of the army and the absolute necessity of the army to use all means of transportation, particularly the railroads, the ordinary means of communication are entirely upset. While supplies in large quantities can occasionally be gotten by rail, more often the local tradesmen have to drive to some town further to the rear having better communications, in order to make their purchases.This inevitably results in an increase of prices, but seldom a great increase. These towns are always military headquarters of one kind or another. They are also frequently rail heads, and the point from which supply motor trains start for the army. The [main city square] and other public squares and the principal roads leading out of town are the places where these supply motors are parked when not in use. Frequently they are the centers in which are located the evacuation hospitals. This means long strings of ambulances coming and going: either to the battlefield to get the wounded or to the railway station to ship them to the rear. The soldiers and officers who go with these activities are billeted, that is assigned, to different families throughout the town… It generally means no other inconvenience than the giving up of a bedroom to a certain number of officers or soldiers. Frequently it means gain to the family concerned … because there are a good many things which they want and for which they always pay…
34. “… EFFECTS OF THE WAR,” by Baron d’Estournelles de Constant, New York Times, 9 May 1915, p.8. … [T]oday is Sunday.Well, it is simply a usual Sunday [in Paris]… Everybody is in the open air; neatly dressed, the children in their new clothes, … women in mourning, … groups of wounded out for a walk, … soldiers on leave… Some leave the street cars or the subways to inspect the German flags and cannon in the Invalides.3 Others simply watch the Seine, more ani3. One of the most famous 17th-18th century edifices of central Paris, the celebrated location of Napoleon’s tomb. – 39 –
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mated than ever with its multitude of barges aligned four or five deep along the quays, and the constant activity of the little boats which pass each other… Even the boxes of the booksellers scattered along the quays near the Institute4 attract the saunterers as in normal times, as well as the little carts of the flower merchants from the south who offer, as in former years, their bouquets of violets, carnations and mimosas… People are walking up and down the avenue of the Champs Elysées. However, automobiles, which are countless during the week, are not in evidence on Sunday and leave room for strollers. The aeroplanes, which on week days fly in numbers before my window, remain in the hangars today… It is astonishing how marvellously well Paris is cared for… The avenues are sprinkled and swept as ordinarily; what is more, the ground around our shade trees is spaded… Those which are withering are replaced. I ask myself if I am not dreaming! But no, decidedly Paris remains Paris. Many people are in the churches.A holiday is more painful than other days for mothers who see youths about them while they lack knowledge of their own sons, or knowing, weep.The churches are wide open to them; they go there to pray in silence and to meet each other…
35. PARIS TREMBLES. FEARS EPIDEMIC FROM THE DEAD,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 15 May 1915, p.6. Warm weather is arriving, and with it is also arriving a very unpleasant odor when the wind blows from the north. And likewise arrives a stir of anxiety in the breast of every person condemned to stay in Paris during the hot weather. For that sickening, breath taking, terrible odor comes from Compiègne and from Soissons, where there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers barely buried under the earth; where there are parts of others that have never been buried, and which are floating in the still waters of creeks 4. The Institut de France, located on the Quai de Conti, was a creation of the French Revolution. It comprises the Académie Française, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, the Académie des Sciences, and the Académie des Sciences Politiques et Morales. – 40 –
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Map 2.1 Paris-Compiègne-Soissons
and rivers; where there are heaps of bodies still smoldering and burning. And with it comes the fear of pestilence and plague, or death in a thousand vile, creeping forms—not the sudden, brave death of the battlefield… Already typhoid, typhus and spotted fever are common enough to make them feared as warmer weather advances. Notices have been issued by the authorities telling the inhabitants to boil their water as soon as warm weather is really here. And yesterday there was a new injunction posted all over town to be revaccinated…
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36. “NIGHTLY AIR RAIDS KEEP PARIS ON EDGE,” New York Times, 16 May 1915, ii, p.15. One of the most vivid pen pictures of Paris in its state of nightly anxiety and alarms about aerial attacks is contained in a letter from John L. Poole, just received by the Hupp Motor Car Company of Detroit, for which Mr. Poole acts as European agent manager, with headquarters in the French capital. The Zeppelin night attacks are now more frequent than ever. In fact the German raiders are becoming so bold that we are frequently attacked in broad daylight.These air attacks are very dangerous, for in every instance a goodly number of the Paris populace is either killed or wounded. I am not remaining in Paris for amusement or pleasure.That is all past now. The city has taken on a sober and sombre aspect. Nearly a third of the women are in mourning, and sad-faced, droopy-eyed girls, wives, and mothers are to be seen everywhere. It is a pitiful sight, the sorrows that the loved ones at home are suffering. Paris is gay no longer.The cafés and amusement places are deserted and the thoughts of everyone are turned to war. Saturday night, or rather at 1:30 Sunday morning,April 18, we were awakened by the motor fire brigade of our section of the city frantically rushing through the streets blowing on bugles “garde vous!” which means “guard – 41 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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yourself!” This is the signal which is given to the people on the approach of Zeppelins. We got up and dressed and descended to the ground floor, where we convene in the centre lobby of this hotel, the Continental.This big hostelry covers an entire block.All the guests of the hotel were in the lobby, many scantily clad, having arisen and descended from some of the top flights in a great hurry.This did not matter much, however, as all the lights were out and we were in total darkness. Inside of ten minutes after the sound of the first alarm all the street lights in the city were turned out. There was total darkness, except for the huge searchlights that flashed over the heavens in search of the German marauders.About 2 a.m. we could hear the reports of guns firing on the Zeppelins as they passed over the inner city forts… The latest Government report … states that six actually visited Paris that night, while two others reached within twenty miles of the city.
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The nearest point to our hotel where bombs struck was about three-quarters of a mile away.The reports were terrific, for about one-half of a building was blown away… At about 4:30 in the morning the fire brigade returned through the streets blowing bugles to cease firing. We have a Zeppelin raid almost every night. Following this Sunday morning attack, about 9.15 Monday evening we were in our rooms when the first alarm was sounded—by the way no one at all ventures out of doors in the evening except with special permission from the Provost Guard—and again we all rushed to the ground floor of our hotel and remained there until 11 o’clock… Hardly had we returned to our rooms when a second alarm was sounded… As nothing further seemed to develop we [stayed in] our rooms to watch the flash of the many searchlights… I must say that some of the forts carry nearly twenty to twenty-five of these huge searchlights.With an entire ring of forts around the city you can imagine the display this would make in the skies at night…
37. “THE FACE OF PARIS,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 11 July 1915, part 2, p.5. Paris, June 21. I can never forget the poignant impression that Paris has made on me these June days since I descended from the train at the Gare de Lyon. I knew, of course, that the war, which has swept so close to the city last summer and which today, after ten long months, is no more than an hour’s motor ride from the northern gates, must have wrought strange – 42 –
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things in this the most personal of all human cities. I had read of the scarcity of men in the streets, the closed shops, the sight of women and girls performing the ordinary tasks of men, also of the always swelling army of convalescent wounded. But no written word is able to convey the whole meaning of things; one must see with one’s eyes, must feel unconsciously the many details that go to make truth… The little station restaurant was full of men, almost all of them in some sort of uniform, drinking their coffee and glancing at the morning papers. Every body reads the papers—the cabmen as they drive, the passersby hastily walking on some errand—and yet the newspapers give almost no news except the colorless official announcement of a few lines twice a day.The silence of the restaurant seemed strange to me.A gathering of Parisians, as I remembered, is rarely silent, a French restaurant never. But I have perceived that one of the striking aspects of the new France since the war is its taciturnity, its silence… There are plenty of cabs and taxis on the streets now, rather dangerously driven by strangers, ignorant of the ramifications of the great city and the complexities of the combustion engine. There are some tram lines running, with young girls as conductors… Some of the shops are open in the busier quarters, perhaps one of three, fewer in other districts… Most of the women are in black. Almost every one on the streets seems to be wearing some kind of mourning. But their faces are calm and dry eyed; there are no outward signs of grief other than the black clothes… There is little loitering and gazing in at shop windows these days… Paris is the center for innumerable relief agencies that are at work trying to mitigate the misery of war. Many of the larger hotels have been turned into hospitals. Almost every other building seems to be some sort of hospital, and all are full, while the greater part of the wounded are taken through the city at night and distributed among the country hospitals to the south and west and on the seacoast.There are charities for the widows and orphans made by the war, for the women and children left unprovided for by the absence of their men, although there are so many chances for women to earn money these days that this source of poverty must be slight.The most appealing of all these charities is that which looks after the refugees, especially the little children whose homes have been destroyed in Belgium and northern France. These refugee orphans are kept together in companies under the charge of nuns… – 43 –
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Across the street from my hotel is a school, and the hum of the children in the playground during recess, their thin voices in chorus in the schoolroom, are the one completely natural thing in Paris—the one living thing seemingly unconscious of war. Probably the school children are also learning history in a way they will never forget.The other day a French mother pointed out a legless man on the street to her child.“Do you see that? she said sternly.“The Boches did that, remember!”5 That is the way these children will learn history, and they are not likely to forget it for many years. One of the common features of Paris is the presence of aeroplanes. The hum of their motors is never long absent. I can see the great silver winged flying machines almost any dawn or twilight steadily winging their way high over the city—sentinels of the air.The Germans have done no great harm by their raids so far, and probably can accomplish nothing of military importance with Zeppelin or aeroplane.They have dropped a bomb on the roof of Notre Dame, and might possibly destroy that noble monument if they chanced to hit it squarely… Day by day Paris is taking on more of its ordinary activities and aspects… It is now a Paris wholly stripped of that parasitic luxury with which it catered to the self-indulgence of the world. Paris … has returned under the stress of war to its best self—a suffering, tense, earnest self… Paris can never again return to her former state of international frivolity. She has lived too long in the face of death.
38. “WHEN THE GREAT GERMAN ARMY … ENTERED GERBEVILLER,” by Wythe Williams, New York Times, 11 July 1915, iv, p.4. It was just dawn when I got off a train at Gerbéviller, the little ‘Martyr City’ that hides its desolation as it hid its existence in the foothills of the Vosges.There was a dense fog… A gendarme demanded my credentials. I handed him the laisser-passer from the Quartier Général of the First French Army…6 5. A common wartime slang for Germans. 6. A permit to travel, issued, in this instance, by the Headquarters Staff of the First French Army. – 44 –
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I started across the road to investigate and fell into a pile of jagged masonry on the sidewalk.Through the nearness of the fog I could see tumbled piles of bricks… An odor that was not of the freshness of the morning assailed me. I climbed across the walk. No wall of buildings barred my path, but I mounted higher on the piles of Map 2.2 Paris-Gerbéviller bricks and stones. A heavy black shape was now at my left hand. I looked up and in the shadow there was no fog. I could see a crumbled swaying side wall of a house that was.The odor I noticed was that caused by fire. Sticking from the wall I could see the charred wood joists that once supported the floor of the second story… At my feet, sticking out of the pile of bricks and stones, were the twisted iron fragments that was once the frame of a child’s bed… I was standing in the midst of a desolation and a silence that was profound.There was nothing there that lived, except for a few fire-blacked trees that stuck up here and there in the shelter of broken walls of the other houses that were.They were all that remained of nine-tenths of Gerbéviller. I wandered along to where the street turned abruptly. There the ground pitched more sharply to the little river.There stood an entire half of a house unscathed by fire; it was one of those unexplainable freaks that often occur in great catastrophes. Even the window glass was intact. Smoke was coming from the chimney. I went to the opposite side and there stood an old woman looking out toward the river, brooding over the ruin stretching below her… She threw out her hands and turned a toothless countenance toward me. I judged her to be well over seventy. It wasn’t her home, she explained. Her home was “là-bas”—pointing vaguely in the distance. She had lived there fifty years—now it was burned. Her son’s house for which he had saved thirty years to be able to call it his own, was also gone; but then her son was dead, so what did it matter…? I went on down the road… One house remained standing … inhabited by … the village carpenter… He told me how the Germans … [had] swept … into the town… [A]cross the bridge waited the hundred and fifty – 45 –
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thousand reinforcements come from Lunéville. The five hundred of the two thousand inhabitants [of Gerbéviller] who remained were herded to the upper end of the town near the station. That portion was not to be destroyed because the German General would make his headquarters there. The inhabitants were to be given a treat. They were to witness the entrance of the hundred and fifty thousand—the power and might of Germany was to be exhibited to them. So while the flames leaped high from the burning sky, reddening the sky for miles, while old men prayed, while women wept, while little children whimpered, the sound of martial music was heard down the street near the bridge.The infantry packed in close formation, the red light from the fire shining on their helmets, were doing the goose step up the main street to the station—the great German army had entered the city of Gerbéviller with the honors of war.
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39. “MEAT PRICES SOAR IN PARIS,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 21 July 1915, p.5. Paris, July 2. It is an absolute marvel to me how the poor manage to live. The prices have gone up so much, meat is so high that none but the wealthy—I mean that seriously, the wealthy—can have it. Vegetables are much dearer than before the outbreak of hostilities, owing partly to difficulties of transportation in the outlying Paris districts, partly to the fact that there are no men left to raise and sell them, and partly to the fact that a large producing district is now in the hands of the enemy. Think for a minute what the average wage of the middle class Frenchman is… This man makes about $25 a week… Now do you think with rents at $25 a month, even away out there in the suburbs where he lives, that he can afford to pay 68 cents a pound for steak or 42 cents a pound for his roast lamb…? And those are the prices in Paris. Rents are just as high here … as they are at home, and salaries much less. It is a long since exploded theory … that life is cheaper abroad than it is at home. Practically everything is dearer. I find it impossible to live on less than exactly twice what it cost me in Chicago. I have never heard of even the cheapest kind of pension [bed and breakfast] which did not charge $1.20 a day, which makes $8.40 a week, exclusive of heat, often light, and the expected pourboires [tips] for servants… – 46 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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Take my femme de ménage [cleaning lady], for instance. She lives in the garret of an old apartment house. She has two rooms and a little closet of a kitchen.There is no running water in the place, and she has to go down three stories to draw it. She and her sister live here, and for this tiny home she pays $10 a month. She has a husband in the war and one small child, so that her “allocation” from the state is $2.45 a week—25 cents a day for the wife and 10 cents for each child. And her initial expense is $2.50 for rent! According to the law, if she works she loses her allocation. But how can she help but work? There is always food to buy, always shoes for la petite [the little girl], always oil for the lamps that one may see to sew in the evening, always little presents to send the husband at the front…
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40. “THE GRAVES,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 1 August 1915, ii, p.5. Vitry-le-François, July 3. When the French and English fell back last August before the German rush, no warning was given to the civil population of France… The people in the countryside of Champagne had no warning of the cyclone …, except the increasing volume of refugees from the north brushed up before the storm… All the rolling stock of the railroads had been sent to the south, in many cases the rails removed Map 2.3 Paris-Vitry-le-François and the bridges destroyed by the retreating French. And all the good horses had previously been requisitioned. So the country people set out on foot or in cart with some old horse that had been left them. It was literally flight, over the choked roads, through the fields, the fugitives sleeping in the woods or in their carts… – 47 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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Those who fled crept back, [but] … to what? In every case to sacked and ruined homes, lucky if they found a bit of roof to shelter them from the winter. They have all come back and cling to the desolated villages, sleeping in the cellars or in outhouses… And they have begun to clean out the débris, to get things to rights…! So life recommences among the ruins… Beside the remains of farm machines, burnt and twisted …, are the new hay stacks, the carefully tended potato patch, or the old climbing rose or grape vines, hiding with their blossoms and fresh foliage the scars of battle and fire… If it were not for the graves it would already be difficult to trace the course of last autumn’s battle along the Marne, outside the ruined villages. But the graves remain, thousands of them, the most notable, the most poignant fact in the smiling landscape.The dead were buried where they fell, French and German alike, but never together!… Sometimes they were buried in companies of thirty, fifty, or more, more often in single graves, just where they fell in the open field… As you crawl along in the train, which on these lines rarely attain a speed of ten miles an hour, you can follow the battle by the bare spots left in the fields by the graves. For they are never plowed under and sown, not even the German graves, not in the richest fields. In most cases they are carefully surrounded by a little rustic fence with a wooden cross, on which is painted the identification number of the body or the number of the regiment, rarely the name, and very often from the point of the cross still hangs the soldier’s red “képi,” his cap… Most of the French graves have fresh flowers or those ugly wire wreaths with which the French adorn their cemeteries, and occasionally, where a company lies together, there is a little monument with a touching inscription,“To our dead heroes…”
41. “BOMBARDED REIMS” and “REIMS AGAIN,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 15 August 1915, ii, p.5 and 22 August 1915, ii, p.5. Paris, July 21 … I reached Reims just as the shells were beginning to fall. The bombardment lasted for exactly one hour… During that hour it was estimated by the officers who escorted us that about 500 shells of various caliber were fired into the desolate city by the Germans… – 48 –
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We entered the city and rode through the deserted outer boulevards past the railroad station, which is a mass of scorched ruins. The grass was growing thick and tall between the cobble stones… Many of the comfortable houses in this resident part of the city seemed intact until one caught glimpses through windows and doors of the desolation within. Strips of tar paper tacked on roofs and over rents in the wall, the piles of rubbish in the gutters, told of the efforts to clean up the damage— until the ruin got out of hand in Map 2.4 Paris-Reims the continued bombardment… The inhabitants—there are around 20,000 of them still left—came out of the underground holes in which they hide themselves. The men were at their work in the little shops.The women had brought their chairs out into the shade and, the day’s work done, the day’s bombardment over, were sitting sewing and gossiping before their houses like working women the world over… Think for yourselves of a city of 130,000 people, old and rich and still full of life, in which today there is hardly a single house or store or factory untouched by shot or fire, in which over two-thirds are quite completely gutted, in which a scant sixth of the poorer inhabitants still live precariously in the cellars and ruined buildings. Each day they note the toll of their dead, for 3,000 civilians are said to have been killed or wounded since the bombardment began. Over all reigns a strange silence, except when the shells whine and explode… The sun was throwing golden cross lights over the cathedral … when we came into the little square beneath the splendid western front… [T]he surprising thing was the majesty of the windowless, roofless, defaced cathedral. Acres upon acres of other buildings here in Reims have crumbled utterly, but not even the German guns have succeeded in destroying the dignity of this ancient monument… After nearly a year of bombard– 49 –
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ment it still raises its mutilated face in dumb protest about the crumbled dwellings of its people, who for once it cannot protect from the barbarian. Not that the Germans have spared the cathedral in their senseless bombardment of Reims! On the contrary, … [they] seem to have taken a peculiar, vicious delight in shelling the cathedral. They have damaged it beyond the possibility of complete repair… The glorious glass of the great windows has been broken into a million fragments; many of the finely executed moldings and figures … have been crushed; large surfaces of wall pounded and marred with deep gashes… It can never again be what it was—the full, marvellous flowering of Gothic art, a precious heritage from dim centuries long past…7 [W]e enter the one room off the old cloisters still standing, a long, low vaulted room, once the hospital. It now serves as hospital for the cathedral itself, for here on benches and gathered in piles around the walls, lie all the mutilated fragments of statue and molding that a pious search could rescue from the débris about the cathedral. And in this room already, while the German guns still rain down shells on Reims, sullenly tearing away at cathedral and city, an old man in a workman’s apron is making plaster casts of the more complete fragments in order that a record of their individual grace may be preserved. I saw between his hands the fine, hard lines of a stone head wrapped in clay. I know of nothing more beautifully eloquent of the French spirit than this labor of preservation, looking forward to some reparation of the ruin her enemies have wrought on her sacred treasures.
42. “FRANCE BRAVELY FACES ANY SACRIFICE TO WIN,” by Dr. George B. McClellan, New York Times, 19 September 1915, iv, p.9. Using article IX of the obsolete law of Aug.9, 1849, which permitted the military authorities during a “state of siege” to forbid publications and meetings tending to excite disorder, and the law of Aug.4, 1914, which punishes indiscreet publications of a military nature, the Government has decreed a censorship the like of which the world has never known. 7. Gothic style was the work of architects and builders between the 13th and 15th centuries. – 50 –
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No new newspaper may be started without the permission of the censorship. Of existing newspapers only one daily edition may be issued, no “scare heads” or “display type” may be used, no newspaper may be “cried” in the streets. Every word that is printed must first be passed by the Censor, on pain of the suspension or the suppression of the newspaper. No criticism of any one in authority, either civil or military, is allowed, nor may any military news be printed that is not passed by Headquarters. Some of the vagaries of the Censor would strike any people but the Latins as, to say the least, amusing. For many weeks the London Times was not allowed in France, because it was supposed [by its directors] to print news unfavorable as well as favorable to the Allies, nor for the same reason were the newspapers allowed to print the British official bulletins. Of course, no German newspapers are allowed to enter France, although French and English newspapers may be obtained in any large city in Germany. The climax was capped when the newspapers were forbidden to print the weather predictions, on the ground that they might furnish information to the enemy.To any one who has ever followed French weather predictions, which do not come right once in a hundred times, the force of this censorship rule does not appear. All mail matter is held up by the Censor for five days before being permitted to leave France, and both inward and outward bound mail is liable to be opened, although there is no authority in law for this proceeding. Thus far there has been no popular protest against the dictatorship of the Viviani Government. The French people are so determined to win that they are willing to make any sacrifice to do so.They have been told so constantly that victory will be impossible without the temporary loss of political liberty that they have begun to believe that it is so…
43. “SEEKS OUR AID FOR FRENCH ARTISTS IN WANT,” New York Times, 3 October 1915, iv, p.18. [Monsieur Paul Cappellani of the Comédie Française is in New York for a benefit performance at the Metropolitan Opera.] [He] returned from the front a short time ago, having seen active service in the trenches of Northern France until illness compelled him to leave. He still considers himself a soldier.“I’m here on leave of absence,” – 51 –
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he told a Times man.And then in vivid French … he described to his visitor the terrible straits to which many of those affiliated with the stage and other branches of the fine arts have been reduced… “Life in France has come to a complete stop,” he said.“Everybody has been struck by the war. I have lost a brother—killed in battle. I, myself, have been at the front fighting. I am now a sick man. “And for those of us—actors, artists, musicians, sculptors—who cannot fight, or can fight no more—what is there to do? Our life work is to amuse people. But how can we amuse when our country is invaded, when our brothers are dying? … And the audiences? Who wants to go to the theater now in France…? “I cannot hope to give you an idea of the straits in which many of my colleagues now find themselves in France. I know of actors … whose names stand high in our profession … who have been accustomed to work for $30 or $40 a performance, and are now glad to get $4. I know of one well-known actor who is peddling on the boulevards, getting a few centimes [cents] with which to buy his meals; I know of another who goes through the cafés selling trifles. I know of an actress … who was forced to apply for aid to one of the funds established in Paris for succoring those reduced to absolute destitution… “Tell me, you knew of Paris before the war, did you not? You knew the laughter of the crowds, the shining lights? You should see it now! Darkness, darkness, nothing but darkness… “Have you heard of the “Repas des Artistes”? It is a charity started since the war by well-to-do actors and others connected with the fine arts to provide meals for their impoverished confrères. In order to get these meals one must have one’s name inscribed and go on a waiting list if the providers of the “repas” are taxed for the time being to the limit of their resources. Well, I know of one needy actor whose name was put up for this charity who went on the waiting list, and who had to wait three whole months before he could find a vacancy left by some other, fortunate enough not to need the charity any longer. Three months! That is our Paris of today!”
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44. “FRANCE, SOBERED, CONSECRATED TO WAR TO THE END,” by Owen Johnson, New York Times, 31 October 1915, iv, p.4 I remember vividly … our arrival at Bordeaux… In the station everything was swallowed up in this military note… The long train was filling up with fresh red corpuscles to be pumped through the life veins to the menaced front.The confusion of uniforms was like the babel of tongues—dark-blue coats, blue-gray, khaki, red trousers, and the olive green, sweeping folds of the Zouaves;8 officers in pearl-blue shell jackets, and others gray and seared with service; bearded, ragged privates, with young, boyish faces. In this bustle of departure, side by side, was the sobering spectacle of destiny in the worn and stricken figures of the wounded—men on crutches, limping on canes, heads bandaged, arms in slings, an empty trouser leg or a sleeve pinned up, crossing and recrossing those whose turn had now come to face the inexorable—those who looked at them steadily, thinking their own thoughts. Through the young and the maimed a dozen white-robed, charming silhouettes of the ministering nurses of the Red Cross flitted in their busy tasks, bringing the wounded to rooms for temporary bandages, cutting away soiled cloths, substituting fresh, clean ones. In the dark … these white-robed figures had something so noble and so healing in the grace and dignity of their presence that they seemed to move amid the stern and unlovely grimness of war as the inspiring vision of an artist… At every station at which we stopped—great city or village of a hundred souls—it was the same story—soldiers healed, or soldiers recalled, returning to the front and, by their sides, women in black. Never shall I forget the look on the faces of these women, turning away to hide the coming tears, or standing immovable as images, staring sternly ahead, dryfaced, seeing visions, imprinting in their memories a last look, to bear down the empty future. At Poitiers, a score of boyish figures in clean grayish uniforms, were sprinkled in the worn crowd of shaggy veterans… They were the recruits of 19, going off to their years of preparation. Such serious, exalted, boyish faces, standing apart to listen to the last calm words of exhortation from 8. Regiments of French North African troops. – 53 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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the black-clad mothers who had given so deeply of their human store… [A] group of young wives with their children came into our compartment.They were in black… The mothers began instantly on their work of rolling bandages; each had from ten to twenty convalescents sheltered in her home… Through the whole land there seemed to be but two uniforms and but two colors—drab war and black resignation… The wounded passed us in long trains from the front, the compartments choked with soldiers back for a few weeks’ recuperation in the open houses of the south; other cars, significantly quiet, with glimpses of immovable bodies stretched among the straw. On these faces of men who had lived among the dying and seen death pass a hundred times by their side there was an expression in the eyes such as I had never seen. It was as though what they have looked upon had been so hideous that the memory haunts them still… Paris seemed like one great family united in a common grief. Bright colors were so completely absent from the avenues that it seemed a world in drab; even the courtesans, in restaurant or trailing the street, were sombrely attired in black or dark-blue tailored suits, without a suspicion of coquetry in hat or blouse. In the restaurants, where formerly a profligate, cosmopolitan society had spilled its wealth, I seemed to be dining in a railroad restaurant; not even a dinner jacket was to be seen among the men, not a display of jewelry among the women, or an attempt at décolleté [low-cut dress]; no gayety and no laughter; conversation in low-pitched voices, as though solicitous of the feelings of those who might be in grief beside them… This Paris was an orderly Paris—a strange city, without violence or crime, where women passed unprotected on their errands of mercy, along ill-lighted streets and parks of darkness, over obscure bridges looking down on the Seine, … passages that a year ago, under a thousand searching lights, would have exposed them to insult and violence at every step… At each hotel, at each department store, a great tablet was displayed of the employees who had gone to their duty, and underneath the record of each—wounded on such a date; mentioned in general orders; promoted; a prisoner; dead on the field of honor…
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45. “WAR PREFECT OF POLICE PROUD OF HIS PARIS,” by Wythe Williams, New York Times, 28 November 1915, iv, p.3. [Interview with Monsieur E. Laurent, Prefect of Police of Paris, who said the following:] “Since the war there have scarcely been any murders in Paris; there have been practically no hold-ups, and burglary has almost ceased to exist… “The new problems—or rather the problems now many times increased in importance—are, first the suveillance of foreigners, under which comes your desire for information on our system of espionage, and of which I can only say very little; secondly, the verification of papers, including the livret militaire or army papers, carried by every Frenchman, which must always be shown to a policeman on demand, with an explanation as to why the holder, if he is in civil attire and of military age, is not with his regiment. “The question of espionage is primarily under the direction of the War Office, but all inquiries, instructions and arrests in the Department of the Seine are under the direction of the Prefecture. In these cases military justice is meted out, but I am not at liberty to give details as to the numbers of spies we have caught or what has become of them… “I am the censor of everything except the newspapers, the telegraph and telephones, which are under the control of the Ministry of War.The Police Department takes care of the theatres, concerts, cinemas, restaurants, cafés, and everything else where it is necessary for war rules to apply… “And about the music in the restaurants?” “We allowed music to recommence last Winter, but it was necessary to stop it again.We have encouraged the open-air concerts during Summer, and I hope many concert halls will reopen this coming Winter, but I decided for the restaurants that music with wine was not a decent combination, so I stopped it.” “How about the tango?” “In the capital of a nation at war there is no place for a thing like that.” …
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46. “VOUZIERS’ TRUCE WITH INVADERS,” by James O’Donnell Bennett, New York Times, 5 December 1915, ii, p.5. France. Nov.7. Five miles behind Monthois hill lies the pleasant little French town of Vouziers… [It] is typical enough of dozens of other towns of 4,000 or 5,000 inhabitants in occupied France. There is always an old church, always a Rue Victor Hugo, almost always the birthhouse of some famous man …, always a statue to Jeanne D’Arc, always a German regimental band playing something from the classic light operas in the market place at 1 o’clock, Map 2.5 Paris-Vouziers and always a stationer’s shop where soldiers are buying lead pencils and picture post cards and Cologne newspapers and humorous weeklies.And always there is hovering neutrally on the scene a kindly, wise-looking Catholic priest whom both the foreign soldiery and the native population treat with a great deal of respect and question incessantly.And so life goes on. Once a town is definitely occupied the women resume their knitting, bringing out their chairs in the afternoons and setting them against a sunny expanse of wall, and the soldiers quartered at their houses stand by and visit in monosyllables or awkwardly hold the skeins for the knitters. Manifestly, it is a difficult business for human beings thrown into the daily and hourly contact of the domestic routine to keep on hating each other.The effort is too great and the satisfaction too slight. And so matters adjust themselves. When the women place their chairs against the sunny wall they like a man around to fetch and carry and to run after the children, who, like as not, will be darting across the street where the military autos are roaring by. And the soldiers, when they come out in the air to smoke, want a woman around to give heed to their grumbling. – 56 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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Pretty soon the children … pick up some of the ways of the soldiers and imitate them, and that makes for laughter all around.A dozen times a day I have seen French children of the countryside pull themselves up, stand to attention, and salute in the German manner when a German officer’s auto rushed by them.A year ago they would have had their ears boxed for doing that, but it was too hard work to keep them up to the hating point…
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47. “PARIS OPERA OPEN AFTER 18 MONTHS,” New York Times, 10 December 1915, iii, p.13. Paris, Dec.9.The Opera was reopened today after it had been closed for nearly a year and a half on account of the war. The performance which was a benefit matinée for the Belgian Red Cross, is likely always to be remembered as an occasion when the centre of Paris suddenly became its old self again. Parisians had almost forgotten the hundreds of automobiles that choked the boulevards for blocks about the Place de l’Opéra, and had almost come to believe that the mondaines [fashion plates] of days gone by, thronging the marble corridors and the Grand Staircase and decorating the tiers of boxes with their silken elegance, would never come again. But they were all there this afternoon, and when Camille Chevillard raised his baton for the opening number—a patriotic medley called “Homage to Belgium”—every inch of space, sold at prices from $1,000 for the boxes to $20 for the orchestra stalls, was occupied. Those in the audience included nearly every well known person left in Paris. All the Diplomatic Corps were there, including the American Ambassador, who brought a party… The enthusiasm outside the building was almost as great as inside, due to the mere fact that the Opéra was open again.The lights in the Café de la Paix opposite shone cheerfully, and although rain poured down all the afternoon, crowds surrounded the place, listening to the honking of motor cars. It seems wonderful that so many cars have escaped military requisition. Only the printed notices on the billboards that the majority of the forthcoming performances will be for the benefit of the Red Cross, and occasional glimpses of soldiers on crutches limping down the Grand Staircase, reminded one that there was a war. – 57 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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48. “ARRAS AN UNBURIED CITY,” by Richard Harding Davis, New York Times, 12 December 1915, iv, p.1. Arras, Nov.11, 1915. In Northern France there are many buried towns and villages.They are buried in their own cellars. Arras is still uninterred. She is a corpse of a city that waits for burial, and day by day the German shells are trying to dig her grave… On one single day, June 26, the Germans threw into the city shells in all sizes, from three to sixteen inches, and to the number of 10,000.That was about one for each house. The bombardment drove 2,700 inhabitants into exile, of whom 1,200 have now returned. The Map 2.6 Paris-Arras army feeds them, and in response they have opened shops that the shells have not already opened, and supply the soldiers with tobacco, postcards, fruit and vegetables from those gardens not hidden under bricks and cement… As we entered Arras the silence fell like a sudden change of temperature… Under our feet were shell holes that had been recently filled and covered over with bricks and fresh earth. It was like walking upon newly made graves. On either side were cellars into which the houses had dumped themselves or, still balancing above them, were walls prettily papered, hung with engravings, paintings, mirrors, quite intact.These walls were roofless and defenseless against the rain and snow. Other houses were like those toy ones built for children, with the front open. They showed a bed with pillows, shelves supporting candles, books, a washstand with basin and pitcher, a piano, and a reading lamp. In one house four stories had been torn away, leaving only the attic sheltered by the peaked roof. To that height no one could climb, and exposed to view were the collection of trunks and boxes familar to all – 58 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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attics. As a warning against rough handling, one of these, a woman’s hatbox, had been marked “fragile”. Secure and serene, it smiled down sixty feet upon the mass of iron and bricks it had survived. The pure deviltry of a shell no one can explain. Nor why it spares a looking-glass and wrecks a wall that has been standing since the twelfth century. It loves a shining mark.To what is most beautiful it is most cruel.The Hotel de Ville, which was counted among the most presentable in the north of France, and which rose in seven arches in the style of the Renaissance, the shells marked for their own.And all the houses approaching it from the German side they destroyed. Not even those who once lived in them could say where they stood.There is left only a mess of bricks, tiles and plaster… When we reached the ruins of the cathedral we did not need darkness and falling rain to further depress us or to make the scene more desolate. One lacking in all reverence would have been shocked.The wanton waste, the senseless brutality in such destruction would have moved a statue.Walls as thick as the ramparts of a fort had been blown into powdered chalk; there were great breaches in them through which you could drive an omnibus. In one place the stone roof and supporting arches had fallen, and upon the floor, where for 200 years the people of Arras had knelt in prayer, was a mighty barricade of stone blocks, twisted candelabra, broken praying chairs, torn vestments, and shattered glass… The destruction is too great for present repair… The sacrilege must stand. Until the war is over, until Arras is free from shells, the ruins must remain, uncared for and uncovered.
49. “WAR AND HATE FILL THE HEARTS OF FRANCE,” Toronto Globe, 25 December 1915, p.1. Paris, Dec.24. This will be a real soldiers’ Christmas in France, with the motto “War and hate” instead of “Peace and good-will.” Last year’s stories of Christmas cheer came from the trenches, [with] Gaul and Teuton feasting tranquilly without fear of bullets with their pudding. But another twelve months of war has thoroughly hardened France’s heart. She has nothing but loathing for the enemy. L’Intransigeant yesterday struck the keynote of this year’s Christmas spirit. “The struggle on our front has now reached a pitch of desperate – 59 –
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fury never before attained.The combats have become frightful, and a sort of frenzy of extermination hitherto unknown has seized upon the adversaries. Never has war been so awful, so pitiless, so savage…” The Christmas rush of shoppers has besieged two departments only, food and men’s wear. Everywhere else the salesmen have been comparatively idle. But the army parcel post bureaus are besieged from six in the morning till midnight with queues two hundred yards long waiting hours for admission.There will be few soldiers of France who will not receive some souvenir, for even the men cut off from home in invaded territory are being taken care of by special … societies. [But] even if the front will show a semblance of Christmas gaiety, Paris remains dark, stern and silent.
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1916 January
Zeppelins resume attack on Paris French war dead reach 800,000
February
Battle of Verdun begins
March
Fierce fighting around Verdun Allied war conference in Paris
April
French counter-attack at Verdun Russian troops arrive in France
July
Allied advances as Battle of Somme begins
November
Battle of the Somme ends New French measures in war economies 1000th shell hits Reims’ cathedral
December
General Joffre replaced by General Nivelle Briand’s 2nd wartime Cabinet Battle of Verdun ends
50. “FRENCH WAR ORPHANS TO BE MADE GOOD CITIZENS,” New York Times, 6 February 1916, v, p.10. On the morning of Aug.2, 1914, just after the general order of mobilization had been posted in the streets of Paris, a group of workmen ran to the Université Populaire. “We are mobilized,” they cried, “who is going to look after our motherless little ones? Who will feed and care for them until we return—and if we never return?”They were taken to the office – 61 –
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of M.Vilta, head of the Université, and stated their case to him… “Give us your babies,” said M.Vilta,“and we will care for them…” That was the beginning of the Orphelins de la Guerre [War Orphans], an association founded in the most informal fashion, without rules, regulations, funds, or officers, to meet the pressing need of a group of mechanics …; it now numbers thousands of little beneficiaries, and hundreds of happy families… This is the story … [as] it was so graphically told by the American delegate, Mme Joséphine Morse: “… Thirty children were received by M.Vilta that first day, and put to bed in Concierges’ loges,1 in bakers’ beds, in train-conductors’ beds, in any corner where a good woman was found who would give them a scrap of room. It was soon evident that more definite arrangements must be made immediately. Again it was M.Vilta who took the initiative. He rented an empty hotel at Etretat, a seaside resort on the Normandy Coast… Here the real foundation of the Association des Orphelins de la Guerre took place. “Today there are 500 orphans in Etretat alone, living in charming little villas, in groups of ten or twelve, each cared for by an adopted mother—nearly always the wife or widow of a soldier—who kisses and pets them, tucks them in at night, so that they shall never remember that they are orphans… “All sorts and conditions of babies are gathered together, fair little Normans, brown little Bretons, black-eyed babies from the Midi, blueeyed babies from Alsace. There are no formalities of admittance. To be a child, and to be in need, are the only qualifications… In they come, some to a home on the Coast of Normandy, some to a colony along the Côte d‘Azur, some accompanied by a relative, some traveling alone with tickets pinned to their apron pockets. “Life in the little households is not all kisses and petting. The children’s future is the first care, and they go to school as they are old enough. The boys are taught a trade, and the girls domestic science and sewing… We take entire charge of the children until they are sixteen, and we utilize the services of the réformé, or mutilated soldier, for their instruction. We have forges, carpenter shops, bricklayers’ yards, stone masons, metal workers, representatives of every trade, and the individual preferences of the boys are respected… 1. A concièrge is a caretaker of an apartment block. – 62 –
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“Now as to our expenses. We have had no help from America, and only 6,000 francs from the Secours National [National Assistance]. Our contributions come from private sources. It takes, however, only $6 a month to feed and clothe a baby, and to give an older child an education and a future. Only $6 a month to equip a citizen of France…! “Many of the children from the invaded districts are in a sad state of ill health when they reach us. Dr Pinard is our head physician, and he examines them all and prescribes the best treatment for them. The tubercular children are sent to Thorluc in the Alpes-Maritimes, for there are hundreds of cases of tuberculosis from exposure… Some of the poor little creatures, only a few months old, have spent all their brief lives in the trenches, and are often in a pitiable condition.The ‘war babies’ are a problem. Of course, there is no Government provision for them, but we take them in and care for them, and they will grow up absolutely French under our auspices.”2
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51. “CATHEDRAL AT REIMS SCENE OF DESOLATION,” by Philip Kerby, Chicago Tribune, 6 February 1916, p.10. 21 Jan. The cathedral at Reims, viewed from a distance, appears to have suffered little damage from the enemy’s bombardment. Its silhouette remains the same.The two massive towers, rising like twin sentinels above the Champagne countryside, seem to stand guard over the many small villages nestling in the valleys. From the square in front of the cathedral one mourns with the rest of France a loss which seems almost personal. As one of our party remarked: “One could almost forgive the Germans for everything else if only they had spared Reims.” … The greater portion of the marvelously intricate exterior decoration … has been irreparably destroyed.The high facade stands gaunt and red, reminding one of an open wound. Each bastion is heaped high with sandbags and other supports resembling rather clumsy bandages. Within, the religious atmosphere is completely dispelled by the broad bands of light entering from the yawning empty window casements.The 2. “War babies” refers to children fathered by German soldiers. – 63 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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famous stained glass windows, some of which dated as far back as the twelfth century, allowed only a very meager proportion of daylight to enter, which greatly added to the dim religious sanctity of the cathedral. They have been smashed to atoms… The massive central columns, instead of standing in their former gray splendor, have turned a chalky white as a result of the fire. Great pieces of shale dropped continually. About half way along the nave, on the northern side, could be seen the figure of a man, outlined on the stone floor at the base of one of the pillars. The verger of the cathedral explained that when the enemy started the bombardment a number of wounded prisoners were taken into the cathedral in the hope that the Germans would refrain from killing their own men. Nevertheless, the shelling continued and fire started. It quickly gained headway, feeding on the heaps of dry straw used as temporary mattresses for the wounded… Aged Cardinal Luçon thus offers … his devotions in the sole portion of the cathedral which has not been desecrated by bombardment. It is impossible to hold mass, as the cathedral is no longer consecrated, the sacred relics having been removed during the first bombardment. A French flag occupies the niche where the memorable statue of Jeanne d’Arc stood just behind the main altar. The statue has been removed to a place of safety, together with many other treasures… Our guide pointed out nearby a mass of ruins, saying that that was all there was left of the robing room of the kings of France. Before being anointed by the papal legate in the cathedral, the kings changed their robes in the adjacent chapel. Being on the side of the bombardment, very little remains of it…
52. “FRENCH YOUTHS HAPPY AS THEY LEAVE FOR WAR,” by Philip Kerby, Chicago Tribune, 12 February 1916, p.8. Paris, 14 Jan. “Hurry up, you lazy loafers, or you’ll miss the train.” The speaker, … a corporal, stood on the parapet of the Montparnasse railway station and shouted … to a large crowd of young conscripts belonging to the 1917 class in the street below… – 64 –
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The laughter and lively badinage exchanged on all sides completely contradicted the thought that these overgrown boys were leaving to become soldiers. The holiday spirit was in the air. It seemed as if a large school was going to the country for a picnic and would return before nightfall… Instead of being depressed by all the stories of hardships, dangers, and fatigue of war …, instead of being reluctant to join the colors now that all the glamour and excitement had been worn away by the long, dreary months of fighting—with a rollicking song and a light heart these youths of 18 joyfully entered the many long trains to be taken to their barracks. Volunteers never went more gayly than did these conscripts. For them it was as if, after many months of waiting and anxious wondering if they would be called, the government had at last permitted them to be trained, so that they might join their relatives and friends in the great struggle for victory… “I do hope we’ll be able to have an opportunity to show what we can do,” one pink cheeked little fellow said to me.“You see, just because we’re young they think we must still be tied to mother’s apron strings, that we can’t fight…” The desire to eclipse the brave actions of their predecessors seemed to be their watchword…
53. “LOTI TELLS GAS HORRORS,” by Pierre Loti, translated by Charles Johnston, New York Times, 13 February 1916, v, p.1.3 A place of horror which one would think Dante had imagined.The air is heavy—stifling; two or three little night lamps … hardly pierce the hot, smoky darkness which smells of fever and sweat. Busy people are whispering anxiously. But you hear, more than all, agonized gaspings, These gaspings escape from a number of little beds drawn up close together on which are distinguished human forms, above all, chests, chests that are heaving too strongly, too rapidly, and that raise the sheets as if the hour of the death rattle had already come. 3. Pierre Loti, pseudonym of Julien Viaud [1850-1923], was one of the most celebrated, romantic novelists of his day. – 65 –
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It is one of our hospitals on the battle line, improvised as well as was possible on the morrow of one of the most infernal of German abominations… This great hall, with its crumbling walls, was yesterday a storehouse of hogsheads of champagne, these little beds—some fifty in number—were put together in feverish haste, made up of branches that still keep their bark, and look like rustic garden furniture. But why this heat which the stoves send forth…? The reason is that that it cannot be too hot for asphyxiated lungs.And this darkness, why this darkness? … It is because the barbarians are there in their burrows, quite close to this village… [I]f they saw in this sad November [1916] twilight the lights appearing in the windows of the long hall, they would instantly scent a field hospital and shells would rain on the humble sick beds… Every moment nurses bring huge, black, air balloons, and those who are struggling in agony stretch out their poor hands to beg for them; it is oxygen which makes them breathe better and suffer less. Many of them have these black air balloons resting on their panting chests, and in their mouths they greedily hold the tubes through which the saving gas escapes… Some of the men, almost naked on their beds, are covered with blisters or smeared all over with tincture of iodine. There are others— these, alas, are the most seriously injured—who are all swollen, chests, arms, and faces, and who look like India rubber dolls blown up… [The] evening when this … crime was committed, six hundred of our men had just taken their advance positions after a long and tiring march; all at once, in the midst of a salvo of shrapnel which aroused them from their first sleep, they made out here and there little sounds of whistling, as if from treacherous steam sirens, and the death gas was pouring around them, spreading its thick, gloomy gray clouds… Bewildered then, already suffocating, they thought, too late, of the masks which had been given them …; they felt the burning of their lungs, yielded to the desire to run, and these were the most terribly injured because of the excess of chlorine inhaled in the deep breaths of running.
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54. “THE NEW EUROPEAN DESERT,” Editorial, New York Times, 17 February 1916, p.10. The impossible goes on taking place, in a neutral, dispassionate way. It had to be a short war, said all the military experts, because sustained hostilities of such magnitude were utterly impossible. But the war is long. It had to be a short war, as any economist knew, because to find $50,000,000 a day for destructive purposes would in a short time become ridiculously impossible. But the cost has doubled, being now $100,000,000 per diem, and the end is not in sight for either physical or financial reasons… Nobody could imagine Europe spending $100,000,000 a day for war and keeping it up. Last September Mr.Asquith … definitely noted the rise which already had taken place.4 During April, May, and June 1915, the cost had been $13,500,000 a day; in July it rose to $15,000,000, and in September to $17,500,000… England’s war expenditure now amount[s] to nearly $25,000,000 a day… [T]he French Minister of Finance … said the French expenditures were nearly $15,000,000 a day. The combined expenditures of France and England, therefore, now are $40,000,000 per diem, which is $14,600,000,000 a year, and that is probably equal to the total gross income of the 85,000,000 people of those two countries in peace time.That only shows how impossible it is.
55. “THE KAISER’S THROAT,” by Henri Lavedan, translated from L’Illustration, and reprinted in Chicago Tribune, 20 February 1916, ii, p.5.5 What fatal disease has he? … Where is he affected? … Where one might expect it, where it is most deadly—in the throat! … That throat which has clamored incessantly for so many years, which has raved itself hoarse in mad discussions, in insane proposals, is now again attracting the attention of the world… Now at last the inevitable is approaching.The geyserlike fires in the notorious throat are about to be cooled forever… 4. Herbert Asquith, the British Prime Minister in 1915. 5. Henri Lavedan (1859-1940) popular dramatist. – 67 –
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Why, then, one asks, … this world-wide excitement over the likelihood of his death…? [Because] he has been lavishly endowed with all the hideous personality of crime. He has achieved the pinnacle of sovereign importance through the role of Terror that he has chosen to play… Now that death is creeping upon him it is decreed that he should be chained in the world limelight, … a reddened figure, blood besplotched from head to foot, with the multitudinous drippings of those millions of men he has murdered… Will we be accused of being actuated by base motives of hate and fiendish desire for revenge? Blameworthy though these sentiments usually are, they are more than justified now in the face of that ruin and debâcle more terrible than the world has ever witnessed before. Nor is that ruin for which he is responsible the only reason for the biting vigilance with which we follow each step in his suffering. It is sufficient when we say that we are curious, logically, serenely, coldly curious… We wish to know what happens to William II, emperor of Germany… His most insignificant moods, his fiercest torments, are in the domain of our liveliest interest… We must keep ourselves well leashed, our passions chained, to watch coolly and collectedly the progress of events, to enjoy to the full the sure grim advancement of the punishment inevitable… When will it be, O Lord? Will it be today that the voice of the Great Artificer will be silenced forever…?
56. “CITIZENS OF PARIS ARE NOT ALARMED BY RAIDS MADE BY ZEPPELINS ON CITY,” by Philip Kerby, Chicago Tribune, 24 February 1916, p.6. Paris, Feb.2. Instead of a plague of locusts as in times of old, Paris was visited last Saturday evening by a plague of fireflies and glow worms. All street lamps were extinguished by military order as a Zeppelin visit was announced, and all that could be seen along the crowded boulevards were the glowing tips of thousands upon thousands of lighted cigarettes and cigars, occasionally interspersed with the bright rays of an electric pocket flashlight… The spirit of insatiable curiosity overcame all instincts of self-preservation, and accordingly every man and woman and child who could walk – 68 –
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or crawl came out to the wide boulevards and open squares and turned sky gazer. Afraid? Not for an instant. It was a lark! The fête spirit was abroad.The majority of the population who had missed the sight of last year’s Zeppelins were not going to be caught napping this time… Although the crowds continued to move restlessly for hours along the principal thoroughfares, no one was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the hostile Zeppelin… The fire engines again made their rounds … , signaling that all danger was past… The following morning the newspapers carried a detailed account of the raid, but by order of the censor [no] mention of the location where the damage had been done, except to say that it had occurred in one of the poorest quarters of the city… [Nevertheless] before 10 o’clock the next morning there was scarcely a person in all Paris who did not know the exact quarter where the majority of the projectiles had been dropped… Before noon fully 150,000 pedestrians thronged the narrow streets… The police reserves had been called out … to form a cordon around the damaged buildings, as the majority of the outer walls were in danger of falling at any moment… One bomb completely shaved the inner wall off a five story tenement. On the various floors could be seen the furniture, stove, and various cooking utensils, just as the owner had left them, with the kettle still on the stove. The crowd had changed overnight. It was still curious, but all element of the festive spirit was gone. A quiet, thoughtful assemblage instantly made a wide lane the moment a covered form was carried out on a stretcher. The only time a roar swept over them was once when a small covered body was brought past.“A child! My God—have the Germans no little ones of their own!,” said one women in deep mourning with a baby at her breast. Children were there in great numbers. Their parents or relatives brought them to see the destruction because, as one explained to me: “After the war is over and we are gone we wish our children to remember how Paris suffered at the hands of the Germans. We hope that they will always remember the sights they see today, and that they will never be friends with the enemy…”
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57. “A ZEPPELIN RAID,” by Sterling Heilig, Chicago Tribune, 5 March 1916, p.5. Paris. Feb.14… Some time after 9 p.m. the light went out… Far off in the night came the old trumpet call, almost forgotten warning against Zeppelins! … Silence.Waiting.We are sure it is a false alarm, a dress rehearsal. But what were those crashes? … We complain of the bother of it, but we are all proud of the defense of Paris. For ten months no Zeppelin has penetrated… The automatic “listeners” are well nigh perfect.They are reversed megaphone horns constructed to receive sounds—and register their intensity on a dial.They are vast horns, facing north, south, east, and west. The imperceptible rumble of a Zeppelin motor fifteen miles distant is caught by their microphones in the still countryside.Which dial registers the strongest this time? The north and east dials are alike. A Zeppelin is coming from the northeast. Alarm the front aeroplanes! Notify the Paris squadrons, the forts, the searchlights and the automobile batteries! … [T]he Zeppelins steered rapidly for Paris by compass and calculation above an exceptional fog.Their speed was probably sixty miles per hour. When they hoped and believed themselves to be near Paris they groped their way, rising, descending, peering, uncertain! Suddenly alarmed, they dropped their bombs and trusted for the best—that they might fall on houses full of sleeping women and children… You ought to see those houses—and the bombs. One bomb, which failed to explode, weighs 225 pounds and looks like an old fashioned cannon ball, nearly two feet in diameter and six feet round. It is a hollow sphere of steel, two inches thick, containing nearly 100 pounds of trinitrotolvene—wickedest of high explosives. Falling from the height of 9,000 to 11,000 feet, at which the Zeppelins rose to flee, its rate of speed on hitting the top of a house would be about 250 yards per second, which, according to the mechanical laws of falling bodies, represents a force of thirty tons for a steel ball weighing nearly 100 pounds. It probably smashes through roof and top floor by its acquired momentum alone, and possibly deeper. Its explosion by percussion is found to have been set for one second after striking—to make the diabolical explosion begin deep down in the house!
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It results that the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors up of an ordinary five floor Paris apartment house are sure to be blown out when it is squarely hit; and there is no safety … on the first floor up or ground floor either! Nor is there safety in the cellar. These great bombs, falling in a courtyard, smash downward and outward, crushing in the foundation walls upon the cellar.
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58. “WAR IN PARISIAN ‘REVUES’,” New York Times, 1 April 1916, p.4. Paris, March 31. A curious indication of the topics most interesting to Parisians in war-time is given by an analysis of the leading features in the theatrical “Revues” which are consistently well attended, despite the recent heavy fighting. During the last six months the most popular topic has been the Zeppelins, which have been featured in twenty-three different shows; next, soldiers’ “godmothers” twenty-two times;6 third, the cost of living, twenty times. The censorship and marriage by proxy tie for fourth place, with twenty; next come soldiers on leave, with seventeen, followed by darkened streets and the moratorium on rents. Last comes the Marne victory, whose total—nine—justifies the critics’ frequent suggestion that it is an unsuitable subject for humor.
59. “LES FEMMES FRANÇAISES,” Le Devoir, 13 April 1916, p.5. The French Red Cross is not a single society… [Rather] it comprises three autonomous groups: the French Society for Aid to War Wounded (Société française de secours aux blessés militaires), the oldest and most aristocratic of the three—the Union of the Women of France (L’Union des femmes de France), where one finds a preponderance of women from the 6. These “godmothers,” or marraines de guerre, were women who “adopted” soldiers at the front who had no family to write to them or to supply them with gift packages. Often, these women were recently bereaved widows or mothers. – 71 –
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industrial and commercial classes—and the Association of French Women (L’Association des dames françaises), where you have the women of the bourgeoisie.Together, by coordinating their action, these three quite independent societies represent the French Red Cross to the outside world… Before the war the three had carefully prepared their resource networks.The Society for Aid to War Wounded had 300 hospitals and 16,000 beds; the Women of France, 190 hospitals and 10,000 beds; the Dames françaises, 100 hospitals and 6,000 beds.All were ready at the time war was declared, but the casualties soon exceeded any expectation. Each group had to expand its facilities. By 12 January 1916 the Society for Aid to War Wounded was operating 796 hospitals and more than 67,000 beds; the Women of France were up to 353 hospitals and 29,000 beds; and the Dames françaises some 350 hospitals and 22,000 beds. Service is provided by nurses who not only outfit and maintain themselves but who also pay a subscription to their respective society. Currently, the Society for Aid to War Wounded has more than 15,000 certified nurses; the Women of France, some 9000 certified nurses as well as 18,000 nurses aides; and the Dames françaises another 16,000 hospital attendants… Hospital services are not the only ones provided by the three Red Cross societies. Any traveler has seen, for example, the medical and the canteen services in the train stations, the free buffets prepared for soldiers. At each train stop, night or day, since the beginning of the war, there are nurses who bring food and refreshments to soldiers in transit. The courage of these women matches their devotion. In occupied territory they have continued to nurse the wounded. Even under shelling, they have remained at their post… The Society for the Aid of War Wounded alone has lost 22 nurses to shells or infectious disease. [Take, for example, the case of] Mlle G——, “supervisor of the military hospital at Reims, who demonstrated on several occasions her devotion, courage and sense of professional responsibility, tending to the wounded in a hospital under the most intense enemy fire…” Or several [unnamed] women who “despite the danger offered invaluable assistance to the doctors of ambulance no.——, and who, during the continuous shelling of Arras, continued night and day to aid the wounded and reassure the fearful by their good humour and composure.”… Or Mlle G——,“nurse in a hospital at Lunéville that was bombed by the Germans, a women who – 72 –
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showed outstanding courage by continuing, despite the danger, to look after her wounded… She was killed at the post she refused to abandon.”
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60. “FRENCH FARMERS,” by Ernest Bilodeau, Le Devoir, 1 July 1916, p.1. The example France currently is showing to the world is not confined to military courage and life-threatening heroism. There are also domestic warriors—men and women—who assure the economic livelihood of the country while the soldiers face death at the front… This is what one could call the “agricultural battalion.” It is largely feminine in nature. With the men away, it is the women who have seized the shovel and the plough, and who attend the livestock. The following is drawn from an evocative account published in L’Echo de Paris. “… Whether on isolated farms or in small villages, whether on flatland or rocky slopes, plateau or valley, these brave troops are composed mainly of women, bravely aided by the elderly, the children, the disabled, and a few demobilized soldiers. For twenty-two months their ranks have increased, shortages and fatigue have worn upon them, as has the worry about what is happening to loved ones at the front… “[Here are two striking personal examples]: Mme Léon Boude, from Maison-de-Champagne (Marne).With three children the oldest of whom is 13, and in spite of German pillage and requisitions of supplies by French troops, she managed to run the 50 hectare family farm aided only by a single, 16 year old domestic servant… [Or] Mlle Germaine Noorenberghe, of Ghyvelde (Nord): twenty years old, she lost her father, mother, and brother in a bomb explosion in December 1914; badly wounded she herself managed to recover and to go on to run an 80 hectare farm aided by an aunt and a domestic servant… “Let us honor them then. Proclaim their worthiness… [I]n the citations which will be issued to these peasant armies by the government, France will find new reason to be proud… Before the spectacle of French soil being drenched in the blood and sweat of so many heroes and heroines—their fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters—the children of France will better understand the sacred responsibility of the post-war generations, and devote themselves, body and soul, to the resurrection of French agricultural society.” – 73 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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61. “FRENCH FIELDS OF CALM AND QUIET,” reprinted from the London Times, Chicago Tribune, 23 July 1916, p.5. There are many wide acres in France where men and women are living lives of quiet industry in most beautiful and peaceful surroundings. A chance visitor would see no signs of war in such places, but he might think the world strangely unpeopled… Women in blue aprons and wide brimmed straw hats may be seen working in the fields with old men and sometimes children.The sheep have their shepherd, but he is single handed, where once he had two or three men working under him.The cows are brought home every evening … by the women and children, and the milking is done by elderly men and women. Everything on the farm is being done,“more or less” for want of men… No sound of cannon has ever caused the people in these peaceful areas to stop in their work and look with unquiet eyes toward the direction from which the sound comes. No personal experience of atrocities has been theirs, no appalling sights of wounded men have shocked their senses. No refugees have troubled the calm of their homes. And yet the war is beginning to tell on them all. Some have lost their sons, their husbands, their fathers; all have lost a man temporarily, and generally he is the breadwinner… They are overworked, and not excited by the war, and that is depressing. Yet France owes much to these quiet living people; whether in château or cottages, they are “keeping things going.”
62. “HOW PARIS KEPT NATIONAL HOLIDAY,” by Annie Neland Taylor, reprinted from the Minneapolis Journal by the Toronto Globe, 12 August 1916, p.19. Paris, 14 July.The day before the Fourteenth of July, Louise, my “bonne à tout faire” [all-purpose maid] told me how it had been before the war… Her plain face was lit almost to prettiness by the memory of the three nights she had danced behind the church of St. Sulpice.“Flowers, garlands, music, everywhere,” she cried.“The night before the fête day itself and the day and night afterwards.Three nights I danced in the square.” – 74 –
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“With whom did you dance, Louise? With your husband, perhaps?” No, malheureusement, not with her husband, for he did not love the dance.“Mais avec un boucher, avec un épicier, avec n’importe qui!”7 With everyone who asked her, for on the Fourteenth of July one never refuses. On the second Fourteenth of July since the war, there was no dancing. But it was by far the happiest day, and perhaps also the saddest, that Paris has known in these two years. For the first time the city was hung in flags. For the first time Paris decked herself as for a coming victory… Those of our generation have never, I believe, seen anything more moving than the [parade], by the most beautiful roads of Paris—the Champs Elyseés and the Boulevards—of the regiments returned from the front to join the national fête: a symbolic procession from the tomb of the Emperor Napoleon to the Place de la République. I watched from a balcony of the Hotel de Crillon overlooking the Place de la Concorde. For hours people had waited in the great square in a drizzling rain. The rain stopped, and with the first sound of distant drums and bugles a pale sun came out, touching the gold of the dome of the Invalides and the four flying horses of the bridge Alexandre III. From beneath the thick tree tops that concealed from us the Champs Elysées there rose a throbbing roar from the crowd.Then into the Place swept the Belgian cavalry, and after them a Highland regiment in kilts, playing their wild bagpipes as they were played centuries ago. Turbaned warriors from India, with graceful oriental tread, were followed by Australian, Canadian and English troops in khaki. A new fury came into the shouts below us when the Russians … entered the Place.There was a grandeur, an immense gravity about them that was almost religious. All big men, they marched 20 abreast in four great squares. There was no military music, but they burst out in a slow minor chant, a slow rhythmic song that took us by the throat.After them came the Senagalese, with their savage African music; then a detachment of Annamites [Vietnamese]. We could tell from a deeper, almost agonized, note in the road below us that the French poilu were passing under the trees.8 In their “horizon 7. “With a butcher, a grocer, anyone!” 8. Poilu was an affectionate nickname the French had given their footsoldiers, comparable to the British “Tommy.” – 75 –
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blue” [uniforms], dusty and shabby from the front, they marched into the Place with their nervous, rapid step, to the music of the “Chant du Départ,” and the march of the “Sambre et Meuse.”Then came squares of cavalry, to Louis XIV music of the hunting horn. More battalions of infantry followed, and the music changed to the chant of the Girondins, the most stirring and tragic of war songs.9 The crowd caught its breath when the battered marchers, who had been yesterday in the hell of Verdun, and who would perhaps go back tomorrow, broke into the song. A shiver ran through everyone who heard it.“If this had been the day after the end of the war,” I said to the fine old Frenchman who stood beside me on the balcony. But he did not hear. Tears were streaming down his face. His three sons had been killed. Everyone was frankly crying. The great crowd tried to cheer, and then broke down. Women threw flowers at the marchers, then clung to each other and wept. It was the salute to those who are about to die. But afterwards, after the procession had broken up at the Place de la République, after the soldiers had found their families, and friends had gathered together for déjeuner [lunch], it was better. Paris began to be cheerful, almost gay. It was not a day of merrymaking, although it was given a festive air by the sunshine, the little shops on wheels along the curb where strange toys were sold, and balloons, and confetti, and hot waffles, and goldfish. It was a day of tenderness, friendliness, gratitude.The warmest, kindest day I have ever seen…
63. “FRENCH FORCED TO QUIT HOMES,” Chicago Tribune, 17 August 1916, p.4. A Town in Eastern France, Aug.13. On account of the protests of France against forcible removal by German authorities of inhabitants of French cities in the occupied area, and representations that hardships have resulted, a correspondent of Associated Press investigated conditions under which 9. The Girondins, men from the Gironde in south-west France, were one of the prominent revolutionary groups in the early 1790s. – 76 –
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civilians from Lille,Turcoing, and Roubaix, quartered at various points in eastern France, are living.The German authorities permitted examination of official documents dealing with the subject. The proclamation posted by the Germans … said that since the English blockade made the problem of feeding the population of Belgium and the occupied part of France daily more difficult, and since a call to agricultural workers by the German authorities has not been answered, the Germans were obliged to move to the country certain parts of the population. The proclamation was posted on April 10, and at midnight of April 24 the German troops aroused the inhabitants in certain quarters of the three towns, telling them to assemble in front of their houses. In all cases the instructions were to select persons familiar with agriculture or suited for it. The women were to do the cooking for the men or to work for French country families who needed assistance around the house… Nearly 21,000 persons were removed from their homes.Those taken were told they would have ninety minutes in which to pack sixty-five pounds of household utensils and clothing.At the expiration of that time they were taken to the railroad station… In the first [of three villages to which these people were taken] the leader … had many complaints. He said the people he represented were not suited for farm labor, and that French farmers did not like to employ them for that reason. He asserted that the food was insufficient and that the fare was monotonous. In one house the correspondent talked with one of three girls. She said their treatment had been good, but the villagers had not employed them, so they were not earning money and were living on rations allowed by the German authorities. An internment camp for males of military age was next visited.The men were employed at a saw mill and in cutting wood in a nearby forest, earning on an average of a mark and 60 pfennigs daily… The correspondent visited the kitchen and found the food to be of good quality.
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64. “WAR MAY ELIMINATE FRENCH MONEY MARRIAGE,” New York Times, 20 August 1916, v, p.16. French writers frankly put the question to be discussed in the following terms.After the war, will a dowry be needed for girls in order for them to find a husband? … As far as the next generation is concerned, the question is expected to find its solution in an extraordinary phenomenon, first announced from Budapest, then from Vienna, later from the German cities, and now receiving a certain confirmation in Paris. This is the fact of the great excess of male children being born in the belligerent countries, a verification of the old-time belief that nature brings a prompt remedy for the destruction of men in warfare… The problem, however, of immediate interest is that of today, intensifed by the fact that marriageable girls are in the majority, while, with every day that the war continues, the men available for marriage are growing fewer. In accordance with the laws of supply and demand, it would naturally be expected that men should show themselves more and more exacting when they consider entering the bonds of matrimony.The question is: will they be exacting in the way of demanding more virtues, qualities, and accomplishments in the girls? Or will they simply insist on more dollars and cents? … M. Urbain Gohier, the famous French editor of the Paris Journal … affirms that the war will have brought about a radical change in views on what may be considered as the financial side of matrimony. “The young generation now of marriageable age will despise the rather ignoble prudence of an older generation.The girls will be proud to show their gratitude and admiration for the defenders of their country in accepting marriage without dowry, the marriage of love and abnegation. The young heroes will not degrade their heroism by counting the pennies… The whole war will purify, elevate and ennoble. Parents may perhaps obstinately insist on the obsolete trades and combinations and continue to calculate real estate values, bags of gold, bonds and stocks and annuities, and hopes of inheritance. But the young generation will not need to pay attention to the ancient methods and undoubtedly will not do so… – 78 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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65. “WAR WIPING OUT OLD RELIGIOUS FEUD IN FRANCE,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 17 September 1916, p.3. Paris, Aug.20. A few days ago in Britanny I saw one of those odd incongruities of war which crop out daily and which are going to make of this nation a people even more indissolubly bound together. It was the Fête of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary… I was lunching on the sidewalk opposite one of these shrines… I watched the little shrine grow more beautiful with flowers, the drapery of sky blue, with white stars hung above, and over all the ermine of Britanny. On either side of the statue were three flags in pale blue and white—the flags of the Virgin. The decorator stepped back three paces to view his work. Suddenly, quite out of breath, a fat old priest arrived on the scene, and unrolled from under his arm ten fluttering flags of the tricolor of France. “These must go up there.” “But, mon père, it is impossible. There is no place to put them.” “Well, then, take down the flags of La Sainte Marie.” The decorator fell back, his mouth open.“But today—today,” he stammered. “Today we are Frenchmen,” saying which the good man mounted the ladder himself and put the waving flag of his country in the place of that of his church… [Then] around the corner of the street they swept down upon us, sixty small boys, sons of men at the front, dressed in the bright red and blue of the zouave, their little fezzes tipped at a saucy angle, blowing on their clarinets with all the strength of their young and loyal lungs, hammering on drums the march of their fathers before Verdun.Their leader carried the flag of France. Behind them—as befitted the church and women—came the Enfants de Marie, their bands of pale blue around their necks, and after them the nuns. Do you know enough of France to know what this means? Do you realize the bitter hatred there has been here between church and state these three hundred years, aggravated yet more the last ten? … France has cried loudly,“There must be freedom of conscience.” But she never granted it… The country was divided between Catholics and anti-Catholics, although this last branch was made up of Calvinists, Jews, – 79 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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every branch of French Protestant, and five times greater than all these put together, heretics, or free thinkers… The anti-clerical deplored unceasingly the wish for authority on the part of the church, and overestimated its dangers, while the orthodox valued it too highly simply because they had lost it…10 In the early days of the war that spirit still reigned. But if Britanny, the most Catholic of all the provinces, can decorate all her churches with flags—Saint Malo, Dol, Quimper—all of them, can start their most traditional religious procession with little boys in the uniform of the French army, there is a better spirit, a broader one growing…
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66. “THE WOMAN AND WAR,” Le Devoir, 19 October 1916, p.5 The employment of women, we are told by the under-secretariat for munitions, has been related to two considerations… The prolongation of the war meant that more and more women had to find jobs, which in turn meant that more of them could be recruited for munitions productions; and the demands of the war meant that such production had to increase with more government expenditure… Women workers in the war industries numbered only some 30,000 in July 1915. Today, if one counted all the women who were working for national defence—not simply in war production (for which, understandably, we cannot give precise statistics)—the figure would be higher than a million… Work done by women is of diverse nature.Women are found in factories engaged in lathe and cutting work, drilling and stamping, polishing, finishing, loading, calibrating, verifying, packing and wrapping. To this list, by January 1916, could be added: the cleansing of shell casings; the napping, charging, painting of grenades; the painting of finned projectiles; the assembly of shells and grenades; the bleaching of fibers for gun-cotton; the operation of industrial ovens, etc.; [in fact] most of the 10. The equation here between anti-clericals and non-Catholics is misleading. In the decades prior to the war, there were an increasing number of Catholics who identified themselves as anti-clericals, which is to say that they wanted the church to confine itself to strictly religious activities. – 80 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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work required for the production of 75mm and 120mm shells has been expressly reserved for women. This does not mean, however, that women do or could do all the work required for the manufacture of munitions. Some of them are still excluded by virtue of their relative physical weakness. Such would be the case, for example, of shells larger than 120mm, although they tell me that there is one woman who can handle, effortlessly, shells of 155mm. [But] the most difficult and specialized jobs are still reserved for men—tool-making, part assembly, hand stamping, and supervisory work which requires a comprehensive knowledge of operations… Nevertheless, in all jobs which can be learned in a day, or a matter of hours, … women are being used. Apprentice schools for women in Marseille, Toulon, Bordeaux, in a matter of eight hours, … produce a harvest of good, exact and disciplined female workers. As for salaries, whenever a woman replaces a man, the rule is that the woman is paid the same. A recent circular from the under-secretariat for artillery and munitions productions reminded labor administrators of this fact. [G]reat efforts have also been made to provide this female work force with much improved facilities: “washrooms, hotplates and food services, lounge areas.” Some factories even have crèche facilities where children can be left while their mothers are at work… Thanks to women … industrial production now finds itself tremendously improved, and so it is fully warranted to attribute to them the title: Victory Workers.
67. “CAMBRAI CALMLY SIPS ABSINTHE IN WAR’S MIDST,” by James O’Donnell Bennett, Chicago Tribune, 12 November 1916, p.3. Cambrai, Mid-September. By day and night Cambrai can hear the guns of the great offensive on the Somme, but, with an adaptability not always credited to the French, it continues to sip absinthe and play piquette with itself and to sell cambric [a fine linen] to German officers… Today Cambrai is an important point on the German line of communication with the Somme. Day and night it is streaming with troops and its citadel is a receiving station for prisoners of war… – 81 –
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[The French civilian population] dwell amid sobering signs that point the quickest way to the bomb proof cellars to be used in case of an attack by flyers, but their fears, like their hates, have not survived two years of occupation. Even in a war ridden town, life soon swings back to routine. Black robed nuns glide about the streets. Sprinkling carts go bouncing over the cobbles and the French drivers of them peremptorily warn German soldiers out of the way… On the walls at every street corner are posted proclamations, old Map 3.1 Paris-Cambrai and new, French and German, which contain instructions to the people relative to the laws of war, food, lights, hours. One of the earliest of them, dating from the autumn of 1914, may account for the good state in which the town finds itself. It is an appeal from the mayor to the citizens. It says … “Show the same calm and dignity in the future as you have in the past and all will be well…” The town is now eighteen to twenty miles behind the fighting. It has been nearer and may again be nearer. Pending either eventuality it may be trusted to enjoy its absinthe as long as the supply holds out and to sell at hours most convenient to itself the exquisite linens to which it gave its name.11
68. “A VISIT TO ONE OF FRANCE’S AIRCRAFT FACTORIES,” New York Times, 12 November 1916, v, p.4. Not far from Paris … one finds a large number of wooden buildings— one of several aeroplane manufacturing plants under control of the Gov11. It would appear that Cambrai residents, under German occupation, disregarded the French law of 1915 making the sale of absinthe illegal. – 82 –
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ernment… [This] factory … consists of more than 25 buildings. In ten minutes we must have seen at least 1,000 aeroplanes, yet this is only one of the plants that turn out the material used by French aviators, whose daily task consists of scouting, gun spotting, bomb throwing and fighting the enemy planes… As the machines are returned in more or less battered condition from the fighting ground, they are taken apart immediately.The wooden bars are thrown in one pile, parts of the engine in another, the wheels compose another heap. It is all systematic and efficient. The rapidity with which machines are repaired is an indication of the war’s effect upon aeroplane construction. The officer in charge of the plant said that at least fifteen aeroplanes, usually in bad condition, come in each day, while fifteen new planes are sent out to take their place… About 2,000 men, expert mechanics and engineers, are employed at the factory. In one building the detailed work was done. Here men planed down the wooden struts and tested wires and the attachments which bind the wire to the frame. In a room like a hallway the wings were being covered. This work was done by women—the only work they do in the factory. Some were sewing the tough canvas in large strips, others were stretching them diagonally over the wooden frame, and varnishing the wings with a solution which makes the canvas look like aluminium. It also makes the wings strong, and leaves a glossy finish, which is little affected by water… Within a short space of time I made two flights, one in a French aeroplane, another in a British machine. In the French machine, a biplane, I took my seat ahead of the pilot. At my feet was a glass panel through which I could always look down to earth.The machine had two engines of about seventy-five horse power each… [The English machine] was capable of going over 100 miles an hour …, the single engine exceedingly powerful.This time I sat behind the pilot… The apparatus about our seats resembled the dashboard of a modern motor car. There were gauges which marked how fast the wind was blowing, how fast we were going, the speed of the engine, and our height at any given time… One of the officers had lent me a heavy leather coat, a cap which fitted completely over the head, and a pair of goggles and mittens. After I had drawn a leather belt across my chest and fastened it with due care, the signal was given. One turn of the propeller and our engine was spinning – 83 –
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at a loud rate, driving a shaft of air behind that made breathing most difficult.The suffocation and noise were barely noticeable after we had risen a short distance from the ground. I do not think it could have been more than six or seven minutes before we were nearly 9,000 feet in the air… When we were over 9,000 feet high the engine sputtered a few times and stopped, causing a rapid descent, which I welcomed heartily owing to the intense cold of the higher altitude.We came down in little more than two minutes.The pressure on the ears was very painful, and I suffered from a headache for the rest of the day…
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69. “FRENCH PREPARE FOR LEAN DAYS,” Toronto Globe, 16 November 1916, p.11. Paris, Nov.15. Under a Government decree which is about to be signed, France is to begin a series of war economies.A National Board of Supervision, presided over by ex-President Armand Fallières, will be invested with large powers in an effort to stop waste and to compel savings in the use of coal, light and provisions. Shops under the provisions of the decree will begin closing at 6 o’clock this evening, and restaurants and cafés will shut their doors at 9:30 p.m. instead of 10:30 p.m. Theatres will be closed on Mondays. This includes the operas. Moving-pictures will be closed Tuesdays and café concerts and music halls on Wednesdays… France has no cause to fear a coal famine. Manufacturers, including those working for the national defence, will have an ample supply of coal, according to a statement made today by Minister of Public Works [Marcel] Sembat to the Chamber of Deputies, which adopted the first clauses of a bill which would fix maximum retail prices of coal and other combustibles and regulate their sale during the war. M. Sembat said the price of coal had increased from eighty-one francs per ton in April 1915 to 140 francs per ton in May [1916]. France was able, however, to economize on the importation of coal … [and] … the production of French coal had been greatly increased. [But] it was still insufficient, and the supply was dominated by the question of labor. M. Sembat urged the sending from the trenches to the mines of the greatest number of miners possible. – 84 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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The prospect of greatly diminished lighting has caused a sudden hoarding of candles, oil and acetylene. Shopkeepers either were sold out today or were dealing with long lines of people waiting to make purchases.The Government measures are largely precautionary, and are taken to remind the people of the prospect of a long war and the necessity of forming the habit of conserving their resources…
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70. “RHEIMS CATHEDRAL LIABLE TO COLLAPSE,” New York Times, 20 November 1916, p.13. Rheims, Nov.4. On the first day of November the thousandth German shell struck the cathedral of Rheims. Ever since the recent French drive at Verdun, salvos of shell have been poured daily into Rheims, many striking the cathedral. Four of the flying buttresses supporting the roof and nave have been demolished and several others hit. As the weight of the stone roof, which is sixty centimeters in thickness, is borne almost entirely by these flying buttresses, the danger of its fall has become imminent… The fears of the authorities have been increased by the unusually severe rainy season, which this year has been uninterrupted for many weeks.The timber and leaden roofs of the Cathedral having been destroyed early in the bombardment, the rain falls directly into the building through the shell holes in the stone roof and washes away layer after layer of the stone of the interior, leaving muddy puddles on the floor, and gradually percolating through to the crypt and foundations… The Associated Press correspondent, who at the beginning of the war was one of the first to be allowed to witness the destruction caused by the German shells, was again granted permission to view the interior. Inside, every particle of woodwork except a few splintered stalls and the pulpit has been removed in order to avert danger from fire.The bare cathedral could thus be seen in all its beautiful architectural lines.The unique rose window above the front portal, whose stained glass was considered as the finest specimen of that art, is in a sad state of destruction. Most of the panes have disappeared, and those which remain hang to the leaden frames only awaiting an extra shock of vibration to fall.The bells in the belfry are held in their places by ropes, for shells have destroyed their supports. Fragments of statuary strew the floor. – 85 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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Outside, the main portals are now protected by sandbags, but all their stone ornamentation disappeared during the first bombardment. All around the roof the delicate stone colonnades show signs of toppling over. The bishop’s house by the side of the cathedral has almost disappeared, and every house in the direct line of the fire from the German batteries is a mere shell. The population, which before the war was considerably more than 100,000, has been reduced to approximately 18,000. Stores still keep open in some of the streets, but whenever the arrival of a salvo of shells from a German battery announce that the town is about to submit to a new bombardment, these are closed and the proprietors as well as the other inhabitants retreat to their cellars. Some of those, however, who have remained in the town since the Germans evacuated it, have become so accustomed to the danger that they decline to leave their work unless the shelling becomes unusually severe. For this reason scarcely ever does a bombardment occur without causing some casualties among the civil population.
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71. “FRANCE COPIES GERMAN SYSTEM IN TRADE PLANS,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 21 November 1916, p.14. Paris, Oct.20. Although they don’t like you to say so, the French are taking a leaf out of Germany’s book in preparing for the commercial tomorrow. Many of their recent steps might be considered mere imitations of German methods, such as the efforts to minimize their cotton importation by the cultivation of typha, a plant flourishing in wet and marshy ground and furnishing cellulose in the same quantity as cotton. [I]n 1913 France imported 268,255 tons of cotton, which amounted to almost $100,000,000. Since the war, experiments have been tried with the typha pod, which have given satisfaction both in nitrates for explosives and in fiber materials. It is claimed that there are seventy-nine types of this plant, which furnish, according to their quality, everything from coarse jute to finest cotton… There are already many after-the-war occupations springing up in France, and these are invariably trades monopolized before the war by Germans. French soldiers, deformed on account of amputations, are being – 86 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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taught these trades which bring in good incomes. Retouching photographs, making false teeth, manufacture of artificial limbs, winding of electric bobbins—all of these were “made in Germany.” The newest trade to appear during the last three months is the making of thermometers. Naturally there has been an unbelievable demand for thermometers since the outbreak of war. France alone has used 540,000 of them.The supply was small. So this summer a quest was made among the German prisoners. Fiftyfive glassblowers were found and seven thermometrists.They were installed in [a military facility] just outside of Paris, and as each of these seven men had a different method, the French apprentices have already mastered seven distinct fashions of making and filling these delicate instruments… The minister of commerce, Marcel Sembat, … is organizing under the government a national committee on “Tourisme”—or post-bellum sightseeing.This is to be a serious and carefully managed undertaking. It means the conservation of various sites of famous battles, the reconstruction of ancient houses and landmarks, and the building of new hotels to house the tourists. At Meaux, the center of the battle of the Marne district, the site has already been purchased and plans are being drawn up for the construction of a large, modern hotel similar to Versailles or Fontainebleau. There will be similar hotels at such war famed towns as Arras, Reims,Amiens, Senlis, and many others… There is one need of France, though, which should be attended to at once, and that is the replanting of her forests. It is impossible to travel through France today without noticing and worrying about the bare spaces that the needs of war have made all along the automobile roads in the country, along the banks of the scores of little rivers in central France. The construction of that series of trenches from Dunkirk to Basle, the thousands of kilometers of new or reconstructed railroads, the refugees’ barrack homes, the hangars, the shelters, the wooden forts—all of these have sadly impoverished the countryside of France.
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72. “WHITE PLAGUE IS CALLED FRANCE’S GREATEST PERIL,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 24 November 1916, p.12. Paris, Oct.31.The most vital, the most important, the fundamental question which France faces at this moment is the treatment of her tubercular victims.Already there are over 100,000 soldiers released from the front, receiving no pension from the government, living as best they may, either in their own homes, thus spreading the disease among their children and their friends, or housed in some wretched room in a poor quarter of the city, trying vainly to seek work… A friend of mine calls them the poor relations of glory. What is the use to talk about a new France after the war? What use crying for more children and larger families; talking about premiums to be paid mothers and care of state children, when the fundamental trouble … is that the father or the mother or both are consumptive? Tuberculosis is the scourge—the plague—of France. It is so usual, so common, that practically nothing is done to cure it in the smaller districts. A man or woman contracts it and regards it as natural, as inevitable, as incurable as any physical infirmity or deformity incapable of being cured. Professor Landouzy, speaking in the senate, cries out in the face of this astounding lethargy, … “Will you ever comprehend that bound up with the tuberculosis which kills, good year or bad year, 100,000 French citizens, are all the interests of our national security, our national power and wealth, as well as the future of our race?”… And yet, so far, nothing has been done, or practically nothing… Among the civilians in Paris hospitals, 37 per cent are suffering from tuberculosis.A doctor who [examines] children brought from the villages near the lines, says 25 per cent of them already are touched by the disease, and that another 15 per cent, on account of their lack of nutrition, are liable to it.This is the coming generation in France. It is all France has to count on, to hope on. It must be cared for…
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73. “CRIPPLES MAKE OF ‘GAY PAREE’ A SORROWING CITY,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 9 December 1916, p.16. Paris, Nov.20. I suppose you are wondering if the everyday Paris I’ve been talking about doesn’t mean that one sees a lot of wounded—scores of “mutilés” as they call them, cruelly, it seems to me. Unfortunately it does… [T]he young fellows and the poor, pale men of 40, minus an arm or a leg or with faces horribly distorted, these you can’t pass without a tremor, a sudden tightening at the heart, and for a bit, lovely, hazy Paris loses its beauty… It is something to be ashamed of, but only to be overcome with difficulty—that first instinctive shrinking from deformity or horrible mutilation. I am so angry with myself every time it happens to me, but I can’t overcome it. I can better stand the terrible wounds I see in the hospitals. They seem less personal—more a part of surgery. And always I think to myself as I see these poor disfigured bodies and faces, “What will it be like after the war? Now these men wear the uniform.They have the braid of achieved service on their sleeves, they have medals of acknowledged bravery over their hearts. But what will it be when they are all reduced to the leveling, forgetting monotony of civilian clothes? … Will people shudder at these terrible disfigurements as one shuddered at the mutilated beggars of peace time?” The Invalides, where the most seriously wounded of the pensioned soldiers live, is just a couple of blocks from my apartment. One morning … I heard the click, click of sticks on the pavement.Across the square was a young boy hobbling cheerfully along on four sticks. Both legs were cut off below the hips and the red trousers of his uniform were cut and tucked in above the stump of the wooden leg, rolling thick above the knees.The canes that he held in his hands were just as thick as the wooden legs, and his progress was noisy and slow. Just as he passed the entrance to the Chambre des Deputés a little bunch of violets … dropped from his tunic and fell to the pavement. He leaned against the wall and, using his two canes as sticks, tried to catch the violets between them and lift them up… He is just one of the Parisians I am trying to show you…
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74. “AMERICAN WORK IN FRANCE,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 17 December 1916, p.5. I have just returned from an expedition to Savoie with two members of the Paris committee of the American Fund for French Wounded… We went from the Seine valley up the Yonne and over into the Saone towards the slopes of the Alps passing through the old historic towns of Sens, Joigny, Auxerre … past the church of Bru to Aix-les-Bains and Chambery… There was an abundance, even a richness, of merchandise in the shops of the many small towns through which our route lay; well stocked food shops of all sorts; nourishing and inviting meals at every country inn… There is a shortage of sugar and coal in Paris and some talk in the newspapers of “meatless” days; … but from what I could see on this long trip there is no shortage of any kind yet in the country. Not even of gasoline… There are eleven military hospitals in Chambery alone. Savoie … has not suffered directly from the war and can thus do its share in looking out for the wounded. It happens to be the hospital district for those sections of the army that are fighting from Verdun to the Vosges. Consequently it has had its full quota of wounded during the prolonged contest about Verdun and most of those still in the Chambery hospitals were wounded at Verdun. Unfortunately there are many cases of tuberculosis also for which the medical service is beginning to make provision in separate sanatoria… [Owing to space restrictions] I must content myself with a little picture of the delightful old French doctor, the “médecin chef ” of the town… His son was killed in the first weeks of the war while he was busy making hospitals out of nothing, providing thousands of beds in a place where there were only dozens. He has never ceased his labors.As he stood there in the hotel with his shabby old military cloak, his worn red trousers, his fine sad face—a face that would never again be anything but sad—he seemed the figure of all that is best in France—of a simple dignity and kindliness, and of a boundless grief.
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75. “FRANCE CENSORS MAIL TO GUARD ITS OWN,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 29 December 1916, p.8. Paris, 12 December.About a quarter of my letters come to me a little late with a white slip pasted over one end that has been cut, with the printed notice,“Opened by the Military Authority.” I suppose all of my outgoing mail is treated in the same way, held up for a few days and looked into… The censoring of printed matter is another thing and that is what interests me enough to write about. Obviously anything printed which might give damaging information to the enemy … cannot be tolerated… There are reasons … why [even] personal or newspaper opinion should not be published unrestrictedly. Some of them had never occurred to me until I talked with an official who has something to do with the publishing of information about the war. In the first place, … Germany is the most indefatigable user of the printed word. She works every possible avenue that may influence foreign opinion. Germany tries to work on the public opinion of France, for example, through her control of certain press channels in adjoining neutral countries. It is only natural that the French authorities should try to prevent this propaganda from seeping through into their own country to weaken confidence and create discouragement or to foster false hopes and fatal illusions in regard to the general situation. But the most plausible reason for controlling public expression of opinion is this: About 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 of voters are virtually deprived of the right of free speech.They are the citizens mobilized in the nation’s armies… By their position they are prevented from expressing in any public manner their views.What right, then, has a weak minority of citizens left at home … freely to express its views, [particularly] when these views … might, indeed, work to destroy the efforts of that responsible majority of fighting citizens?
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76. “WITHIN THE LINES,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 31 December 1916, p.5. Paris, Dec.13. I have been staying for a few days in an old chateau within easy reach of the German guns across the river Aisne, not far from Soissons.This section of the long trench wall is very “calm” … [b]ut “calm” at any part of the front is a strictly relative term… The nature of the country into which the opposing armies settled after the battle of the Aisne does not give any promise of activity to either side… So for two long years and more the French have faced the hated antagonist in the same trenches with practically no Map 3.2 Paris-Soissons change… C—— is a very typical small village up at the front. Originally it had 600 or 700 inhabitants, with a pretty little church, a schoolhouse, a town hall. Now it has hardly a hundred inhabitants … of whom thirty are children. Not a building but bears its scar from bombardment and a good half are pretty thoroughly demolished.The communication trenches, all carefully labeled and each with its telephone wires like a play street, zigzag through the gardens and around the church… Much sadder than the village of C——, where some semblance of movement and life still remain, were two other villages nearer the line of fire which I visited that same afternoon. This time we had to leave the motor a long way from our destination and enter a boyau [communication trench] on the crest of a great rolling hill which had been crisscrossed with trenches. It was all wild grass—grazing land, I thought, until I was informed that once these rolling downs were rich wheat and beet fields. This is another of the heavy charges which must be met after the war— the cost of restoring these waste lands along the trench walls, hundreds of
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miles of them, to their formerly productive state, filling in the deep ditches and in some way obliterating the scars of frequent bombardments. With a battery of French seventy-fives barking sharply over our heads we slid down the slippery boyau into the village of X——, which is immediately on the front line along the Aisne. It was nothing but a mass of walls and a labyrinth of trenches, with not a whole building standing so far as I could see. It had been gradually turned into one of those impromptu small fortresses of which there are so many from the Vosges to Dunkirk. As we turned and twisted through the coils of the labyrinth, passing under houses, through dark cellars and skirting the blackened walls of the village school, I saw an old man with a bundle of fodder in his arms, followed by a bent old woman, who paused to look at us wistfully. “So there are still some civilians left even up here in the first line!” I exclaimed. “O, yes, a few,” one of the department officials … replied.“We give them what help we can and they stay on as long as there is a cellar to sleep in…” Then we entered another village, also in the first line system of trenches, which had been pretty well smashed… There were thirty-five people still left in the village, the mayor told us, of whom three were children.The mayor put on his sabots [clogs] and led us up the street now safe because of the gloom to a ruined church.This square towered church of P—— is very ancient and very lovely—or was… Most of the nave and all the interior have been shot away in the gradual bombardment. There remain the gray walls of the beautiful tower, and how much longer these will stand nobody can tell. By the time we had finished our examination of the church of P—— it was so dark that our motor had ventured down to the outskirts of the village, and we were glad enough after the miles of walking in the muddy trenches to be carried back up the hill in a powerful car… Soon we were dining by candle light in the … chateau. Outside, a dripping mist wrapped the earth, insuring another “calm” night. And thus life goes on under the unnatural condition of war, half accepted as the natural state.
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1917 February
Germany adopts unrestricted submarine warfare
March
Allied gains around Péronne, Chaulnes, Noyon Ribot Cabinet
April
America enters the war Nivelle offensive between Soissons and Reims
May
Outbreak of French army mutinies General Pétain succeeds Nivelle
June
American troops arrive in France
September
Painlevé Cabinet France’s new legislation on war orphans
November
Clemenceau Cabinet
77. “RAVISHED BY GERMANS, SHE MAY KILL CHILD,” Toronto Globe, 25 January 1917, p.3. Paris, Jan.24. It is not a crime for a mother to kill a child born as a result of the mother’s being violated by Germans.A Paris jury so decided yesterday. The case in which this decision was reached was that of Josephine Barthélmy, twenty years old. She is a domestic at Gennevilliers. She is the eldest of five children. Her father is a widower, and one of her brothers has – 94 –
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been killed while serving in the trenches in defence of France. Josephine’s child was born on the fifteenth of August last, and she killed it immediately.The case came to trial yesterday in the Paris courts. Only after the greatest difficulty was the woman persuaded to speak. Then she said: “I killed my child because the father was a German.” She said she was a servant at the military hospital at Chambley, which is in the invaded regions.All the orderlies there were German soldiers. In December 1915, eight of these orderlies attacked her in the chapel of the hospital. Last January she was repatriated, and got a place as a servant at Gennevilliers where her sister lived… In closing his plea, Josephine’s lawyer in an impassioned speech appealed to the jurors as Frenchmen to say if they would condemn her for not letting live the child of men who were killing their sons. The problem of disposing of the children born of German outrages has been one of the most pitiful with which France has had to deal since the war.The Government long since took the most humane measures that seem possible. It provided for the rearing of such children, and offered means by which the mothers could turn them over to the State without revealing their own names.
78. “DOES MIRACLES WITH SOLDIERS,” Toronto Globe, 30 January 1917, p.14. Paris, Jan.9. I saw today in a hospital near Paris seeming miracles in operation… The man who accomplishes daily this seemingly impossible thing is Dr.Alexis Carrel, a French surgeon who, at the outbreak of the war was in charge of the Rockefeller Institute and who crossed the Atlantic in early August 1914 to place his professional services at the disposal of the French Ministry of War. Since [then, he] has been in charge of Auxiliary Hospital No.21 at Compiègne… With him I was escorted from ward to ward … where I saw wounded soldiers on the certain road to recovery. In most cases they would have been in other hospitals lacking an arm or a leg. In other cases they would have been dead and buried. [Dr. Carrel explains]:“Every wound from bullet or bayonet, and from shell fragment in particular, receives automatically, in the very nature of the injuring substance, the source of infection; … and infection is the – 95 –
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cause of more … deaths than wounds themselves.We remove infection if it exists when the patient reaches us …; then we banish new infection. Nature does the rest. Our method is first surgical, then … antiseptical… We first remove every iota of foreign matter or substance that could become the source of infection in a wound.To accomplish this, we deliberately enlarge the wound itself at the first operation… When the operation has been performed and the wound is surgically clean, we place the patient upon his bed and rig up this apparatus over him.” Over every bed hung a glass, funnel-shaped vessel. From one side was suspended a small atomizer bulb. From the bottom of the glass receptacle a flexible rubber tube ran down to the patient and disappeared … through the bandages into the wound. “The glass,” continued Dr. Carrel, “contains an antiseptic solution that is sure death to a germ.” The end of the tube entering the wound radiates into a number of smaller tubes [or sprays] with slightly bulbous ends, perforated like a garden-hose sprinkler. “Into the wound … we insert the tube and sprays, the latter in greater or less quantity as the wound demands. And then we begin a system of periodic spraying by pressing the atomizer bulb at regular intervals… We have never had a case where amputation became necessary after we have started upon the method I describe.”
79. “FRANCE LISTS EVERY MAN FOR SERVICE,” by Capt. Henry J. Reilly, Chicago Tribune, 17 February 1917, p.4. Paris, Feb.16. During every January all of the mayors of the communes publish lists of young men reaching the age of 20 during the year. Later a council composed of three civil, three military officers, and one doctor divides them into classes according to their physical condition. The first is for the fighting branches of the army, the second for auxiliary branches, the third for reexamination in the following year, and the fourth entirely exempt. The third and fourth classes must appear later before another commission of three doctors for a final decision. Individuals of all classes have the right to protest their classifications. The council decides these cases at public hearings.Those of the third class – 96 –
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found fit at the succeeding year’s examination serve three, two, or one year, depending upon their being passed in the second, third, or fourth year after the first examination. Members of the fourth class are examined at the ages of 24, 29, and 35, and if fit are assigned to the corresponding class of the reserve, and assigned duties fitting their physique, mentality, and profession. In the case of two brothers, the youngest is privileged to postpone service until the elder has finished. Supporters of families serve, but each family receives a franc daily, plus half a franc for each child under 16 years of age, during the period of service.A council of four civil officials decides when payment is justified. Those passing the entrance examinations of designated schools and colleges have a special military training leading to reserve lieutenancies. If they fail or leave they must finish the balance of the three years’ service in the ranks.
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80. “GAY PAREE NOW WAR WORN CITY,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 17 February 1917, p.12. Paris, Feb.1. It costs 3 cents to send a letter even a block in Paris, and it takes sometimes twenty-four hours for it to get there—but that also happens in Chicago. When you call central on the telephone you may as well continue what you are doing, for the young woman’s answer will not come for a long time, and as likely as not she will say, sweetly, without moving her lips from the instrument, “Pas libre, m’sieu.” [Busy, sir.] That also happens in Chicago. But over here one doesn’t swear, because one knows that there aren’t enough women clerks to go around in the post and telephone offices… It is the same way with the railroad trains; they are getting fewer and slower all the time, and uneasy lies the head that travels at night, for the roadbeds are like corduroy. The government wants you to think twice before you buy a railroad ticket—to save your money for a war loan, to save motive power in hauling you on a useless errand, to save labor, which is hard to find. So you put off your journey or take it at stage coach pace. – 97 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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The cabs all date from before the war, long before. I often wonder what sort of engines they can have, for they labor on somehow, sounding as if they were at the last gasp. But you are lucky if you can find a taxi or a horse cab even, especially when it rains, as it always does, or at night, or when the firemen have given the Valkyrie toot for Zeppelins. Ordinarily there are three fares at least waiting for a cab.And the taxi drivers at night discuss with you courteously your destination and your payment. If they don’t approve of the quarter where you live they wave a hand and roll away. Then you take the underground, which travels intermittently, jammed to the roof, and gets you within a mile or so of where you want to go. It’s war—that is sufficient answer and explanation for everything from a cold room to a newsless newspaper—”C’est la guerre!”… I could go on enumerating the signs of running down that one encounters in a country whose chief business for two and half years has been war.The surprising thing to me is not that so much has gone that once was taken for granted as necessary to human comfort, but that more has not already gone in obedience to the demands of war. And I am surprised how little difference it really makes to the total of living, the loss of these daily conveniences which every good American considers as indispensable…
81. “FRANCE IN GRIP OF COAL FAMINE,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 18 February 1917, i, p.15. Paris, Jan.28. It is cold.The Seine, which threatened a flood all the early winter, preventing regular coal transport by barges, now threatens to freeze, which also will delay coal deliveries. Coal, which has been costly and hard to get, becomes almost impossible to find. Women stand in line for hours before shops where the municipality sells coal in small quantities. Even the better hotels and restaurants are beginning to be unnaturally cold. Even the rich cannot much longer buy exemption from the hardships of war time. It is cold inside as well as outside.Then thanks to the shortage of coal, there is less gas and electricity; one appreciates at last those primitive necessities of civilized life—light and heat.There is more or less recrimi– 98 –
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nation in the papers and in the chamber of deputies. Everybody wants to find some one to blame for the general discomfort… The lack of coal will become more and more evident, as the munition factories eat up what coal can be dug out of the mines.Another reason for believing that this war cannot endure through a fourth winter. At last the little cake, my old, much loved friend, has received the long threatened blow. Beginning with next month the little cake must go into retirement for two days each week… It is to save sugar and flour and eggs, too, that his doom is sealed… The truth is that Paris has not yet had any real war hardships of food— this is the beginning. How will Parisians take it? At first jauntily, and then with more or less evasion. No Frenchman believes in the possibility of a serious food shortage such as he gloatingly reads of about his enemies… But one cannot get away from the fact that too many people are busy killing each other and the world is destined to go hungry before long if some of them are not allowed to dig in the fields and raise foodstuffs…
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82. “STRICTER FOOD CONTROL PROMISED IN FRANCE,” by Robert Herrick, New York Times, 18 February 1917, v, p.12. The life of that French delicacy known as le petit gâteau is again threatened. It has been rumored often before that the war would demand the sacrifice of this dainty, but although its price has risen from 2 cents to 5, the little cake still issues from the pastry shop windows almost as abundantly and in as great variety as in the far-off days of peace; Columbin and Rumpelmeyer, not to mention numberless humbler haunts of cake lovers, still do a flourishing business at cake (English tea) time.The little cake, I think, will find some way of surviving the edict of banishment. The little cake is but a symbol—a grave symbol. Of all the warring peoples, the French upper and middle classes—the cake-eating classes— have felt the least physical distress or even change of habits due to the agonizing ordeal of this war. Strange as it may seem, paradoxical, sinister perhaps, the nation that has bled so heroically, that has made such immense efforts to repel the invader from its land, that has been most crippled by his rapes, is that one where, behind the lines, the war is felt materially least of – 99 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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all; where one can, if so disposed, lead a life most nearly like what it would have been before the conflict; where personal habits, comforts, occupations, are least disturbed. Even in the poorer, cakeless classes high wages and constant employment prevent widespread distress. Only the dispossessed, the homeless refugees from the invaded provinces and the trench zone have felt the full hardship of war, and for these a generous charity has mitigated the tragedy, made it less than what the Belgians, the Poles, the Serbs, and now the Rumanians must suffer. … [T]hus far no thorough measures of control, such as even England is adopting, have been applied in France. A stricter regime in this as in other matters is promised with the new Briand Ministry.The freedom that the French have so far enjoyed from material hardships is due more to the timidities of the Government—to political considerations—than to the temper of the people. Neither the Viviani nor the Briand Government has really trusted the people—the bravest and the most intelligent people in the world. When a shortage of meat was threatened a year and a half ago, the Government chose to import frozen meats via England, rather than to prescribe meatless days to the civilian population. No thorough check has been put on the production of spirits. In many respects the aim of the French War Government would seem to be to keep the people contented by encouraging, as far as possible, the conditions of “normal” life in the abnormal state of war. Latterly, as uneasiness with this policy has manifested itself, the Government has exercised a relentless censorship on the press, not only on all war news but on expressions of opinion, especially such as were adverse to the Government. Not only has this tendency to “manage” the public been evident in food and luxury matters, but also in the treatment of the war bill. Taxes today have not been seriously increased over what they were before the war.The Government has thought it best to put off the evil day of meeting the war bill until “afterward,” and even now intelligent Frenchmen can be found who indulge themselves in the illusion that a prostrate Germany will liquidate a good part of the debt by a generous indemnity. Very recently there has been some discussion of new taxes to meet in part the enormous outgo, but they are still in the stage of discussion. Sim– 100 –
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ilarly, the Government has encouraged the very natural desire to revive and to extend, wherever possible, private industry.This policy of “business as usual” has still its defenders even in the face of Germany’s latest move to convert herself into an armed camp with but the one purpose—of waging a war. France is not yet quite ready to surrender to the Moloch of modern war all of her precious personal liberties.Yet the very general criticism of the Government for its lack of decision and firmness implies nothing less than the giving up still further of private privileges.Whatever sacrifice the situation demands the people are abundantly ready to make, and they are blaming their Government for not leading them along the stony road that ends in victory.That is the explanation of the recent secret sessions and the reconstructed Ministry which Briand has finally arranged. … Both England and France have evinced in the last six months a realization that the war cannot be won without the complete utilization of national energies under skilled, powerful direction. Hence Lloyd George, who is as much a hero in France as in England.1 The French are seeking their own Lloyd George to give vigor and direction to the dispersed national energies, to save the waste of effort of which they are fully aware. If Briand or any other of the old parliamentarians had the personal power, he could easily make himself dictator, or whatever form of absolutism he chose to assume, in order to complete the task of national salvation. But Briand is of the Asquith rather than the Lloyd George type;2 the skillful manipulator of Parliaments and maker of Cabinets rather than the bold creator of policies. His new Cabinet, for which the country waited nearly a fortnight in anxious silence, proves to be little more than a shuffling of the old cards. … May the nation not be betrayed in the final crisis by an incompetent Government, unable to focus the still abundant energies of the people, unwilling to trust them, to demand of them all, civilians above all, the ultimate necessary sacrifices!
1. David Lloyd George, energetic wartime Minister of Munitions, then Prime Minister, December 1916 to October 1922. 2. Lord Herbert Asquith, British Prime Minister, 1908-1916. – 101 –
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83. “FRENCH DEPEND ON “SYSTÈME D” TO WIN THE WAR,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 19 February 1917, p.4. Paris, Jan.27. The French have an amusing word which these days is in constant use—the verb débrouiller and its derivatives. It means literally to get oneself out of a tangle or mess—a mixture of hustle and improvise, which is wholly French. The “système D,” as it is jocularly called, has perforce been in constant operation since the invasion, when France found herself badly crippled, with iron and coal mines and a good part of her factories taken from her… The other day I visited a vast establishment in the outskirts of Paris for the making of shells. It is a wonderful example of “système D”.A year ago there was nothing there.Two months after ground was broken for the first buildings the concern was turning out shells. Today it is making 32,000 shells a day… Nine thousand women and 3,000 men are employed in the acres of buildings… Women run the machines, but as a rule men do the harder work of lifting the pieces of white hot steel, the more skilled tasks of testing the metal, and for every new process there is a foreman to direct the work. The women as a rule are remarkably healthy, strong, capable, and quick. They earn no less than 8 francs a day.The women munition workers have learned to strike for higher wages; they cannot be as easily managed as the men who would be sent into the trenches if they made trouble. The making of lead bullets to fit the shrapnel shells was the most impressive of all the processes that I saw. A half dozen immense stamping machines stamped the bullets out of dozens of ropes of lead with a terrible rhythm. Millions of bullets rolled out of the hoppers. These skillful machines stamping out the missiles of death are also ending warfare; it is becoming too professional. It is no longer war, it is suicide on a vast scale.
84. “FRANCE PREPARES FOR TOURISTS,” by Sterling Heilig, Chicago Tribune, 11 March 1917, ii, p.5. Paris, Feb.21. A year ago it was announced that 7,000 passages had been booked by Americans on the first ships to leave for Europe as soon as the – 102 –
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war should be over. Six months ago it was said that there were 70,000 thus inscribed. Today the number is put at 700,000—for which, of course, there would not be enough tourist boats in the world… Every one who can will wish to see the great battlefields of north France and Belgium while they are still fresh, and travel along part, at least, of the 600 miles of trenches. One thing certain is that the American wave will rush to France; and one thing admirable is that France, in the midst of trying and bloody war, has already begun organizing to receive the tide handsomely at its flood. I asked and obtained an … interview on this subject.The French foreign office sent me to the president of the national office of touring, which the government has begun. Do you realize?—a cabinet member for touring? The post has come into existence practically with the war. It is held by Fernand David, a member of parliament and former minister in different cabinets of agriculture and commerce. “The national office of touring,” he said, “has been working several months in connection with the Touring, the railway and steamship companies, and hotel syndicates, to properly receive the flood of war tourists, particularly Americans… In many places the earlier war tourists must be content with long one story barrack hotels of simple boards, but very hygenic, with brand new furniture and fittings throughout… Of course, in greater towns, like Reims,Verdun, Bar-le-Duc, etc there will be great hotels springing up rapidly. “[As for the smaller towns and villages] there is no question of making sumptuous hotels at once all over the zone of the armies… One great resource which we have in our hands and is being organized at this moment is to lodge as many as possible with the actual inhabitants of the regions—those whose houses happen to be still intact. In each commune near to the trench line we are constituting a lodging syndicate. It will be particularly interesting because tourists can thus often talk with people who have lived through the war… “[All the highlights of the battle front will be listed in guide books]; and we are organizing automobile services to permit visitors to take such tours across the front and be lodged comfortably… Also we are establishing a map, in several languages, so that visitors can follow, mile by mile, the expanse of the war, and keep in touch. Again the map will be useful in Paris, to choose what sectors tourists wish to visit… – 103 –
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85. “AFTER THE PEACE” and “THE HELPING HAND,” by Robert Herrick, Chicago Tribune, 18 March 1917, ii, p.5 and 25 March 1917, ii, p.5. Paris, Jan.28. [Among the things that post-war France will have to address is the] physical devastation, the ugly scar that runs in a wavering line across Europe from Switzerland to the North Sea—sometimes broader … sometimes narrower … but never less than a good twenty miles of terrible desolation. Ruined homes, ruined churches, obliterated little villages, ruined farmhouses, and always ruined land—a black band of waste which, if it has been the scene of the greatest heroism and the noblest sacrifices that humanity has ever known, is also a terrible indictment of human futility, the incriminating record of man’s vilest passions and abasement… As I walked through the little village of F——, with my host, the [coming post-war] problems loomed large and pressing. Here was a little country community of 420 souls (before the war) now reduced to fourteen. Not six buildings of the village have escaped serious damage. More than half are utterly uninhabitable in their present condition: the stones of which they were made still lie nearby, when they have not been carted off for defense works or to wall in soldiers’ graves… Even where the semblance of a building still stands, it is usually nothing more than a hollow shell, roofless, windowless, gutted of its belongings, filled with melancholy debris of what was once a home; filthy and neglected in many cases after three years’ occupation by troops… St. C——, two miles farther down the valley, was, before the war, completely agricultural. Of its three hundred inhabitants but two or three remain, and the silence of death reigns in its empty streets, within the walls of the ruined houses… I stood inside such a little home in the deserted village of St. C—— the other day… The squalor of the whole gutted inside was visible at a glance. A shell had neatly stripped the roof of its slates, revealing the gray winter sky through the thin rafters. The walls were stained by fire—probably due to the same shell—and the water of subsequent storms. The wall paper hung in dirty festoons. The rooms still held the rubbish of what had been family possessions, the strings of a piano, chairs, a table, mattresses, etc. Behind the little house stretched a small garden, with graveled paths, rose bushes and fruit trees – 104 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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that had been cut by the hail of missiles which in Emperor William’s “sacred fury” had descended upon this guiltless and defenseless village. Some of the smaller hamlets in the valley have escaped destruction from shelling, but after the occupation of the country by three different armies very little remains but the buildings, and occasionally they are smashed by stray shells that have dropped into them by accident. This is but one small canton of one department, a pinprick on the map of this immense battle ground. Other more terribly devastated localities, far greater in numbers and in amount of loss, might easily be found: I have taken one of the least dramatic regions… It is just the insignificant average of a country district which in the total toll of misery bulks so large! Take the small canton that I have briefly described and multiply it by ten thousand and some idea of the total picture may be had.
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86. “PRICES IN PARIS,” by Sterling Heilig, Chicago Tribune, 17 June 1917, viii, p.5. Paris, June 2. I prepared this morning’s breakfast at home by stealing three lumps of sugar at the Grand café yesterday afternoon. (We are on sugar cards in France, not bread cards—yet. Each person has the right to buy three pounds of sugar a month.) It was my sugar. I had a right to use all five lumps which the (well tipped) waiter served with my coffee-crème, price 12 cents, and a microscopic brioche (muffin) [price] 8 cents… I ate two—16 cents, plus 12 cents, plus 10 cents tip (we sat an hour), total 33 cents, to steal three lumps of sugar! … True, the famine is supposed to be due only in 1918; but thousands of families look far ahead—which makes food hoarding runs on grocery stores, and higher, higher prices… So I went provisioning—to hoard. At the best English grocery of central Paris there was no macaroni, no breakfast cereals, no crackers, no biscuits.They had sold $300 worth of crackers in the two days following the French government’s announcement that all such “biscuiterie” must cease. They had no molasses, no chocolate, no salt codfish, no dried beef or tinned beef. All was gathered in by hoarders! … But I said to myself:“I’ll buy a red Dutch cannonball cheese—and hoard it!”Around in the Rue de Sèze is one of the fine crèmeries of Paris. – 105 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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I found the stock beautiful—the prices also.They were letting go Gruyère cheese at 82 cents a pound (formerly 34 cents), red Dutch cannonballs at 90 cents (formerly 35 cents), fine Brie, $1 a pound (formerly 40 cents), and the best cream Camemberts, 40 cents each… A really fine leg of young, fat, tender mutton costs at least $1.80, which comes to 60 cents a pound. Mutton chops can be had as cheap as 10 cents each (previously 6 to 7 cents) but you can guess how little meat goes with each. Good beefsteak is from 48 to 55 cents a pound… Ordinary pieces of veal cost 60 cents a pound (36 cents previously); the cheapest pot-à-feu boiling beef (formerly 13 cents) is 36 cents the pound, and ragout mutton 36 cents (previously 15 cents). France is on sugar cards. France is on gasoline cards. France is (practically) on coal cards—if you can find the coal. I know of clandestine buying, no receipt taken or given, at $70 a ton, when one has luck to find a venal vendor. Cakes, crackers, pies are practically taboo.Ahead, two meatless days a week in sight.Ahead, bread cards…
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87. “FRANCE’S RAIL PROBLEMS,” by Col. Henry J. Reilly, Chicago Tribune, 3 July 1917, p.8. In France the value of communications, as far as the mobilization and concentration of the army was concerned, was well understood prior to the war. The general staff had carefully worked out the whole matter down to the last detail. Every stationmaster in France had locked in his safe sealed instructions telling him exactly what to do from the first minute of the first day of mobilization… France has an excellent system of good highways, which has been highly developed throughout the country. Each year for a number of years prior to the war the French government would pick out some … large manufacturing concern and encourage it to construct trucks of a type satisfactory from a military point of view.The result was that when war was declared the military authorities were able immediately to obtain thousands of standardized trucks of several different makes… The defense of Verdun depended upon motor trucks primarily, because the railways running into this fortress passed too near the enemy lines. These trucks not only brought in supplies of all kinds but also troops and in some cases guns. – 106 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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The railway system in the north was considerably upset by the German invasion. However, new lines have been built in the rear of the army. Also, the development of the narrow gauge light railway has been tremendous, not only in the rear of the army but on the battlefield itself. However, … the belief that the war would be a short one [led to] a failure to estimate the tremendous amount of material and supplies of all kinds which the army would have to use… This, of course, included the failure to foresee that if the whole manhood of the nation was to be kept under arms for a period of years, the country could not produce what it would under normal circumstances and that this difference in production would have to be made up by importation, which would increase the amount of overseas transportation needed and the amount of land transportation between the seaports, the various centers of population, and the army at the front. The result of all this has been that the rolling stock and rights of way, due to the lack of maintenance, have deteriorated to an extent where immediate repairs must be made or traffic will be seriously interfered with… This congestion [contributes to] shortages [because] … in many of the ports more ships arrive than can be immediately unloaded, with the result that they are held up and, therefore, cannot make as many trips as would be the case if immediately unloaded.
88. “THE MOTHERS,” by Maurice Maeterlinck, London Daily Mail and reprinted in the Chicago Tribune, 15 July 1917, viii, p.5.3 It is they who bear the main burden of suffering in this war. In our streets and open spaces and all along the roads, in our churches, in our towns and villages, in every house we come into contact with mothers who have lost their sons or are living in anguish more cruel than the certainty of death. Let us try to understand their loss. They know what it means, but they do not tell the men. Their son is taken from them at the fairest moment of his life, when their own is in decline… He carries away with him all the future that his mother had remaining to her, all that she gave 3. Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), a Belgian poet, essayist and dramatist. – 107 –
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to him, and all his promise… He carries away with him something much more than himself: it is not his life only that comes to an end; it is numberless days that finish suddenly, a whole generation that becomes extinct, a long series of faces, of little fondling hands, of play and laughter, all of which fall at one blow on the battlefield… And yet they do not weep as mothers wept in former wars.All their sons disappear one by one, and we do not hear them complain or moan as in days gone by, when great sufferings … were enwrapped by the clamors and lamentations of the mothers. They do not assemble in the public places, they do not utter recriminations, they rail at no one, they do not rebel. They swallow their sobs and stifle their tears as though obeying a command which they have passed from one to the other, unknown to the men… What gives them this courage which astonishes our eyes? When the … most compassionate … among us meet one of these mothers … they can find hardly anything to say to her.They speak to her of the justice and beauty of the cause for which her hero fell, of the immense and necessary sacrifice, of the remembrance and gratitude of mankind, of the irreality of life… They add that the dead do not die, that they are not dead, … that all that we loved in them lingers on in our hearts so long as it is visited by our memory and revived by our love. But even while they speak they feel the emptiness of their speech. They are conscious that all this is true only for those whom death has not hurled into the abyss where words are nothing more than childish babble; that the most ardent memory cannot take the place of a dear reality which we touch with our hands or lips; and that the most exalted thought is as nothing compared with the daily going out and coming in, the familiar presence at meals, the morning and evening kiss, the fond embrace at the departure, and the intoxicating delight at the return. The mothers know and feel this better than we do; and that is why they do not answer our attempts at consolation and why they listen to them in silence, finding within themselves other reasons for living and hoping than those which we, vainly searching the whole horizon of human certainty and thought, try to bring them from the outside.They resume the burden of their days without telling us whence they derive their strength or teaching us the secret of their self-sacrifice, their resignation, and their heroism. – 108 –
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89. “FRANCE MUST EAT WAR BREAD OR NONE,” by Charles H. Grasty, New York Times, 21 July 1917, p.3. Paris, June 20.Throughout France the only bread one can now get is “war bread,” darker in color than ordinary white bread, the latter being absolutely prohibited.The war bread is palatable enough, and in fact corresponds closely to what we call brown bread or the English standard bread, that is, it is made from the whole meal rather than the fine white flour from which all the coarser part of the meal has been extracted. Formerly the white flour ground by millers only contained from 60 to 70 per cent of the wheat, the remainder, bran, etc, being set aside for the feeding of stock. But the regulations now provide that all millers must grind flour containing at least 85 per cent of the wheat, and, furthermore, introduce into their flour a proportion of substitute meals such as barley meal, oatmeal, cornmeal, or even rice meal…
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* * * One of the miseries of Paris is the telephone.They are not speeded up here on that particular item of life. Or perhaps it is the scarcity of help owing to the war. One blames everything that is out of joint on “la guerre.”The telephone girls who sit where they are visible to all are gentle, dovelike creatures, gowned in fluffy materials, who speak French as on the stage at the Comédie Française, but they do not hustle.Therefore it is well, when calling up a number, to take your book or newspaper with you to put in the time of waiting. * * * I learn that there have been tremendous economies in both France and England in slaughtering cattle and marketing meats. It is estimated that the saving amounts to ten pound in each hundred. It is mainly in conserving and recovering fats. Among other economic methods, plates from which meals have been eaten contribute what is left on them in fats through a process by which the grease is drained off of the dish water.
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90. “BABES OF FRANCE…,” by Joseph Pierson, Chicago Tribune, 20 August 1917, p.1. Paris,Aug.19. [With an American Red Cross delegation, in a town near Amiens] Once it was a town of 3,000 happy people. Now the streets are filled with rubbish. Pretty homes have been shattered by shell and dynamite. Parlor furniture is scatterd about. Ashes still remain in the grates standing among the debris… There is a faint odor of chemicals. It fills the air. The Germans had been gassing the town during the day… “What is this peculiar crooning I hear?” the American woman asked the captain.“The children of Map 4.1 Paris-Amiens France,” he replied. “… [T]hey’ve been in caves all day.They are happy because with the French back in this town they don’t have to stay in the caves all night, too…” Soon the party, equipped with shaded lanterns, stepped through the entrance of one of the shattered houses and down into the cellar [where] the entrances to the subterranean galleries were revealed… The passageways led from cellar to cellar, but so intense had the bombardment been that even the cellars provided no shelter, and the women and larger children had hollowed out with their hands individual caves, still deeper in the earth… The party found some babies 2 years old and less, who had never been out of their subterranean birthplaces.They were covered with scales, their skin was red with constant rash.Their eyes were caked.Their nurses feared to bring them suddenly into the sunlight because of the danger of blindness. Everywhere there was vermin, skin and intestinal disease, malnutrition and wide opened eyes of months of horror. Emerging from the caves in another part of town, the party found itself in a ruins where about 300 children were scattered about so the – 110 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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shells would not wipe them all out at once… In the dusk the children walked—picking their way through piles of stone—not audibly or visibly talking to each other, but all half humming or crooning their montonous, wordless, pitiful, penetrating sounds… There was no pitch to the tune, but overwhelming, depressing volume. None of the children smiled. Some had lost their minds through shell shock and wandered about in isolated spots. Others, maimed by explosions and splinters, or by convulsions caused by inhaled gases, limped about or lay on the banks. Some were startled by strangers. Others seemed dumb to all impressions. When order for evacuation came there was no joy. The children helped their grandmothers bring from the pits cherished articles saved from their broken homes, which they had dragged into hiding places beyond the reach of the German invaders. Soon all the children were separated into groups under the supervision of the Red Cross nurses or native women. Over the hills, away from the muttering cannon, out through the night, the straggling line of the children of France made its way slowly to the first base, from where they were to be distributed throughout France.
91. “WAR CRIPPLES EVERYWHERE AT WORK IN PARIS,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 2 September 1917, i, p.10. Paris, Aug.7. Even as late in the war as last year it was impossible for me to repress a shudder when some of the dear shattered wounded went by. It seemed to me that the time would never come when these [sights] could appear normal—natural. I resented their armless sleeve, their turned up bit of red trouser leg; I loathed all it represented of human suffering… But now, some way, that has gone. Busy, energetic men stump vigorously over the pavement on the way to work. Under that powerless arm with its carefully gloved wooden hand is a huge package of papers—a chief of a bureau hurrying back after lunch. So common has it become, and yet so thoroughly are the men equipped with the latest devices in artificial limbs, that there is only a warm glow now at the unquenchable optimism and courage of the man who has set himself out to learn a new trade… No more of that horror, – 111 –
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of that sickness at the sight of poor, mangled beings.Today Paris is refilling her civilian positions with men of this sort.There isn’t a restauraunt where at least one of the waiters … hasn’t a wooden leg.There isn’t a shop or a bank or an office in town where there aren’t clerks whose arms or hands are gone.The little gray glove usually tells the tale. But ribbons are measured; books are wrapped up; drugs poured carefully out drop by drop, by this same clerk… A large part of this is due to special training in convalescence hospitals, and another share to the improved apparatus which are manufactured nowadays. I was interested a few days ago in seeing the work that is done at the [American financed] “White House”—an institution for preparing the amputated men for a new profession… There have been 1,600 men received there who have had either arms or legs off.They have been fitted with perfect artificial limbs and have received a training for some useful, well paying position. Among other things, accounting, stenography, commercial drawing, as well as applied design and decoration, mechanics, auto driving, carpentering, sculpture and wood carving, saddlery, tanning, horticulture… Among those coming forward the other day for his diploma was a little boy of 12… He hopped quickly along over the big paved court to get his diploma for his year’s schooling, and it wasn’t until he got out from behind the row of chairs that I saw that both his legs had been cut off, and that the funny old fashioned long trousers … were only there to cover up the ugly joints of wood and leather, and to let peep out at the bottom the little wooden feet on which he balanced himself so agilely without a stick or a cane. His mother was a widow living at Amiens, and in one of the aerial bombardments one of her legs was taken off; and both of the little boy’s. But they say that in the year that he has been at “La Maison Blanche” no one has ever heard him complain when all the tedious and painful fitting of the apparatus was going on. That, on the contrary, he used to run after the men who, driven almost to a frenzy by the irritating pain of the new, unaccustomed legs would try to throw them away, and coax the men to resume them.
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92. “FRANCE MOTHER TO ITS ORPHANS UNDER NEW LAW,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 3 September 1917, p.8. The French government has just passed a new law that … provides for the support, education, and apprenticeship to a trade of all children who are orphans of the war. The article of first importance in the law reads: “ France adopts all orphans whose father, mother, or guardian who was the support of the family, may have died during the course of the war, whether a military or civil victim of the enemy. Any child shall be considered an orphan of the war which is born or conceived before the end of hostilities, whose father, mother, or supporter has been rendered incapable of gaining his or her livelihood by reason of wounds received or of sickness contracted or aggravated by the war…” The law as it now stands is one of the most benificent formed since the war. It relieves the anxious father and mother of practically all fear in regard to the future of their children… It also provides against children going out of the country… In some cases it has been possible to send children to America, but the government have guarded them zealously here, seeing in them, indeed, the only hope of the new France. Often this guarding has been to the distinct disadvantage of the child, living as it had to in poor quarters, suffering from malnutrition on the little soldiers’ allowance given to the mother—26 cents a day and 10 cents a day for the child.You can’t go far on that when sugar costs 17 cents a pound, butter 88, potatoes 5 cents each, eggs 8 cents apiece, and meat beyond the hope of the meager pocketbook. I am really shocked every day to see the strides that the cost of living has made in the few months that I have been gone… It would even seem to be almost a luxury keeping clean.An ordinary piece of soap such as we buy [for] 5 cents a cake, sells over here for 30 cents… And, of course, laundry has immediately shot up, [partly because of] the “extra tax” of 40 per cent [occasioned by] the recent strike of washerwomen. Shoes and all forms of leather have advanced … about 200 per cent. It is practically impossible to get a pair of shoes under $11, and all the extra resoling that is done for the poor, is done with a heavy oil cloth rather thinner than linoleum.
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93. “FRANCE TURNS TO BREAD CARD TO SAVE WHEAT,” Chicago Tribune, 16 September 1917, i, p.2. Paris, Sept.15.The housewife of war ridden France today is paying practically the same price for bread that she paid before the war.The only difference is that today’s bread is of whole wheat flour. The French food ministry today explained … how France dealt with the problem [of supply].The ministry’s statement follows: “During the first two years of the war there was no bread problem in France.We imported all necessary wheat, but even then, in view of transport difficulties, the government was obliged to regulate baking. As the French are essentially a bread eating nation it was necessary to keep prices as low as possible.Therefore, the only increase permitted was the raise to 5 cents of the usual 4 cent loaf. “The government held it inadvisable to tax wheat because the farmers might grow other cereals.Therefore, it was decided to pay the farmers the prices they demanded for their wheat—although the flour from this grain was resold at former prices to the bakers. “In October bread cards will be introduced in France. They will allow a minimum daily allowance per capita of a pound of bread with a maximum of a pound and four-fifths.The latter weight is for the working and agricultural classes.”
94. “SLANG AND SLOGANS OF WAR IN FRANCE,” by Arthur H. Warner, New York Times, 7 October 1917, iii, p.10. As a resident of France from the beginning of the war until a few months ago there stand out in my memory four war cries, each marking an epoch in the development of the French spirit.They are: “France d’abord!” (France first!) “Jusqu’au bout!” (Unto the end!) “Coûte que coûte!” (Cost what it may!) “On les aura!” (We will get them!)
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How that first watchword, “France first!” comes back to one as expressing the spirit of the Summer of 1914, the period of mobilization and upheaval. It appeared in the newspapers, it was printed on stationery, it was on every lip; and, more important, it was in every heart in those early days of danger… France lived in those days in a state of patriotic exaltation akin to religious frenzy… Then came the Autumn, with the news of the human toll France had paid in the retreat from the border and the glorious stand at the Marne. Came, too, the numbing realization that the war which had been counted on to end by Christmas, must be fought through the Winter.The patriotic exaltation … was gone, but in its place grew a sterner, deeper courage. It found expression in two words … by General Galliéni, … Military Governor of the capital, when the Germans were just outside its gates: “I have received the mandate to defend Paris against the invader. This mandate I will fulfill jusqu’au bout!” “Unto the end!”The soldiers repeated it through gritted teeth as they settled down to hold from the North Sea to the Vosges, a line of trenches which, during that first Winter, were little more than drainage canals (which did not drain) and were as yet inadequately provided with heat or shelter. “Unto the end!” The civilians repeated it as they faced the gigantic problem of sustaining their soldiers and organizing the country for a protracted war. Spring found the line still firm and the Entente Allies beginning an offensive which, it was then hoped, would sweep the Germans from France. A new phrase began to appear—”Coûte que coûte!” (Cost what it may!) It became a watchword. Better pay any price and get through with it.A grim and heroic resolution, but it proved impossible of realization. What had been looked forward to as the great offensive had to be slowed down to await better artillery, more ammunition. A year later another slogan came into prominence. The defeat of German ambitions at Verdun, and the proof during the summer of 1916 that at last the Entente Allies had an offensive which could advance against German entrenchments, gave rise to a new sentiment. France had always been hopeful. She now became confident. To voice this new-born attitude she began to popularize a soldier-saying of which General Pétain had made use in an order to the troops at Verdun.“On les aura!” (We will get them!) became the most widespread slogan of the war. – 115 –
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In addition to watchwords which have been associated with passing epochs of the war, there are others, serious and amusing, in which popular philosophy has been crystallized. One of these owes its origin to a drawing by the cartoonist Forain, published early in the conflict, in which a soldier in the trenches is represented as saying to another,“If only they hold out!” “Who?” asks his companion. “The civilians!” is the answer. “If only they hold out!” (Pourvu qu’ils tiennent!) is quoted again and again by persons writing on the war, and each succeeding month adds to its weight in revealing the importance, in a modern struggle of any length, of the effort and spirit of the civilians…
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95. “FRANCE WILL ADOPT HER ‘BOCHE BABIES’,” New York Times, 28 October 1917, iii, p.12. On Aug.10 Le Figaro published a letter from a disabled soldier who went to meet his wife and child who had been lost to him for three years in one of the occupied departments. He found not one but two children in his home, the second a baby under two years.The soldier’s letter is a cry to France to save the poor remnant of his happiness. His wife he will take back, he says; it was not her fault. But never, as long as he lives, will he return home while “that boche” is under his roof. The story is typical. It is not an isolated instance. As more and more territory is recovered from the enemy, France finds herself face to face with a new German invasion… The committee which answered the cry of the soldier-husband has ready the answer for France. It is the Oeuvre de Protection de l‘Enfance dans les Régions Libérées.4 Its offices are at Rue de Téhéran, 16, Paris, and it counts in its membership some of the best-known names in France… It was [its] President, Princess Murat, who outlined the plans of the Oeuvre and made it possible for me to visit its crèche at Chambly. “… Mothers began bringing us their babies of German fathers, imploring us to take them before their husbands came back.You see, in 4. League for the Protection of Childhood in the Liberated Regions, the latter referring to French territory repatriated from German occupation. – 116 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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nearly all cases the men are willing to take back their wives.They are not like the men, say, in our class. But they absolutely refuse to consider taking in the ‘boche’ babies. “What is to be done with these? First of all, the important thing is to save them for France, because France has great need of babies. Did you know that we have lost nearly a million and a half of our men? “Our plan is to take the babies and care for them in our crèche until we can find good homes for them with peasant families.We pay the mothers so much a week for looking after them.Already a number of them have been placed.We want these children to grow up to be French… “How many of them are there? A great many, I am afraid.They are being born every day in the departments of the Somme, the Aisne and the Oise. And that does not take into account those in the provinces which we have still to win back… Of course, the children are not all ‘Boches’. Some are French children, born after their fathers went away.” [As for the crèche at Chambly] good sense and ingenuity are the rule everywhere… A roomy old house has been converted by means of white paint and plenty of soap and water into a cheery, comfortable and spotless home of many little white beds.The babies’ nursery is a joy, with its white wicker bassinettes, and snowy curtains, drooping from hooks, on which Marcelle,“their mother,” as she calls herself, has fastened bows of Christmas ribbon, rose-colored for the girls and tricolor for the boys. After visiting the babies, the little unconscious jetsam of the monster tidal wave, we went into the children’s room.There, around the low table, in the midst of sunshine and pleasant surroundings, the conscious jetsam sit in their little chairs.They look neat and well-cared-for, and are beginning to show the results of feeding… But they seem to have been born without the instinct of play. Each one holds a doll in its listless hands.They do not move about, nor look at each other, nor utter a sound, except to cry when one speaks to them too abruptly. Some of them are sweet-faced, even pretty.There is Maria du Billard, so-called because she was found on a billiard table. There is little Marguerite Juillet, who arrived in July. One was left on a train. Not one but has lived a tragedy. And in some strange way they seem to know it, like little pale reflections of their mothers’ anguish. Upon them is a look of blight. How much would you say a child of 2 could suffer? Before you answer you must meet the eyes of little Paul—baby eyes which brood and – 117 –
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brood over some remembered horror, and cannot forget. Neither will you forget when you have seen them… “They are different from other babies, you see,” said the Princess,“and see how plainly you can tell the ‘boches’. But no!,” she added quickly,“they are all French!” “They are all French!”That is to be the saving word for these tragic little victims of [German] Kultur.
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96. “PARIS WORRIES OVER SHORTAGE OF SUGAR CROP,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 13 November 1917, p.12. [I]f the new German submarine offensive is at all efficient, things will be harder than ever to get.We have had sugar, bread, milk and gasoline cut down this last ten days—in quantity, not in prices. And prices have gone up again on potatoes, matches, wine, butter, eggs, coffee, and olive oil. Some of these prices have been raised by government orders, some by common consent of the grocers. But they all show on my housekeeping book for the last week. We were told we are to have better bread … but the quantity has been cut.We now have bread cards—or at least we have made the formal applications at the various city halls and will get the cards in a day or two… Although there was a good deal of complaining about this rationing … we are getting off much better than any other European nation today. Here is [an abbreviated] list of European countries with the amount of bread and flour in grams allowed each person per day: France, 500; Germany, 280;Austria, 280; England, 260; Italy, 250. … [T]he sugar allowance [is cut] to a pound per month per person. It is not enough, at least not enough for me. [That is why people] carry sugar away from hotels and restaurants.As I never take sugar in either coffee or tea, I see no reason why it should languish on the plate (two pieces are placed on a little saucer for you) so I put them in my little striped silk sugar case and trot it home. And as for milk in the afternoon, it is impossible to get it.A new law is in force that no milk shall be served in any café or tea place or hotel after 9 in the morning.Yesterday, at Tipperary, one of the new, weird, smart – 118 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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tea places here, the whole room was in convulsions when a party of young women took a baby’s milk bottle out of a handbag and proceeded to arrange their tea to their taste…
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97. “FOOD CROPS IN FRANCE WORST IN FIFTY YEARS,” New York Times, 25 November 1917, ii, p.8. According to a statement recently made by the French Minister of Supply, this year’s harvest in France has been the worst in fifty years.This has been due in part to the exceptionally severe weather last Winter, which did great damage to Autumn-sown crops, and even more largely to the disastrous Spring. Almost till the end of April continuous snow and frost prevented any adequate work being done in the fields, and the consequent rush that came in the last few weeks could not possibly be coped with by the laborers and their women folk still left on the land… Discussing the shortage of labor, the Minister of Supply says: “Proportionately the recruitment of the French Army is much more largely from the land than in Great Britain, where the industrial centres, both under the volunteer systems and the new service acts, have provided the bulk of the men for the army. Actually it is estimated by the Ministry of Agriculture that 8,000,000 people of both sexes—a fifth of the population—are employed on the land in France, and from their number at the time of the mobilization in 1914, 3,000,000 of the best were taken. During the three years since that date the remnant, old men, unfit men, women and children, have had to carry on the work of this second line of national defense.They have worked heroically…” As far as the civilian population is concerned, it is pointed out that things seem in some ways to have improved. Last winter coal rose to the exorbitant price of 10 pounds sterling a ton, and even at that price, when the Seine was frozen, it was difficult to get.This year every household has been provided with a coal card and, though the amount supplied is far from adequate, it may with the aid of wood be made to eke the winter out. Bread cards giving an allowance of one pound per day per person, are being issued, while the quality has been improved. The third card-controlled item, sugar, has been reduced in allowance from 750 grams to 500 grams (about seventeen ounces) per month, a reduction which the Food – 119 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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Minister states will mean a saving of 150,000 tons, and a consequent available shipping space for 5,000,000 bushels of wheat.
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98. “CLEMENCEAU AGAIN PREMIER OF FRANCE,” New York Times, 18 November 1917, ix, p.1. For the second time in his sensational career, Georges Clemenceau is Premier of France. But this is the first time, in all his record as “destroyer” of other mens’ power, that he has himself replaced the Premier whom he overthrew. Some time ago before Clemenceau first made Prime Minister of France—he was 65 years old when, in 1906, that honor came to him—a friend asked him how many Ministries he had destroyed. He replied pleasantly that he was quite unable to remember… The “tombeur des Ministères,” they have called him for years in Paris—the overthrower of Ministries.And now, after a period of comparative quiet, at the age of 76, he has emerged from something that must have seemed to him almost obscurity, and wrecked a Cabinet again… Before he was 20 Georges was thrown into prison for shouting,“Vive la République!” on the streets of Paris, in the midst of the celebration of one of the imperial anniversaries.5 He served his term in jail, and then, practically an exile, he came to America. Between 1865 and 1869 he lived in this country, chiefly in New York and in Stamford, Conn. He had been educated as a physician, and it was as a medical practitioner that he established himself on West Twelfth Street and became known in the neighborhood about Washington Square… But Georges Clemenceau, though his father had been a physician before him, … was not successful as a doctor of medicine. He was not deeply interested in his calling… [E]ven as a student in Paris, young Clemenceau had found time to inform himself carefully on political questions and to contribute controversial papers to the political reviews. In New York he gravitated naturally toward the study of social and political 5. “Imperial” here refers to the Second Empire regime of Napoleon III, between 1852 and 1870. – 120 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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conditions.And he drew his income not from the practice of his profession, but largely from the letters about things in America that he sent to the papers at home. Clemenceau wrote back to Paris that his first impression of the Americans was that they had “no general ideas and no good coffee…” When Clemenceau failed to build up a medical practice and the money that he got from France proved insufficient, [a friend] introduced him to the mistress of a girls’ boarding school, a Miss Aiken, who employed him as teacher of the French language and literature in her “young ladies’ seminary” at Stamford. There Clemenceau translated the works of John Stuart Mill into French, was an indefatigable student of American politics, became known as a serious scholar, and surprised his acquaintances by falling in love with one of his young pupils and marrying her… [He and Miss Mary Plummer of Springfield] were married in June 1869; and early in 1870, he left the school where he had taught for two and a half years, and went back, with his wife, to France. After some years Mrs Clemenceau obtained a divorce. Clemenceau married again… In 1871 he was elected to the General Assembly, and it is interesting to note that he was opposed to a treaty of peace [with Germany]. From 1871 to 1875 he was a member of the Paris Municipal Council, of which he became President, and in 1876 he was elected member from Montmartre in the Chamber of Deputies, where he soon became leader of the Radicals… [But] he was independent even in his radicalism, and he followed no leader but his own principles.They called him the undisciplined vandal in those early days when he was making a reputation as an upsetter of other men’s careers… He destroyed the Fourton-Broglie administration. He overthrew Boulanger. He caused the fall of Jules Grévy, and of Jules Ferry. He wrecked the activities and position of M. Freycinet at least three times. Yet his own policy was a consistent radical Republicanism, clear and practical; he stood for the realization of all that the revolution had hoped and dreamed. He was opposed, we may note, to the alliance with Russia, determined that his country should not be joined in so close a friendship with a despotic power. He unceasingly upheld the complete separation of Church and State… But in 1893 he fell. He fell with a completeness that was universally believed to be hopeless. He was disgraced, finished, … accused of com– 121 –
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plicity in disloyalties and dishonesties in connection with the Panama Canal scandals. He met every charge against his integrity. But his own constituents turned against him. He was literally out of politics. For nine years he had no connection with the Government of France. But two years after his overthrow a very different Clemenceau made his appearance in the world of French letters.The wily politician, the reckless duelist, the insolent hounder of his foes, was gone. In his place was a philosopher and littérateur, a man who wrote exquisite prose, a lover of nature, a friend of humankind… But when the Dreyfus affair suddenly burst upon France, a new journal L‘Aurore, edited by M. Clemenceau, made its appearance. It was devoted to the proving of Dreyfus’s innocence.6 Clemenceau was back in the active world of French affairs with a vengeance.With his tireless defense of Dreyfus, he became, as someone has said,“the sentient conscience of France in print.”And the political world that Clemenceau thus dramatically re-entered, he has never left. In 1902 the same constituency that had forsaken him in his hour of trial returned him triumphantly to the Senate. In the spring of 1906 he was appointed to public office for the first time in his life as Minister of the Interior. In November of that year … he became Premier. While he was in office the most important thing that happened was the great miners’ strike, which the Socialists organized. Knowing his revolutionary tendencies, the miners expected his sympathy… But with the first outbreak of violence Clemenceau became a ruler of iron.The soldiers were called out and the riots were put down… In 1909 his old enemy, Delcassé, rose up suddenly and overthrew his Ministry… But Clemenceau’s power was not broken. He kept his place in the Senate. In 1912 he overthrew Caillaux’s Ministry. In 1913 he wrecked Briand’s cabinet… He started a new paper, L’Homme Libre. When the present war began, … he was Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on the Army… In April of this year he was outspoken in his censure of the management of the allied offensive. He was somewhat scornful of America’s longcontinued neutrality, but was enthusiastic in his welcome when the United States entered the war. 6. Alfred Dreyfus was a French military officer who, in the 1890s, was wrongly accused and convicted of treason against France. – 122 –
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99. “A DESERT OF BRICKS AND DUST,” Editorial, Toronto Globe, 30 November 1917, p.6. Northern France, so long occupied by the enemy and now a desert land of charred ruins where the Germans have been forced to yield ground to the oncoming Allies, is a reminder to the world of what must be accomplished before the inhabitants, or what is left of them, return to the place they called home… Some of the more adventurous spirits are following up the retreating Germans and taking possession of all that remains of their cottages and farms. One old woman of seventy was discovered bending over a washtub, where high grass grew through barbed wire and stones, and where one rainproof room only remained of her former home. Already a few potatoes, carrots and beans were coming up, the result of her industry. Her garden was a tangled mess of barbed wire and weeds, and she was without saucepans, cups, knives or plates. Only from two to thirty houses or rooms are left standing in each village. Nothing but ruins remains to remind the visitor that the Hun armies passed that way. There are hundreds of these villages in northern France, and thousands of homeless people… Mile after mile, this part of France is without a tree, without a wall standing, without signs of life save the rats and birds of prey. Over all is the rusty barbed wire and deep shell holes and the debris of battle. This is what the tide of war has left behind to remind France of the unfading glory of her supreme sacrifice in defence of national honor.
100. “FRENCH PLUCK,” by Rollin Lynde Hartt, Chicago Tribune, 30 December 1917, viii, p.5. I have sometimes described la belle France as a land where all the impossible things are done well, all the easy things badly. Even French thrift disappoints on close view. Frenchmen waste time, which is wages, which are money. Everything is done the slowest, hardest, most intricate way—for instance, when you want a 2 cent stamp, to obtain it is not so much an adventure as a career. A counter runs completely around the postoffice.At intervals you see miniature bronze posts—on each post a set of cards, each card announc– 123 –
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ing the particular functions of some particular official. One post proclaims the spot where telegrams are received, money orders paid, letters registered, and stamps dispensed wholesale.The next tells you that cablegrams are received, general delivery letters surrendered, special delivery services negotiated, money orders taken, money orders cashed, and letters registered. A third declares that telegrams are received, letters registered, orders received, money orders paid, cablegrams received and—O, George, this is so sudden—stamps sold at retail. There you wait while a crowd ahead of you achieves its many and fantastically varied ambitions.After incredible delay you at last come nose to nose with your man, who—sweetly, smilingly, and with infinite courtesy—deals out your 2 cent stamp. French department stores are without pneumatic tubes, or “elevated railways.”7 Your saleman leads you to a cashier (they have a cashier every little way) and while the cashier is testing your coins by biting them or by ringing them on a brass plate for the purpose, the salesman goes to get your purchase wrapped. In some establishments he attentively escorts you to the door and bids you a prolonged and most endearing farewell. In offices the typewriter is a rarity.You see clerks copying documents with the pen into notebooks they themselves have made by scissoring the paper and stitching it together. Telephones are little used; to get a connection involves a perfect Verdun of fortitude and patience. Checks are seldom used, as it takes an eternity to deposit a check at a French bank…
7. Devices common to North America which were used to convey bills and payments, receipts and change, between a sales desk and the store’s central cashier. – 124 –
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1918 February
Resumed air bombing of Paris
March
German spring offensive General Foch made Allied commander French bread rationing German shelling of Paris
May
Renewed German offensive Second battle of Marne (40 miles from Paris)
June
American Expeditionary Force at Château Thierry
July
Allied counter-offensive
September
Allied advance reaches German Hindenburg Line Allied breakthrough between Reims and Verdun Business revives, prices rise
October
German retreat from Cambrai, Lens, Courrières Armistice with Turkey German retreat from Belgium
November
Armistice with Austria Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates Armistice with Germany Preparations begin immediately for Paris Peace Conference (formal opening January 1919)
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101. “FOOD ECONOMY SWEEPS FRANCE,” Chicago Tribune, 7 January 1918, p.6.
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Paris, Dec.7 … Except in the matter of money, there has been no privation in France up to today. If you are poor, you are miserable, cold, hungry, unclothed. But if you have the money to meet the increased prices, you can get everything you want. But something is about to be done… The first of January a new bread regime will come into effect, reducing the ration to what all the other belligerents as well as the rest of the small neutral countries have had for a long time. Under this ruling men and women who do hard work can still have 600 grammes a day, which is considerably more than a pound, but for children under 16, and women, the ration is now 200 grammes a day, which compares favorably with England’s 250 and Germany’s 235… This morning’s paper says that eggs, cheese and milk are to be controlled by the government and their use cut down in the big hotels, so we shall probably be having more food cards. But no one will complain if the big hotels could be forced to have a small menu and the guests be restricted to two courses… As it is now, the menus of the big hotels and restaurants are fully as elaborate as in the gay old peace days, and the meals twice as expensive.
102. “QUAINT YPRES IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND NOW,” Christian Science Monitor, 18 January, 1918, p.16. This quaint [Belgian] city,mentioned more frequently in the past few months than in an equal number of preceding centuries, lies only 35 miles south of Ostend, the most fashionable and expensive seashore resort in Europe… [The countryside has been] a source of great income to its inhabitants, for it was classed among the best dairy land in the world… In addition to this, the district has always been famous for its cloth and lace, and, though recently things were no longer what they once had been, the weaving and lace-making industries were still important items of the wealth of Belgium.This wealth, it might be impressed in passing, was the greatest per capita in all Europe. – 126 –
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Dairying and cloth weaving do not create a great daily stir in a city, so the usual impression from Ypres was that of a dead city. An occasional kermesse enlivened the streets with gayly-dressed throngs from the country, and sprinklings of neighboring townsfolk, who sauntered, bargained, and chattered during the market day.Then, within an hour, the city sank into its habitual quiet, with its almost deserted streets, made all the more empty by the startling dog carts with rattling milk cans or bumping loaves of bread.The streets were used so little it was not surprising that they were so clean. The sluggish old moat, the crumbling old ramparts, the slowly paddling, sedate swans, the little girls and the white-capped old dames at the doors, or outside upon the narrow pavements manipulating the bobbins upon the cushion for lace making, gave an impression of peaceful decay rather than one of remunerative industry. Almost isolated from the world,Ypres, forgetting the world, was by the world forgotten… In most cities, the Cathedral would be the single impressive reminder of past glories… [Here] the monument to her material prosperity is more imposing, … much more impressive than the Cathedral.This is the Cloth Market. Dating from 1200-1304, it is the largest and oldest structure of its kind in Belgium… This vast hall with three stories marked by pointed windows in three rows, surmounted by a sloping slate roof, equal in height to the three stories of building proper, and adorned by statues of 46 counts and countesses of Flanders, [could shelter] all the citizens of Ypres… This was the condition until July 1914. If the world had rolled along in its usual course, Ypres, with a score of other places, would have remained unknown to the outside public… [Since then] the city of Ypres has paid heavy toll.Though the massive belfry, with the solid foursquare walls, still towers above the country, the beautiful Cloth Market below is a crumbling mass of ruins.To see the hall … is to look upon horror unimagined. In the bombardment, the Cloth Market was fired. At first little tongues of flame hungrily emerged from the edges of the roof tiles.Then, as these were aided by more shells, which tore great gaps in roof and side, the flames gained and, darting up and down, fed upon the priceless oaken timbers and carvings within. Crash after crash of stones added to the destruction.With a preliminary creaking, then a loud rumble, and a final rending, the long peaked roof caved in, carrying down with it all the floors below.The central lofty peak of the square belfry was also struck. But so solidly constructed were the main – 127 –
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walls that all did not go with the top. So there are standing today gaunt remnants of departed balance and grace.The side and end walls, pierced by their hundreds of windows, still remain; from above them, a wounded yet defiant challenge to the long-range guns, the old belfry rears its undaunted form, shot through and through, yet proclaiming to the entire world that Belgium, overrun and devastated, is not conquered yet.
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103. “PRICE FIXING IN FRANCE DIFFICULT,” by Fred B. Pitney, Christian Science Monitor, 25 January 1918, p.5. The French Government is very bureaucratic, but the French people do not like to be overgoverned.They object seriously to anything that savors to them of meddling in a man’s private affairs. For this reason it has been extremely difficult to get a workable income tax law in France.The people immediately rose against the proposal to give the Government the right to examine their books and find out what their incomes were, if they failed to make a return. So a scheme was figured out for taxing a man on seven times his rent, if he made no income tax return, or one the Government thought too low. Saying how much of what a man shall eat is, also, getting pretty close to private affairs, and, therefore, the French Government … is slow in coming to such measures, even in face of the only too evident food shortage in the country.There have been efforts at price fixing, but they have not worked satisfactorily, one reason being that they have not been national but local. Paris, for example, has tried fixing the price of butter, but it has been found that the result has been to drive butter away from Paris to localities where it could be sold for what the market would pay. A scheme of national price fixing is to be tried now with beans and potatoes… [But this scheme] will divide the country into districts and fix the price for each district, with a penalty for sending either commodity out of the district without permission… [Now] it is vitally necessary … to control the consumption of meat in France… To what extent the herds have disappeared is shown by the cutting down of the meat rations of the soldiers at the front.At the beginning of the war they were allowed one pound of meat a day.Twenty per – 128 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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cent has now been cut from that allowance… Civilians, naturally, were the first to suffer when meat became scarce. The price went soaring. Retail prices to consumers doubled and trebled.The poor cut down in quantity, one understands, and the very poor went without entirely… [S]ince February, France has had to supply from her own resources 432,000 tons of meat a year to her armies, 1,428,000 tons for the civilian population and another 350,000 tons for refugees, making a total of 2,000,000 tons of meat a year demanded by France. What are the herds she has to do this with? … Today her cattle herds are cut down more than 20 per cent, [compared to] a loss of nearly 50 per cent of her hogs and three-eighths of her sheep… The Government is trying to conserve the meat supply and save the herds now by limiting the use of meat to one meal a day. The endeavor is made to accomplish the purpose by forbidding the sale of meat after 1 p.m. and ordering the butcher shops closed at that hour, while hotels and restaurants can serve meat only with the noonday meal. But this measure has had little effect on the use of meat, as it serves only against the restaurants. Housekeepers can buy all the meat they want before 1 o’clock… Moreover, in the restaurants one can eat all the meat one wants at midday, and thus make up for having none at night, and this, also, is the practice. There is only one real solution of the problem. France must have more meat. Her herds are disappearing rapidly.They are today far below the danger point. Soon they will have to be reconstituted entirely. Meat, meat, meat and again meat is a pressing need for France.
104. “LES MESFAITS DES AVIONS,” Le Devoir, 1 February 1918, p.4.1 For the first time since last July this city has attracted German flyers. On Wednesday evening several enemy machines flew over Paris, releasing bombs. The material damage is considerable and some 20 people were killed and 50 wounded. One German plane was shot down. The attack lasted for about two hours. It was a mild, clear night and with a bright moon. The streets were soon full of curious onlookers 1. “The Evil Doings of Aircraft” – 129 –
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watching the attackers and their French adversaries.The French machines were illuminated so that friendly ground fire could distinguish them from the enemy… At 2 a.m. the sirens sounded the all clear.The official news bulletin reported the following: First indications are that four enemy squadrons crossed the front to the north of Compiègne, on their way to Paris.Thanks to excellent visibility the planes were able to maintain a high altitude. Approaching from the north-east, they dropped their bombs on a number of Paris suburbs… Several of the bombs did not explode, but others claimed their victims, including women and children. Two hospitals were hit, and several residences were burned or seriously damaged. Some thirty French planes went up to meet the enemy when the alarm was sounded.There were several aerial engagements and one German plane was shot down. Its pilots were taken prisoner. A French machine also crashed while trying to land, owing to a mechanical failure. The pilot and gunner were injured… The enemy used three types of bombs, and it is estimated that there were some 70 dropped in all. Once the alarm was sounded the emergency services responded with great speed. Between 11:45 and 1:30 the fire fighters were called to 30 different locations… It is believed that the raid will do more to provoke French opinion than subdue it. One common view is that we should undertake reprisal raids to show the Germans that it does not pay to bomb non-combattants. The people of Paris, however, have still not learned a lesson from Londoners, according to those who have witnessed air raids there.At the first sign of an attack the people of London disappear from the streets, and the city becomes as silent as a tomb. In Paris, prudence is overcome by curiosity.
105. “A DEFEATIST ORGANIZATION,” Le Devoir, 22 February 1918, p.2. According to Le Figaro, an important German espionage ring has been discovered in Saint-Etienne, chief city of the Loire department, and the heart of French industry. The intended objective was to agitate French workers toward riots and strikes. – 130 –
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The center of operations was a busy restaurant run by a German and his wife who did whatever they could to attract French soldiers. Some of their other clientele were also apparently involved in the plot.The German and his wife, a Spaniard, a Swiss, and a man named Fialex, who resided at the restaurant, have been arrested. Fialex has an expertise in military ordinance manufactured in SaintEtienne. Documents were found in his flat which indicate that he was closely involved in the city’s last strike. He also corresponded with other suspect individuals on matters of military importance. He had an official pass to travel in various military zones as well as a sales licence. Other documents suggest that he received a large amount of money in exchange for his hazardous work in Saint-Etienne… One of those documents had been sent in code. This discovery, according to Figaro, makes it clear that there has been a defeatist organization operating in France under German direction, the aim of which was to foment labor disturbances in various parts of the country to coincide with the German military offensive.
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106. “THE PRICE FRANCE PAYS,” Editorial, Toronto Globe, 28 February 1918, p.4. For some years before the outbreak of the world war the population of France remained almost stationary. Sometimes the vital statistics disclosed a small increase, while at others the population was shown to have decreased during the preceding year. Almost a century ago, in 1821, notwithstanding the drain of the nation’s vitality caused by the Napoleonic wars, France’s population was 29,871,000—exclusive of AlsaceLorraine—and was increasing steadily from year to year. The present population is unquestionably less than it was twenty years ago, and the decrease under war conditions is alarmingly great.The population in 1911 was 39,401,000.The surplus of births over deaths in the two years 191213 was 99,812.The surplus of deaths over births in 1914 was 53,327, in 1915 it was 261,285, and in 1916 it was 788,000.The births in that terrible year totalled 312,000, while the deaths of civilians numbered 700,000, and those of soldiers about 400,000. The statistics for 1917 are not yet available, but the presumption is that the decrease of population will not – 131 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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be so great as in 1916. It may be stated in general terms, however, that the population of France today, excluding Belgian and Serbian refugees, is not much over thirty-eight millions, a decline of a million and a half since the outbreak of war…
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107. “PARIS WILL LOSE ALL LUXURIES…,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 6 March 1918, p.4. Paris, Feb.13. People tell you it is criminal to hoard and every day you notice in the papers that some one or another … has been arrested for hoarding. So I am making a dangerous confession when I say that I have been out all day long buying up things to hoard. Not food though—all those things which may come under the new ruling of luxury and which will thus be taxed an extra 10 per cent… I have enough Coty powder and Houbigant perfume and cut steel shoe buckles and silk stockings to last me the rest of my natural life. Indeed, in view of the attentive little bombing raids we are getting these days, I debated for some time if it wasn’t silly to lay in such supplies, since the aforementioned natural life might be so short that only the detested merchants would get any profit out of my purchases. It is perfectly true that the only people in France today who are making money are the shopkeepers. Every article of food and attire and strict household necessity goes up the money scale with a patient doggedness which is heartrending. And the government does not seem to be able to do anything against it… Milk has gone up to 16 cents a quart for the unskimmed milk, eggs are 11 cents apiece, just the meanest little old dried up lemons are 96 cents a dozen, and oranges the same price.There is no more kerosene at all.Two weeks ago people having neither gas nor electricity in their houses were allowed a pint of kerosene, but none since then, and candles are so high that only the rich can afford to burn them… A new law has just gone into effect which will double the price of gas after April 1—a new privation on the poor. I’m only too glad for all the restrictions which may be put upon the rich, such as the shutting of pastry shops and the banishment of candies and the 10 per cent tax on all meals taken in restaurants de luxe. There – 132 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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might be a thousand more like them—just as there are in England. Indeed, people say that only England is suffering among all the peoples now at war.
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108. “FRANCE PLACED ON BREAD RATIONS,” Christian Science Monitor, 11 March 1918, p.3. After much doubt and hesitation, France, at the third attempt, has taken the plunge and is having bread rationing. A beginning was made with Paris and the suburbs and country round about to the extent of a 25 kilometers radius from the center, and bit by bit the remainder of the country is being brought under the new system… The allowance is 300 grammes a day—for each and all, young and old, men and women, rich and poor, alike. It is a system which has its disadvantages, and naturally it is much criticized, but generally the country is taking kindly to the new regulations … The first scheme for imposing bread rations on the people was promulgated … last December, and was a fancy affair in which different allowances were made according to age, occupation, and so forth. It was complicated, and, after being announced, was discovered to be really unworkable and was withdrawn… The second scheme, which was brought out at the beginning of the year, was somewhat better, but after it had been declared, … the Minister of Ravitaillement [Supply] announced that things were going quite well as the result of his appeal to the people to economize, and he thought that they might be able to continue in the voluntary way. Then suddenly came the decision to ration, and to do it quickly, and Paris had scarcely ceased to wonder and learn the rules, than it found itself going along with its sugar tickets to get the new tickets for bread… The bread tickets are delivered monthly at the town halls and other appointed places to those who apply for them and are provided with sugar tickets, the latter being the simple and complete qualification.Those who do not possess sugar tickets must supply proofs of identity and circumstance, and comply with certain formalities… The allowance is three tickets for 100 grammes of bread each per day, every ticket is dated, and the bread can only be obtained from the baker on that day, that is to say a Monday ticket – 133 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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that was not used, cannot be used to get an extra supply on Tuesday… The head of a family with a sugar ticket indicating the number of persons in the ménage [household] is supplied on application, at the beginning of the month with bread coupons for that number… In the case of hotels, restaurants, and pensions, the proprietors have to put in a request indicating the average number of meals they serve daily and the address of the baker with whom they deal.They are then given a certificate entitling them to obtain such a quantity of bread from that baker as will enable them to supply 100 grammes of bread with each meal served… As to the bakers, they are required at the end of each week to collect all their tickets and deposit them at the town hall of their arrondissement, and to deliver them with a signed declaration of the quantity of bread they have duly served to applicants…
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109. “PARIS TASTILY [sic] GUARDS ITSELF,” Toronto Globe, 22 March 1918, p.2. Paris, March 21. A striking change is evident in the appearance of Paris. In every quarter, in every street, one sees criss-crosses of stout paper gummed to the window panes of stores and apartments to lessen the risk of breakage by concussion.The expectation of further air raids … has left Parisians to take the same precautions that are to be noted in every town or village within the sound of the guns at the front. In the smart quarters of the city the proprietors of business houses have devoted characteristic French taste to the window protection. Instead of the regular arrangement of small squares that is universal behind the firing lines, there are five or seven-pointed stars, massive lattice work designs, reminiscent of a Japanese screen, and even elaborate hieroglyphic symbols. Paris takes this opportunity of showing her pride in her new situation of a “war-zone city…” Paris is getting used to air raids. It may be said now that any attempt on the part of the enemy to intimidate the population already is a failure. But the Germans have not renounced their campaign against civilian morale… Once more [they] are making terror in psychology, but the morale of Paris is not rooted in courage alone, but in pride which is strengthened by each new aggression. – 134 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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110. “PARIS SHELLED BY A GERMAN GUN 76 MILES AWAY,” Le Devoir, 25 March 1918, p.5.
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The huge German gun which shelled Paris has been located in the SaintGobain forest, west of Laon, exactly 76 miles from the city hall of Paris. The gun shelled the city for most of a day.The explosions produced by its ten inch shells could be heard all day (Sunday).The alarm was sounded at 6:55 a.m., warning the population to take shelter, but most people headed for the streets and for the already filled churches. At first, the shells arrived about every 20 minutes, and the explosions seemed louder than on Saturday (when 24 shells landed on the city), although they seemed to disturb the citizens even less than they had the day before… The government has decided not to let such shelling interrupt the normal life of the city, but it will warn the citizens of the danger in ways quite different from those used to signal air raids. Drums and police whistles will be sounded to alert the populace, but all public services—trains, tramways and automobiles—will continue to operate normally. As will the Bourse. However, people will not be allowed to gather in the streets, until the alarm is ended by the blowing of a special horn and by the ringing of church bells.
111. “INJURIES IN CHURCH,” Le Devoir, 30 March 1918, p.3. Paris. March 29. 175 people have just become victims of Germany’s latest killing machine, according to an official communiqué. The shell from a long-range gun hit a Paris church yesterday afternoon, killing 75 and seriously wounding 90 others during a Good Friday service… The shelling began a few moments after 3 p.m… As it was the second time this church was hit by a shell since last Sunday, the local parishoners are especially incensed…
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112. “SHEER MURDER AT LONG RANGE,” by Wilbur Forrest, Toronto Globe, 1 April 1918, p.1 Paris, March 31.Through the courtesy of the French Government, I have just stood in the interior of what was, only Friday, one of the most highly prized medieval churches [Saint Gervais] in Paris. Today it is a wrecked charnel house. The gruesome story of this church should go around the world, for, though 77 bodies already have been removed, tons of white stone heaped upon the floor of the Gothic nave are probably serving as the sepulchre of others who were worshipping Christ on the day of the Crucifixion. Blood stains on the white stone floor tell the story of the most outright German murder since the sinking of the Lusitania. During my visit the skies were weeping copiously through the gaping hole where the shell entered.The holy-water vessels had been drained to the last drop by fragments, as though by design, and the pipes of the great organ to the rear of the nave, one of the finest in Paris, were almost irreparably smashed by flying debris. I saw three morgues filled with bodies in Queenstown, Ireland, after the Lusitania sinking about three years ago, but the piles of crushed furs, hats of women and children, broken pieces of side-combs and other bits of trinkets littering the blood-stained floor of this church made a far greater impression… Broken chairs littering the interior of the church also told the story of the hundreds kneeling when the shell suddenly shattered one of the huge Gothic pillars rising to the top of the nave, bringing down the pillar and a huge portion of the dome on the praying women and children. It was plain slaughter, none under the great mass of huge blocks of stone being able to escape.Today workmen are calmly laboring under the menace of unfallen stone. Outside on neighboring streets crowds of busy pedestrians are moving normally, street cars are clanging and taxis honking, as if the tragedy had not occurred a few hours before.The Romanesque facade facing the street does not tell the story…
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113. “BOMBING PARIS NOW A HABIT,” by Carolyn Wilson, Chicago Tribune, 17 April 1918, p.8. Paris, March 28 … In Paris … [w]hen you hear an engine purring over your house, there is no longer any question to which side it belongs. It is sure to be Boche, and you sit there and wait for the rush of the bomb. That’s what I hate—the noise of it as it falls. For if they happen to be dropping around your particular square you can hear every one from five to eight seconds before it lands, and you may be reading a paper or playing cards, but figuratively your eyes are in the top of your head, looking at the ceiling and wondering if the bomb is coming through your roof. Especially if you live up near the sky… Paris itself begins to take on the aspect of some of the Italian cities I saw. It is covering its lovely monuments with sandbags and piles of cinders.The horses at the Place de la Concorde have entirely disappeared— the danseuses in front of the Opera are cased behind a wall of masonry. The column in the Place Vendome looks like the small boy going home in a barrel with its sandbags only half way up. Napoleon sleeps soundly under 25,000 sandbags heaped up above his tomb… Last Sunday … I saw two poilus in faded coats and stained caps looking down over the balustrade at this heap of sandbags.“There you have it,” one of them said to the other, “here’s Napoleon dead these hundred years protected by 25,000 sandbags and we’re lucky up there at the front if we have two of them in front of us.” The busiest people in Paris these days are the window setters and the insurance offices. My maid and I between us went to seventeen glaziers this morning and they all said that it would be impossible to put new panes in my windows before Friday.Today is Tuesday, and in the meantime I have a variegated collection of blue, brown and pink paper pasted over the frames.To walk around my quarter you want to be sure that your shoes are well soled, for there is nothing but broken glass under foot, and twelve hours of sweeping and cleaning is only beginning to tidy things up. I think that all Paris is expecting two or three raids a week. Naturally they aren’t entranced at the idea, but only mothers with little children are going to leave. It is not only the anxiety about the child but also the broken schedule of sleeping hours, the cold damp cellars, and the shock to the nerves. – 137 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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114. “L’AFFAIRE BRION TRIED IN PARIS,” Christian Science Monitor, 4 May 1918, p.3. Paris, France.Who is Hélène Brion? She is a simple schoolmistress of Pantin who might never have been heard of but for her strong opinions about the war, and the fact that she gave expression to them, and for those reasons has been brought within the net of the military authorities in the grand governmental process of the cleansing of France. Of all the curious affairs that have been before the people in the last few months … this has been separated from the others by a peculiar individuality, and it has been most speedily disposed of … Mlle Brion was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, and her “accomplice,” Moufflard, to six months, both “avec sursis” meaning that the sentences are nominal and not real. But during this brief trial before Colonel Maritz, there were continual arguments as to the rights of citizens, the ethics of free thought in time of war, the obligations of patriotism on the conscience and so on, the fact being that if Mlle Hélène Brion was a défaitiste, she was not a traitress… Mlle Brion, besides being a schoolmistress of Pantin, is general secretary of the National Federation of Teachers Syndicates, is a militant Socialist, an adherent to the Zimmerwald resolutions,2 a member of the committee for the resumption of international relations, and so forth; and the definite charge against her was that of engaging in an active propaganda of defeatism, the charge being based mainly on the large number of leaflets, pamphlets and other literature found in her possession… On her arraignment in court she questioned its competence, and claimed to be remitted to a civil court; and when these objections fell, made a vigorous defense of herself. In the beginning her case was that she had never tried to influence her pupils by propaganda, that she maintained the right to think and, when she considered her thoughts to be right, to communicate them to her colleagues and comrades, whether they were soldiers or not; but she did this in a private and personal capacity, and did not engage in public propaganda.To this latter the prosecu2. In September 1915 an international conference was held in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, a conference attended mainly by socialist-inspired pacifists determined to negotiate an unconditional end to the war. – 138 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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tion answered that the letters of her co-accused, asking her for the literature she was circulating, proved that her propaganda had become a public matter… [T]here was a striking scene when M. Jean Longuet, the eminent Socialist leader, came along to give evidence for the schoolmistress…: “Hélène Brion is one who does honor to education and to the Socialist Party. She is what we call a minoritaire.The term is a little inexact, because today the minoritaires are in the majority in the party… Hélène Brion by her character is a good Frenchwoman… At the present time, any steps taken to punish those who think as she does would be steps taken toward promoting national discord. Nobody in France at the present time desires a peace under the heel of German imperialism. In the interests of the country you will send Hélène Brion back again to the little children whom she looks after and brings up…” There was much other testimony, and many passages between the accused and the court, and some impassioned speeches toward the close. The point was clearly a very fine one, and the prosecution was not very happy in the case. Eventually, as stated, sentences were passed which are not, in ordinary circumstances, to become operative. It was a notable case.
115. “FRANCE BEARS AWFUL BURDEN: SHALL HER CHILDREN DIE?” Toronto Globe, 6 May 1918, p.6. Henry Bordeaux, the well known French author … has lately been to the Swiss frontier to witness the arrival of répatriés [repatriated citizens] at Evian. Every day, and twice a day, twelve to thirteen hundred répatriés are put down at that station, and in a convoy of 600 about 200 will be children. It is of these only that he writes: “The station is decorated with flags.There is music.The children get out gravely, so docile, sensible, and disciplined.Yes, disciplined, one sees it at once.They quickly form into line.Watch them pass, in good order, no noise, no talking. They arrive at the Casino, where the reception takes place. They are at long tables, by preference in groups from the same town, Saint-Quentin, Lens, Roubaix, Lille, etc. Suddenly the light is switched on.There is a murmur, then a burst of applause, as though their – 139 –
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lives had been passed in a cellar.At last! At last! I see a child smile! Surely they will be hungry, these children, but no, see how careful they are. “Aren’t you eating, little one?” “I had something this morning.” “That’s no reason, child: would you like an orange or chocolate?” “But will there be enough for tomorrow?”What strange questions! “Afterwards they are divided: some go to the bath, and some to the doctor.We follow the first. Oh! What bodies! Where do they come from? Will God send us artists to observe, to record forever these poor scraps of human beings, guard their memory for future generations? Little chests, … curved spines, chicken legs, skeletons in fact… “What is your name, mon petit?”“Antoine.”“And your other name?” “I don’t know.”“Where is your father?”“He was taken away.”“And your mother? “She is dead.” “Do you understand? They are children without anyone in the world to look after them, without a home, without a roof.And because war has ravaged their country they are returned to us like outcasts. They have packed them off haphazardly, together or separately, like parcels. But they are living parcels—little bits of France coming back—the return of the innocents…”
116. “PARIS CONSUMES 300 HORSES A DAY,” Le Devoir, 14 June 1918, p.3. Paris, 14 May.According to the Petit Journal, Paris may soon expect to have five days per month when only horse meat will be available for sale… Last year, according to the national society for the sale of horse meat, some 70,000 animals were slaughtered … including 2,000 donkeys and mules. Currently, 300 animals are slaughtered a day in Paris, which represents on average a daily consumption of 67,500 kilograms of horse flesh in the capital and its suburbs.There are more than 1,000 Parisian butcher shops specializing in the sale of horse meat.
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117. “A CHANGED WORLD FOR THE WOMEN OF FRANCE,” by William H. Crawford, New York Times, 23 June 1918, vi, p.4. ”So you want me to tell you about the women of France,” said Stephane Lauzanne, editor of Le Matin of Paris.“Americans have never grasped our social organization or the position of our women prior to the war… “French women were divided into two classes—those who worked and those who did not.This division was not based on caste, but on the state of her husband’s finance. French women had no false pride, however, about the indignity of labor.The wives of even the moderately well to do co-operated in the work of their husbands. If he was a farmer she helped him in the fields. If he kept a shop she was his saleswoman, but she was not a wage earner, her work was as her husband’s assistant.Those women who were forced to work outside of the household were engaged in tasks pertaining to women’s affairs, such as dressmaking, millinery, flowers, and as ladies’ maids. These outside workers were so few that the proportion was negligible. “It may be said, therefore, that the women of France were not independent wage earners… [They] were satisfied to be the helpmates for their husbands.They saved with him, and for him; they worked as faithful junior partners; their highest aims were to be good housewives and to raise their children to be industrious and thrifty citizens. “Next let us consider their social position, which was a direct outcome of their economic status. As a French girl was of the dependent or clinging-vine type, her parents looked around for the oak on which she was to lean while she was still quite young, for marriages in France were usually arranged by the parents of the contracting parties. The old folk were not influenced by the vagaries of love or the grand passion; consequently there were few ill-advised marriages. “Our girls were raised carefully. Due to the influence of the Church and public sentiment, our young girls were kept more in seclusion than they are in America.They did not have the same liberties, nor were they allowed to have a separate social position.There was not the same freedom of intercourse between the sexes as there is in America… Our women, therefore, were largely restricted in their social relationship to the immediate friends of the family, always selected by the men of the house… – 141 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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“There was very little illiteracy in France. For years we have had compulsory eduation, but the training of our girls differed very much from that given to the boys.To the girls was given a solid foundation, and then they learned the things that would enable them to become good housewives… A very large proportion of the girls were eduated in the convents under strict religious supervision. Except for the few literary and artistic cliques around the city, our women took no interest in politics. They were perfectly satisfied to let the men do the voting. “This brings our womanhood down to the beginning of the war. What has happened to her since, that may change her future life? The declaration of war came as a clap of thunder out of a clear sky. Men were ordered to mobilize… [Women’s] unaccustomed hands took up the reins that their husbands had relinquished.Without any warning, she suddenly became the head of the household. With dry eyes and a brave smile she sent her husband to his post of duty, while she undertook to provide for her little ones, to feed France, to care for the wounded and dying, and to supply the army with the necessary munitions, clothing, and equipment… “The bravery of the women of France was demonstrated by those who lived in the Champagne district, between the lines… When the cannonading was heavy they would lie flat on the ground, and as soon as there was a lull they would be up attending to their vines.The women of one town never closed their shops while the battle raged around that city. They blockaded their windows with sandbags, and by the light of candles continued to do business… “What is going to be the result of this entire change in her economic position, now no longer a satellite to her husband … but an industrial wage-earning unit? Will she be satisfied to drop back into her former position when the men return to civil life, prepared to take their old jobs? “The wealthier classes will return to their homes, but their souls have been awakened … and it is doubtful whether they will ever return to their careless indifference as to how the other half lives.There will be less frivolity and more true charity. “The women who have managed their husbands’ businesses, like the good steward of the parable, will turn over the talent intrusted to them with the talents earned under their management, but it is doubtful whether they will ever be the same nonentities that they were before. They have demonstrated such superior business acumen that their hus– 142 –
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bands will no longer treat them as petted darlings; they will become partners and confidential advisers. “The future of the wage-earning class is less certain. They will not willingly give up their economic independence or accept their former meagre wages; however, they will meet the opposition of the trade unions which will attempt to deprive them of their profitable positions.The final result will probably be that in organized trades the women will be supplanted by the men, and in unorganized trades the women will continue at their posts… “The industrial crisis will be alleviated by two facts. A great many of the women who are wage earners are married, and are working for patriotic motives alone. Some of these will return to their homes by preference, and there are unfortunately a large number of men who will never return to the industrial fields. More than 1,000,000 of our men have already been killed, and 1,500,000 are physically unfitted by their injuries to again undertake their former positions.The women will continue to fill their place. “There will be a great change socially. The women have come out from the conservative environment of the home into the world of labor… They have tasted social liberty and independence, and it is doubtful whether ever again they will willingly allow the male members of their family to dominate their social existence.Women will demand the right to have some choice in the selection of their husbands. They will be socially, as well as economically, emancipated… “Morally the conditions will be better than was expected. Of course, with the new freedom there will be some license. The early training of our girls will protect their morals. Most of them will pass through the chaotic upheaval unharmed.The Government has recognized the danger of the corruption of moral standards, and has passed … laws to safeguard them… [B]y providing a furlough of one month, to be divided into four periods every year for every soldier, so that he may pass a week every three months with his wife.These recurrent visits to the sacred precincts of his home will have a restraining influence upon him and a salutary effect upon the morals of our people… “Now, as to the political changes that will result from the war. Of course, the laws will be changed to suit the new condition of the woman of France… Restrictions will be removed from women.They deserve and will receive more political freedom.The men of France are grateful to her – 143 –
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daughters, and will willingly give them anything they desire, or that is for their best interests, but woman suffrage will not come in France in the immediate future, because the women do not want it.There is no demand for the vote by the French women. “The women will be a power in French political life, but they will prefer to exercise it through their husbands and in their social life, rather than through the coarse medium of the ballot box. The salon will be woman’s polling place. Nothing will be too good for our industrial heroes and angels of mercy. If they demand political equality, they can have it for the asking, but my opinion is that the women of France as a mass will shrink from taking any active part in politics.”3
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118. “BIG SHARE OF FRANCE’S WORK IS NOW DONE BY WOMEN,” Toronto Globe, 4 July 1918, p.6. As a destroyer of classes and a leveller of social heights, this war surpasses any in the world’s history, both in the universality of its scope and of its effect.The exalted have been humbled; the lowly have been made great; and all have been ennobled and freed by mutual service… The ravages of the struggle on the manhood of France, and the resulting demand for workers at home, have resulted in the revelation and full play of heroic qualities in the women… Hospital and relief work and heavy physical labor in all sorts of industries have been shouldered by those who were once thought to be capable only of amusement and the display in public places of the latest modes in attire. Parisian women have set an example to the whole world in the exercise of charity and tender care both for wounded soldiers and for those destitute refugees from the conquered and endangered regions. There 3. For evidence of Lauzanne’s tendency to under-estimate the force behind the movement for women’s suffrage in post-war France, see Steven Hause and Anne Kenney, Women’s Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Steven Hause, Hubertine Auclert:The French Suffragette (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1987); James F. Macmillan, Housewife or Harlot:The Place of Women in French Society, 1870-1940 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1981); Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization Without Sexes; Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). – 144 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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have been thousands of these homeless and foodless people in Paris from the war zone.They brought very little with them, and most of them were without money. The women of France have ungrudgingly given themselves to such works of charity. The hospitals are filled with women of exalted birth tenderly caring for our wounded soldiers. It is no uncommon sight to see a French Marquise nursing a peasant… In addition … a vast number of women became wage-earners.Work that has been essentially masculine was now undertaken by women.They became the postmen, the policemen, the tram-car conductors, the elevator operators, the carpenters, and a large number went into public work. The soldiers at the front must have munitions and clothing.The daughters of France undertook to supply these wants. In September 1914, there were 25,000 women engaged in munition factories. In 1916 there were 323,500. Now recent figures show that there are 475,000 women engaged in this work alone. They were recruited from poorly-paid operators from other lines of work, from the servant class, from the unattached females, and from the women whose fixed incomes were not sufficient to support them.The Government made an allotment of about 50 cents a day and 25 cents additional for each child to care for the dependents of the men in the army, provided they were not self-supporting.The majority of the women refused to take the Government’s gratuity, preferring to care for themselves and at the same time to assist the Government by their work.The pay was about $2 a day. The dressmakers, servant girls, and others who had been making about 75 or 80 cents a day gladly undertook the new work. Many a woman who never before earned any money of her own is now enjoying her first experience as a wage-earner.They are reveling in their newfound economic independence. At first, they spent their money very freely for women’s furbelows, but the inherent thrift of the French nation has asserted itself and the latest report is that they are saving their money…
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119. “PEOPLE, NOT THINGS, COUNT IN FRANCE,” by Frances Boullion Toplitz, New York Times, 7 July 1918, iii, p.8. Back in the station at Lyons, early in the morning of the 19th [June], I saw the first convoy of “évacués” coming down from the north—the first for me. And what a tired, weary, travel-stained conglomeration of humanity they were; the trains packed solidly, passenger cars, first, second and thirdclass, and freight cars, some of the poor people standing through the journey, others squatting or lying on the straw-covered floors of the freight cars. Old people, pathetically old, and women and children. The young men—one did not have to ask where they were.The north-bound trains told the tale. Splendid, rosy-cheeked lads, with life all before them—men of sober mien, men who knew how to endure—grizzled officers, yes, and many young ones. I wondered how many of the old people, whose lives were at low ebb, felt, as they watched the north-bound trains, that they would be glad to exchange places, give up their few remaining days to save those splendid young fellows whose days of usefulness were all before them. Some of the old people did not look as if they could last until the journey’s end… This cruel, ruthless uprooting, this sudden removal from their beloved soil …— it was beyond human expectations that they should survive this terrible wrench… They were going into a quiet, peaceful part of France, as far away in the sense of security as if they were going into the heart of the Rockies. They were leaving the horrors of war behind them, the deafening roar of cannon, the destruction, desolation, mutilation, death; they were leaving them all behind to come into this lovely sunlighted valley of the Rhone… Among the young people, the women and children, this wholesale uprooting … did not seem to have about it the element of hopelessness. There was novelty in the change, although some were “évacués” for the second time… They clung to their possessions—a bundle of clothes, a roll of bedding, a basket of food, even a trunk … ; and they waited patiently for their journey’s end… What a heavy task is that of the women, and they know it! They must save France through their children.Their men have gone, some killed and some missing or prisoners.The women show in their steady eyes, in their – 146 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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devotion to their duty, that they know their part and will do it.They will not forget and they will not allow their children to forget.They have suffered too much… The French Government has planned well for its now shifting population. A daily allowance is made according to age [1 franc 50 centimes per adult, 1 franc, 20 centimes per child; with a franc about 20 US cents]; rent is paid, or, rather, provision is made for rent whenever families decide to lodge separately… Where the task is too big for the local authorities, the Red Cross steps in, and together the responsibilities are carried… It is a tremendous rush and hurry all the time… Here are thousands of people with nothing but the clothes they are standing in.And eventually they are to go back to their homes—homes denuded—yes, and in many instances razed to the ground. The few things they can take back with them will be their beginning… War bread, loaves fully a yard long, or in rings no less than two feet in diameter, or in solid round loaves of similar dimension, is ever present. It is never wrapped in paper. Everybody walks along the street with his loaf of bread under his arm, and all the sanitary measures we take to have our bread wrapped and sealed, or handled with gloved hands only, would probably be scoffed at.The war bread is not very good, but we may judge from the size of the loaves that it is not unpopular. One does not feel any shortage of food here, except perhaps sugar and chocolate… The little town itself is a very gray little town… From a tourist’s point of view, there might be many interesting things to see. But somehow with this world’s great tragedy going on … nothing else seems of any value, particularly not things. It doesn’t matter if a church is Romanesque or Gothic or flamboyant, or whether this or that king was buried in it; it is the people, the simple people, kneeling on the stone pavements, pouring out their sorrowing hearts, that count; it is the bended figure in flowing crêpe, or the mutilated soldier, or the blinded one groping, feeling his way down the nave, that makes that church exist for me, not its architectural history.
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120. “FRANCE CHEERS ALLIED HEROES,” Washington Post, 15 July 1918, p.4. Paris, July 14. The celebration of the French national holiday was little interfered with by the rainy weather. Inspired by the example set ten days ago when the country universally honored America on the Fourth of July all France turned out in irresistible holiday spirit. Paris was the center of the most spectacular celebration but there was not one of the lesser cities, towns or hamlets but outdid itself to make this Fourteenth of July the most notable in history… Heroes distinguished during the war in all the entente allied armies participated in a monster parade through the streets of Paris today.American troops from the the First and Second divisions … represented the United States army. All the American units had been in France more than a year and wore two service stripes.The American expeditionary forces were showered with flowers by French girls and were received all along the route with the greatest enthusiasm. The parade was reviewed by President Poincaré, who was accompanied by Gen. John J. Pershing, the commander-in-chief of the United States forces in France.The Americans occupied second place in the column [just behind the French]. All branches of the French army service were represented.The Alpins chasseurs received an ovation while singing their well known Alsatian song along the line of march. Historic French regiments with battle flags of the Napoleonic wars as well as of engagements in the present war, including the battles of the Marne,Verdun, the Somme, the Aisne and Champagne, were cheered with “Vive le Poilu” while girls threw flowers to them. A battalion of Belgians followed the Americans. Then came British contingents, including the grenadier guards, the black watch, Irish guards, Canadians and New Zealanders. Bagpipes accompanied Highlanders who came out of the trenches yesterday. The Italian representation included Alpine units.A detachment of the Polish army was loudly cheered by the crowds… Czecho-Slovaks who had fought on the Russian front … sang a battle song that was pleasing to the spectators, who cheered them… A Russian detachment of the French legion of honour, officered by Russians, occupied a place in the parade.A – 148 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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battalion of Greeks and Portuguese also was present. Part of the line was taken up by French marines, sailors and cavalry. American ambulances concluded the procession, and here again the overseas soldiers were showered with flowers and cheered. Unfavorable weather with frequent rain did not prevent all viewing points … from being crowded. Many persons had taken up their positions the night before. Special arrangements allowed wounded soldiers to have good places to see their comrades. The line of march was from the Bois de Bologne through various wide avenues to the Tuileries Garden. As the official party left, President Poincaré and Premier Clemenceau received ovations. Marshal Joffre, hero of the Marne, also was enthusiastically cheered.
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121. “PITIFUL INCIDENTS OF FRENCH LIFE,” by Monica Moore, New York Times, 21 July 1918, iii, p.2. [For four years Miss Monica Moore … was chief social service worker at the Volunteer Hospital in New York City. It was at the request of the Rockefeller Foundation that she was sent to France to help in the fight against tuberculosis…] [Speaking of French refugees], she writes: One family that I found one evening in one of the small towns was most pathetic—a mother and two sons; one boy was suffering from pleurisy when the bombardment of his town took place. He was taken to the cellar; before they had time to get upstairs for the bedclothes their house was blown to pieces—just the cellar and part of the ground floor left.There they had to stay for four days without covering or food. They got away and were brought through to one of my villages, where I found them in a hovel—the boy practically dying of tuberculosis, lying on the floor on a bed of straw.They had had very little food and no fire… In another house I went into one night I found a man of 80, a woman of 72.The old man was lying on a narrow feather mattress on the floor; he was a cripple.The old woman was lying on the floor beside him, using the edge of the mattress for a pillow. That was all that was left to them of a comfortable farm in Nancy. The old woman told me of how they had got away.Another farmer managed to keep his horse and cart, to – 149 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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take himself and his children, and the old woman begged him to make a corner in the cart for her old husband, as he was crippled, but she could walk. They put the feather mattress in, the old man on it, and off they started, the old woman walking behind the cart holding to a piece of rope. She said the first day things were all right; they slept in a field for a few hours that night, but not for long, as they were still in danger. The next day the horse showed signs of being tired and they told the old woman she would have to take her husband out of the cart. She knelt in the dust and prayed them just to keep the old man in, as he could not walk and would die by the road. She then offered to carry some of the bundles for them if only they would keep her husband, and so they gave her a bundle to carry—of kitchenware—and they strapped the feather mattress to her back, and that was the way the old woman had to walk almost seventy miles from Nancy… I was called down to help at a train of wounded one night… With them was a woman 88 years old; she was partly paralyzed and in some way had not got away when the town was evacuated. She had reached an old church, but could not get any farther. The Germans went through that village, were pushed back, and on their way back saw the the old woman and took her with them. A short time [later], after the French [had] surrounded the Germans and [taken] them prisoners, [they] rescued this poor old soul. In the meantime she had gone out of her mind. I have her in the hospital at Châteaudun, hoping that she will be able to tell us something before she dies. It seems dreadful to think of her dying without knowing even her name.
122. “FRENCH PEOPLE CHOKE ROADS,” Toronto Globe, 29 July 1918, p.14. With the American Army on the Aisne-Marne front, July 29. French peasants are again choking the roadways below the Marne, east of ChateauThierry. But this time they are going home instead of leaving, as was the case in June, when the alarm was sounded that the Germans were coming. Every road leading northward contains streams of peasants and vehicles of every description, with effects of all kinds piled on them. But on the faces of the people is a different expression than that which they bore – 150 –
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when they were going the other way. The expression this time is of anticipation, but also of anxiety, as they do not know what awaits them at home. Many peasants travel in great two-wheeled hayracks or carts, with one, two, and sometimes five horses, in single file. The carts are loaded with household effects, with bicycles, bird cages and similar belongings swinging over the sides. Grandfathers, grandmothers and babies ride with feather mattresses as seats. Fathers drive the carts, and mothers and walking children and cows, goats and dogs trail behind. Various surprises await different groups of the French people. Some of them will find their thick-walled stone or frame houses hammered to pieces by the German heavy guns—nothing more than a pile of crushed rock or shattered woodwork.Their fields have been pitted every few feet as if by a rain of iron.Vegetable gardens are bare, the vegetables having gone to feed the Germans. Some of the people will find their houses standing in great holes, the red tiled roofs and windows shattered, and what was left behind when the exodus began in heaps, everything of value or of use to the Germans having been taken. Some of the people will find their kitchen stoves standing, mirrors intact and beds in place, the latter with indications of having been recently occupied.These will be the farms where the Germans made themselves comfortable, and when the allied offensive began they were so taken by surprise that they did not have time to destroy or pack the utensils of which they had been making use.
123. “BUSINESS REVIVES IN THE PARIS SHOPS,” New York Times, 2 September 1918, p.9. Paris. Sept.1.The uninterrupted series of allied victories since July 18 have had a markedly satisfactory effect not only on the whole economic situation here, but have also rendered almost certain the successful issue of the new French war loan in the immediate future. Trade in Paris, and indeed the whole of France, has received a tonic from the improved military situation which in some cases is almost startling. Delighted directors of the big Paris stores say that during the last few weeks business has exceeded even pre-war volume.With the retreat of the – 151 –
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Germans to a safer distance from Paris and the cessation of the Big Bertha’s efforts,4 confidence has returned to such an extent that a majority of the wealthier fugitives who left the city in May, June and July have come back by thousands.The population generally, who suspended purchases during the anxious period covered by the great German drives, are now buying freely in spite of the 10 per cent luxury tax which affects all articles except those of sheer necessity, and in fact nearly all lines of goods are now doubled in price as compared to pre-war rates. Restaurants and cafés admit that they are doing a land office business, notwithstanding the terrific rise in their tariffs.The prices of all dishes and drinks, even the most ordinary, show at least 100 per cent advance compared with two years ago.Whisky in a vast majority of cafés is absolutely unobtainable, and the price of a highball in those few places where it can still be had has gone up to at least $1 instead of the average price of 25 cents formerly. Manhattan and Martigny cocktails are 50 to 75 cents, and at one famous boulevard café, which is frequented by Americans, a franc is quoted for a glass of plain water. I say quoted intentionally, for by a recent police ukase the price on all food and drinks must now be legibly posted up on both outside and inside every public feeding and drinking establishment for all the world to know… Exchange has come down enormously in every direction with the exception of Italy. Beginning in July it took 143 French francs to buy 100 Swiss. Today only 127 are required …, and the British sovereign [has dropped] from 27.15 to 26.25… During the last three weeks the receipts from taxation and sales of Treasury bonds have been so satisfactory that the State for the first time in many months has not required any further advances from the Bank of France… Whatever the type of the new bonds to be issued, Paris is perfectly resolved to make the success of the new loan immensely greater than any of its predecessors. It is fully realized that the amount of wealth in the country as yet untouched is enormous, and all that is required is some effective means of bringing it out.The enormous success achieved through the adoption of the more or less American methods which characterized the experiment made on the last great national Fourteenth of July holiday, when nearly $25,000,000 worth of Treasury bonds were sold from booths erected in the streets of Paris, indi4. The nickname for Germany’s longest-range artillery. – 152 –
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cates that similar methods will be adopted in connection with the pending issue…
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124. “FRENCH PRICES RISE SKYWARD,” Toronto Globe, 12 September 1918, p.3. Paris, Sept.11. The serious increases in the cost of living … throughout France may, to some extent, be gauged by the … proposals to increase the pay of military and civilian employees of the State, which … [were] approved by the Council of Ministers this morning. Under this bill, civilian public servants drawing salaries under $2,400 a year will receive an additional war pay of forty cents a day… Finance Minister Klotz … announced that the Government will take vigorously in hand the question of stopping the scandalous artificial rises in prices of all necessaries in the way of foodstuffs, which in the last few weeks has assumed little short of monstrous proportions… Instances of the manner in which prices are being raised against the public occur daily.The price of ordinary French table beer yesterday suddenly rose 40 per cent in the average Paris restaurant. The reason given was that the public was drinking more beer, owing to the fabulous present cost of wine. The cheapest vin ordinaire [ordinary table wine], which could be obtained before the war at from 7 cents to 21 cents [for] a pint and three quarters … cannot now be had under 40 cents. Prices of all wines, it is announced this week, are to go considerably higher forthwith. The extraordinary explanation given by dealers is that the increase is due to the fact that the wine crop is exceptionally large this year and that prices have to be raised because there is a shortage of barrels. On a par with this is the defense offered by the dairy farmers, who have raised the price of milk from 7 cents a litre … to 20 cents.Their excuse is that their cows, which formerly were worth $100 each, are now worth three times as much; consequently, they claim, as the yield of milk is more or less a fixed quantity they have a right to raise the price of that commodity til it yields the same percentage of profit on the increased value of four-legged capital as it did before that value soared to its present fancy figure.The fact that the cows are exactly the same animals, they insist, does not enter into the argument. – 153 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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The cost of living in Paris, it is generally agreed, is now twice what it was a year ago, and three times the figure of before the war.
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125. “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER TREND OF PARIS JOURNALS,” Chicago Tribune, 7 October 1918, p.2. Paris, Oct.5. Unconditional surrender characterizes the general comment in Paris on the demand for peace sent by the central powers to [American] President [Woodrow] Wilson. It is felt here that Germany and her allies have not gone far enough in their request to the president for an armistice, and that … they have not shown submission such as was forced upon Bulgaria. “Germany wishes to stop the war at the moment she is going to be beaten, and knows it,” says Figaro, … “The humiliation of having demanded peace would disappear rapidly…” “We are on the road to victory,” says L’Homme Libre.“We will not let them stop us. An armistice is not possible at the point at which we now are… We would not be satisfied with autonomy for Alsace-Lorraine.We want reparations for the past and guarantees for the future…” “The central powers’ move is not without its danger…,” says Le Journal. “The enemy offers to negotiate on the basis of President Wilson’s peace program.There is no discussion between conqueror and conquered. Beaten on all fronts and facing the menace of being completely vanquished …, [Germany] seeks to save what is left of her military prestige and materials in arms. She wishes to represent herself as having asked for peace out of consideration for humanity.” The Paris newspapers are unanimous in their demand for complete victory.The present peace move is sneered at. A demand is made for the entire submission of Germany and that the Germans be disarmed. “The white flag trick,” is the caption of the editorial in the Temps on the peace proposition of the central powers.What Germany has done, says the newspaper, is “to invite the United States, who are belligerents as much as Germany, to play the role of mediator, as if they were outside our alliance… Germany only invokes President Wilson’s principles to make us let fall our arms.Then, when the fighting has ceased, when the German – 154 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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troops have regained their breath, when the imperial government has become popular and strong, the German diplomats will undermine and overturn one by one the pretended bases of negotiation.” “The cornered beast draws in its claws and offers us its bloodstained paw,” says Journal des Débats in beginning its editorial. This newspaper declares that the suspension of hostilities will be acceptable only on conditions offering the same advantages as the continuous victorious advance of the allied troops—the evacuation of territories occupied in Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Russia, Italy, Roumania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro.“We shall keep our program of restitution, reparation, and guarantees,” says this newspaper.“There will be no armistice before we possess guarantees for the execution of these conditions.”
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126. “FRANCE WILL NEVER FORGET,” Toronto Globe, 11 October 1918, p.4. With the Canadian Forces, Oct.10.The Hun has never perpetrated more ruthless nor more premeditated vandalism than the destruction of Cambrai, now in progress… We stood in the Place d’Armes, a great public square, when the Canadians entered early this afternoon. It was practically intact. Now it is like unto Ypres. All is ruin. At 9 o’clock explosions began and have continued ever since.All day, in every part of the town, there were explosions of incendiary bombs with time fuses attached, and these were followed immediately by outbursts of fire. In one short street a dozen houses simultaneously burst into flames. The Hotel de Ville, the Bishop’s Palace and other buildings were blown to pieces. The cathedral still stands, but with the ruined chancel only.There is left the great belfry tower but with fire lapping its base.As the hours went by the universal character of the holocaust developed. The sun was obscured and seemed like a fiery ball in the smoke and the thick dust of falling walls… Cambrai tonight is a smoking ruin…
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127. “LENS COAL MINES RUINED FOR YEARS,” Toronto Globe, 16 October 1918, p.5. Paris, Oct.15. It will be from eighteen months to two years before it will become possible to take out any coal from the mines in the Lens region, which the Germans damaged to the best of their ability before they retired from the city… It is estimated that it will take five years to restore the normal production of the pits. The inspection [of these mines was made by two cabinet ministers and two parliamentary deputies.] They visited Lens itself and the adjoining mining towns of Sallaumines and Lievin.They found Map 5.1 Paris-Lens-Courrières the mines flooded … [and] it will be two years, it is estimated, before the mines can be cleared of water.The mining plants have been systematically destroyed. At Courrières, northeast of Lens, the Germans had blown up the mines before retiring. Of the ten thousand houses in Lens, the visitors found not one left standing, the town having been completely razed.
128. “PARIS REJOICES AT NEWS COAST HAS BEEN FREED,” by Charles N. Wheeler, Chicago Tribune, 22 October 1918, p.3. Paris, Oct.20. Paris, which has remained calm through the weeks of victories, shrugged its shoulders and simply muttered,“On les a” [we’ve got them], today thawed out considerably.When Paris awoke this morning it was to read the thrilling news that Zeebrugge had been recovered and that the Huns were evacuating all of Flanders, with the Belgian coast now freed of the enemy… – 156 –
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Through the rain and mist great crowds thronged Place de la Concorde, where hundreds of captured Hun cannon of all calibers, bombing planes, mine throwers, and tanks had been banked. The adoration around the Strasbourg and Lille statues revealed the French spirit at its best, but one of the most striking features of the crowds, which lifted up their hearts in song and shouting for the first time in months, was the children of Paris.The gamin[s] of Paris are inquisitive birds. They clambered over the Hun cannon in droves. Every little device had to be inspected, and when a gun was discovered with the mechanism intact and which could be pointed at almost any angle there was great shouting… They shinnied up the barrels and hung from the muzzles of the big guns while friendly gendarmes turned their faces in the other direction. Bands played and from out of Rue Royal and Rue Castiglione and up the Rivoli swung the marching soldiers of many nations, with their battle flags hung high. But the children of Paris only stopped long enough to raise their lusty shrill voices—the children who have snapped their fingers at the Hun air bombs for four years and who spat in derision at Big Bertha’s shells… A huge tank was wheeled into Place de la Concorde near the obelisk. The mechanism of the outside did not satisfy the curiosity of the children, and so they piled onto it and down into it until it resembled a huge ant hill with a very busy family within it…
129. “PARIS GIVES REIN TO ENTHUSIASM,” New York Times, 12 November 1918, p.2. Paris, Nov.11. Scenes of the wildest enthusiasm were enacted in the Chamber of Deputies this afternoon when Premier Clemenceau read the conditions of the German armistice. The whole Chamber rose to greet the Premier, while the galleries, in which was a predominance of soldiers in uniform, and women, cheered for several minutes. Prolonged cheering greeted the announcement that Alsace-Lorraine would be occupied, and the name of Marshal Foch, as the signer of the document, was enthusiastically received. Premier Clemenceau received the newspaper men this morning, addressing them as follows: – 157 –
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“… The armistice was signed at 5 o’clock this morning, Germany accepting all the conditions with slight modifications.We have to be very careful about the food problem in Germany.We cannot let the nation suffer famine.We must endure, ourselves, and at the same time keep our military superiority…” The War Office issued the following communication tonight on the cessation of hostilities: “In the fifty-second month of a war without precedent in history, the French Army, with the aid of the Allies, has achieved the defeat of the enemy… Our troops …, [have] after a decisive offensive of four months, thrown into disorder, beaten and thrown out of France the powerful German Army.They have compelled it to beg for peace… All the conditions required for the suspension of hostilities having been accepted by the enemy, an armistice came into force today at 11 o’clock…” As soon as the official announcement was made, all official buildings, Embassies, and Legations, in Paris were bedecked with flags, and church bells were rung.Workers flocked from offices and shops and formed processions, which paraded through the principal streets of the capital. The marchers sang allied national hymns and carried allied flags. Marshal Foch was received by Premier Clemenceau at 10 o’clock this morning. President Poincaré also received the Marshal and congratulated him warmly on the signing of the armistice.
130. “WOMEN IN FRANCE SEEK NEW STATUS,” by Gertrude Atherton, New York Times, 29 December 1918, i, p.3. I knew when I arrived on Dec.12 that I was too late for the wild rejoicing following the armistice, but I did expect to find another order of tranquillity, not the lofty serenity of a tempered people with much yet to endure… [In fact] I have found the French people restless, dissatisfied, anxious.The air of winding themselves up and pushing themselves along was noticeable in the throngs on the street and in the great shops even on the day and night before Christmas. The shops were blazing with electricity, both within and without, in the fashion of our Broadway.The people were buying and promenading, – 158 –
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but their faces were grim or sullen. Nowhere did I see the joy of the light irresponsibility of the season. It is true that very many women were in black, that no one bought for the living without sad, bitter memories of the dead, and there is probably not a household in France without a gap at the table… [T]he women bitterly resent the armistice… Here they tell me that ten or, at most, fifteen days would have seen a complete and ignominious defeat upon which the French had set their hearts.An armistice seems to them a contemptible compromise. The Germans have saved their immense army intact, the hated land which has spawned the vilest race of modern times is inviolate, and the people, far from admitting themselves conquered, are daily giving proof that there is only one kind of German, of which the scapegoat Kaiser was the figurehead… If there should be another war, ten or even twenty years hence, then all this terrible sacrifice and suffering will have been in vain.The millions crumbling under the soil of France will have given their all for little more than the temporary safety of Paris. Only the greatest wisdom and harmony at the Peace Congress can avert this haunting tragedy, and when one considers that the fate of the world will be in the hands of a few fallible men … one ceases to marvel that the French women … should be too full of resentment and anxiety, too disgusted, to rejoice with a whole heart over an armistice that leaves the enemy crippled but slapping himself on the back.Ten days more and there would have been a victory that would have crushed Germany to the earth, avenged every wrong, and insured external peace for a century at least. Is it to be wondered that they resent the armistice? It will be remembered that the women of the lower classes of France were far more vicious and fearsome than the men during the Reign of Terror and even during the Commune.5 Mingled with the fear of what would happen if the Socialists got the upper hand and demobilized the troops abruptly, is a growing apprehension of the stand that the women of the working class may take. There are grievances past and apprehended. The soldier in the trenches received 5 cents a day, his wife 20 to 30 cents a day, with about 15 cents for each child in Paris, and 10 cents in the provinces. Good 5. References to 1793-94, and to the Paris Commune of 1871. – 159 –
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Socialists, on the other hand, in favor with Albert Thomas, were withdrawn from the trenches and placed in munitions factories where they earned from $3 to $4 a day, their families receiving the same allocation as those of the soldiers risking their lives for 5 cents a day… Many women of … [those] classes, moreover, have made high wages themselves in the munitions factories and find this source of revenue abruptly cut off.They are demanding to be taken on in the factories for agricultural implements and other necessaries of peace time, refusing flatly, vast numbers of them, to slide backward to dependence and insignificance… The question of independence is … acute. A mediaeval law still exists in France that entitles a husband to his wife’s earnings and gives him control of her property unless it is otherwise stipulated in the marriage contract.After four years’ absolute control of home economies, dispensing or saving as they willed, making more money in a day than their husbands formerly earned in a week. It would be miraculous indeed if the French women of the industrial and commercial classes … should subside automatically at the declaration of peace and become mere creatures of the men… Every now and then a Deputy lifts his voice in favor of the franchise for women, believing that if they are granted the power to vote and alter some of the musty old laws, they will give less trouble in the end. It certainly will require all the tact the men possess to repress or divert these fires seething at present below the surface, fed by memories of the agonies of the years of war and the apprehension of what yet may be in store for France. These women have been intensely loyal to France, but they now have a strong inclination to be loyal to themselves and to those dependent upon them, many of whom are legless, armless, and tubercular.As men in all countries are notoriously stupid where women are concerned, and as Frenchmen are, perhaps, the most conservative of all and the most determined to keep woman in her place and maintain their own ascendancy, we may see some lively times as soon as the demobilization is complete. One solution would be back to the soil, restored homes, and small farms all over the rest of France, bought from the large proprietors willing to part with the land they can no longer find the men to till. But here again the women step in.They don’t like farm life and are not to be tempted by the landlord’s high wage, much less when they must – 160 –
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do a large part of the work themselves.They prefer the towns where they can go to the cinema and wear tight skirts and high heels. They do not object to work if it is remunerative, for they are an energetic and industrious race, but the time is gone by when they will work without reward, and after the most trying war of modern times, during which they have made the acquaintance of far more than loss and grief, they propose to have their full share in the rewards of peace. They have found themselves, and if the men are wise they will yield with what grace they can muster. Otherwise they will have their eyes scratched out…
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R
eaders of the twenty-first century will not fail to detect some resonance in the closing piece by Gertrude Atherton.1 Written eighty years ago, here is an article with a distinctly feminist cast, one which expresses an abiding confidence in women’s abilities first to endure and second to attenuate the follies perpetrated by men. “Notoriously stupid” though they may be, the latter will eventually listen to reason, and will eventually succumb to women’s inherent acumen and energy. This was not a new discovery for Atherton, an already celebrated feminist writer,2 but her own acumen had detected three moods in late 1918 that are worth remark. Each of which was to find numberless echos in the two decades that followed. On the brighter side, one certainly was the enhanced sense of confidence that women had acquired through the trials of war. They had suffered losses as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, but many of them had made significant monetary and psychological gains as war workers. They had made shells of all calibers, and aircraft of multiple types. They had worked on drill presses, and metal lathes. They had run shops, staffed government offices, driven vehicles, and entertained the public. They had logged long hours as nurses, guardians of orphans, and administrators for refugee work. They had knitted for the army and buttressed the morale of millions of individual soldiers by writing caring and compassionate letters. All this in the name of a sacred patriotic cause which, par hazard, provided 1. See #130 2. See “Gertrude Atherton” in Appendix – 162 –
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an occasion to demonstrate once again not only the limitless technical skills of women, but also their energy, courage, perseverance, and wisdom. Although such demonstrations failed to usher in a new post-war era of social and political equality for women, as Atherton had feared might be the case, there is little doubt that the experiences imposed by the war, and the attendant bolstering of women’s self-confidence, constituted an important chapter in the slow progression of French women toward greater equality after 1945. A second of Atherton’s appraisals in 1918 was the realization that French women had not welcomed the end of the war, at least as that war had been ended by the armistice of November 1918. The reason was simple. Wives and widows, mothers and daughters, women of sorrow, women of compassion, wanted the enemy to suffer much more, and much longer, than was ensured by the terms of the armistice. In December 1918 there was a sense that the Germans—including the women—had gotten off too easily, with their army intact, and with it their propensity for denying both the defeat and any responsibility for what had happened. The third mood detected by Atherton was the fear, even in 1918, that war would come again. Prophetically, like the more famous prediction of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Atherton raised the spectre of war “even twenty years hence.” Unless, of course, the “fallible men” to whom the peace process was to be entrusted, should outdo her expectations. And thus the link between the fear of Germany and the fear of male leadership. The men who made the armistice, badly, would similarly betray women’s hopes by being too soft on the enemy at the peace conference. And it was such a grievous miscalculation that would send a new generation of husbands and sons to another war. That apprehension, so particularly informed from a feminist angle, was one of the most enduring legacies of the Great War. Indeed, very little proved ephemeral. True, one might forget easily enough the war-time privations: the economic dislocation that had accompanied the mobilization of 1914, the early cutbacks in public transit, the curfews and the closures, the war bread, the coal shortages, the sugar rations, the escalating price increases toward the end of the war. Forgotten too, if less easily, were the censorship con– 163 –
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trols and the propaganda campaigns that had been targeted at domestic morale. At odds though such practices were with the principles of a liberal democracy, the exceptional demands of war seemed to justify exceptions. Even the ruins, the physical remains of villages and cathedrals, of mines, railroads, and hospitals, could be razed, cleansed or reconstructed. The quickest of them in a few years. But even the broken stones and mortar were going to become a condition of some permanence in the new peace order. Not because stones took so long to mend, but because there were so many of them broken in north-eastern France. The villages of Gerbéviller and Vitry-le-François, the ruined hamlets around Soissons, the shattered cantons near the Belgian border, would not be restored over-night.3 Reims and Arras were not going to have their cathedrals rebuilt in a fortnight, or Cambrai its town center, or Lens and Courrières their mines, or Paris its medieval church of Saint Gervais.4 Those repairs, however, would be cheap and simple compared to the damages inflicted on the people who had survived the war in villages, towns and cities. Most of that damage was emotional and psychological. But not all of it. One is reminded of Carolyn Wilson’s article of September 1917 about the “war cripples.”5 By war’s end how many legless, armless, handless, sightless veterans were there distributed across France? How many survivors of gas attacks, men with scorched lungs who had writhed on the rude hospital beds recounted by Pierre Loti?6 How many children, like Wilson’s little lad of 12, hobbled on wooden feet to receive their school diploma? And how many mothers, like his own, had lost a leg during some aerial bombardment? But while legs could be rebuilt in some fashion, and lives returned to some semblance of normalcy, physicians remained baffled by shattered hearts. A million and a half dead soldiers left between two and three million bereaved parents—fathers like René Bazin who had worried about whether his son was warm, dry and 3. 4. 5. 6.
See #s 38,40,76,85,99 See #s 41,48,51,70,111,112,126,127 See #s 73,91 See #53 – 164 –
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safe, mothers whose dry, inconsolable courage had so moved Maurice Maeterlinck.7 France offered millions of such personal tragedies from which no one truly fully recovered. The empty place at the table, the fading photograph on the mantlepiece, the tarnishing military medals, the commemorative visits to the military cemetery, for millions these became part of the post-war ritual. Care of grand-children did not. The sons who did not return were never to have sons or daughters of their own, a condition which had national as well as personal import. As the editorial in the Toronto Globe pointed out in early 1918, France was already experiencing an annual surplus of deaths over births by 1914, the year in which the war had only begun.8 By 1916 that surplus had increased dramatically, further sharpening an already much publicized anxiety about the nation’s capacity to regenerate. Without some redressment, it took no imagination to project major problems ahead in the event of a future Franco-German war. By the mid1930s, the numbers of young men eligible for military service would be sharply reduced owing to the demographic carnage inflicted by the last war. Thus, in the seeds of one great tragedy lay the makings of another. That tragedy had yet another face, this one too in the form of children, living children bereft of parents, many of them psychologically scarred. One can only wonder about the fate of the 500 French orphans in Etretat, housed in one hotel in Normandy, or that of the 300 crooning children discovered in the ruins of Amiens, unattended, listless, wordless, or the 200 little ones repatriated at Evian, “poor scraps of human beings,” unsure of their last names, physically wan, and emotionally emaciated.9 And what of the “boche babies,” the little creatures in the crèche at Chambly, foresaken by their French mothers? Whatever became of Maria, who had been found on a billiard table, or Marguerite, who had come in July, or little Paul with the brooding eyes?10 7. 8. 9. 10.
See #s 23, 88 See #106 See #s 50,90,115 See #95 – 165 –
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Epilogue
What a range of searing emotional experiences were brought by these civilian non-combattants into the post-war world. And what a conditioning effect these millions of experiences must have had on their attempts to recover from one war and to steel themselves to the prospect of another. They were fated to live among the physical and psychological ruins of France: trying to shake off the memories of bombing raids by Zeppelins and Taubes, of streets strewn with broken window panes and gutted apartment blocks, of churches crushed by huge shells from distant artillery; trying to put aside their trials as refugees, the destitute human flotsam which had surged back and forth along the roads of France, responding to the press of gathering armies; trying to put behind them the years of hard field work, when women, children and the elderly had toiled on their own to seed, cultivate and harvest the nation’s food supply. Trying to forget was certainly part of it. Insisting on remembering was another. The cemeteries, military and civilian, were the first monuments to the fallen, places where survivors made their pilgrimages in efforts to hold on to what was forever gone. Next came the special days of remembrance: All Saints Day on November 1st, Remembrance Day on the 11th, Bastille Day on July 14th, each of them offering a special commemorative holiday, the last two highlighted by parades of men in uniform. Before long, came the memorials proper, for two decades, monuments in countless village, town, and city squares, on which the names of the dead were faithfully inscribed. And with each grave, and each monument, there was added one more reason to remember, to resist, to fear war. In that, all of that, there was no ambiguity. The resolve to avoid what had been once endured was unqualified. But there was one catch. War was no abstraction for these civilians. It was very real, very destructive, and very German. It takes little effort to recall Robert Herrick’s story of the French mother pointing out a legless man and cautioning her son: “The Boches did that, remember!” Or Philip Kerby recalling Parisian bombing victims intent on instructing their children to hate the Germans and “never be friends with the enemy.”11 Even the likes of Hélène Brion, socialist school mistress of 11. See #s 37,56 – 166 –
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Pantin, did not dispute the government’s contention that the war had begun with a German invasion of France.12 Given the apprehension by the end of the war that Germany was going to get off too lightly and that, accordingly, she would be bent on a some new war of aggression, suspicion hardened into certainty. The Germans were terrorists, and they would come again. Which is to say that the victors of 1918, before the peace conference had assembled, were already concerned with their security, that they could not stop themselves from thinking about the unthinkable. Such is the irony, the tragedy of post-war, what we now think of as inter-war, France.
12. See #114 – 167 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
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GENERAL Becker, A. 1998. Oubliés de la grande guerre. Paris: Noêsis. Becker, J.J. 1977. 1914. Comment les Français sont entrés dans la guerre. Paris: FNSP. ______. 1986. The Great War and the French People. New York: St. Martin‘s. ______ and Berstein, S. 1994. Victoire et frustrations, 1914-1929. Paris: Seuil. ______ et al. 1994. Guerres et Cultures, 1914-1918. Paris: Colin. Coetzee, F. and Shevin-Coetzee, M. (eds.) 1995. Authority, Identity and the Social History of the Great War. Providence: Berghahn Books. Duroselle, J.B. 1972. La France et les Français, 1914-1920. Paris: Editions Richelieu. ______. 1994. La grande guerre des français, 1914-1918. Paris: Plon. Ferro, M. 1973. The Great War 1914-1918. London: Routledge. Fridenson, P. (ed.) 1992. The French Home Front,1914-1918. Providence, Berg. Hess, P. 1998. La vie à Reims pendant la guerre de 1914-1918. Paris: Anthropos. Keylor, W.R. 1997. “France and the First World War,” in The Transformation of Modern France. Edited by William Cohen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. – 168 – Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.
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Suggestions for Further Reading
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Perreux, G. 1966. La vie quotidienne des civils en France pendant la grande guerre. Paris: Hachette. Prost, A. 1992. In The Wake of War: ‘Les Anciens combattants‘ and French Society, 1914-1939. Providence: Berg. Rearick, C. The French in Love and War. Popular Culture in the Era of the World Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press. Wall, R. and Winter, J. (eds.) 1990. The Upheavals of War: Family, Work and Welfare in Europe, 1914-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, J. 1972. The Home Fronts: Britain, France and Germany,1914-1918. London: Constable. Winter, J.M. 1989. The Experience of World War 1. New York: Oxford University Press. ______. 1995. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ______ and Jean-Louis Robert (eds.) 1997. Capital Cities at War. Paris, London, Berlin 1914-1919. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
GOVERNMENT Bonzon, T. 1996. “La société, l‘Etat et le pouvoir local: à l‘approvisionnement à Paris, 1914-1918.” Guerres mondiales, 183 (July 1996): 11-28. ______ and Davis, B. 1997. “Feeding the cities.” in Capital Cities at War. Edited by Winter and Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coutin, C. 1994. “Pourvu qu‘ils tiennent...les Français! La contribution de Forain, dessinateur de presse, au moral des Français pendant la Grande Guerre.” Guerres mondiales. 173: 53-76. Collins, R.F. 1992. “The development of censorship in World War I France.” Journalism Monographs. no.131: 1-25 Duroselle, J.B. 1988. Clemenceau. Paris: Fayard.
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Suggestions for Further Reading
Flood, P.J. 1990. France, 1914-1918: Public Opinion and the War Effort. London: Macmillan. Godfrey, J. 1987. Capitalism at War: Industrial Policy and Bureaucracy in France, 1914-1918. Leamington Spa: Berg. Hanna, M. 1996. The Mobilization of Intellect: French Scholars and Writers During the Great War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Hardach, G. 1992. “Industrial Mobilization in 1914-1918: Production, Planning, and Ideology.” in The French Home Front. Edited by Fridenson. Providence: Berg. Hennebicque, A. 1992. “Albert Thomas and the War Industries,” in The French Home Front. Edited by Fridenson. Providence: Berg. Keiger, J.F.V. 1997. Raymond Poincaré. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Magri, S. 1997. “Housing.” in Capital Cities at War. Edited by Winter and Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pederson, S. 1993. Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rollet, C. 1997. “The ‘other war’ I: protecting public health.” in Capital Cities at War. Edited by Winter and Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ______. 1997. “The ‘other war’ I: setbacks in public health.” in Capital Cities at War. Edited by Winter and Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Triebel, A. 1997. “Coal and the metropolis” in Capital Cities at War. Edited by Winter and Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Veray, L. 1994. “La propagande par les actualités cinématographiques pendant la Grande Guerre.” Guerres mondiales 173: 19-34. Winter, J. 1997. “Surviving the war: life expectations, illness and mortality rates in Paris, London, and Berlin, 1914-1919.” in Capital Cities at War. Edited by Winter and Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Suggestions for Further Reading
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LABOR\INDUSTRY Augé-Laribé, M. and Pinot, P. 1927. Agriculture and Food Supply in France During the War. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bonzon, T. 1997. “The labour market and industrial mobilization, 1915-1917.” in Capital Cities at War. Edited by Winter and Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fontaine, A. 1926. French Industry during the War. New Haven: Yale University Press. Fridenson, P. 1988. “The Impact of the First World War on French Workers.” in The Upheaval of War: Family, Work, and Welfare in Europe, 1914-1918. Edited by Wall and Winter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horne, J. 1989 “‘L‘Impôt du sang’: Republican Rhetoric and Industrial Warfare in France, 1914-1918.” Social History 14: 201-23. ______. 1991. Labour at War. France and Britain, 1914-1918. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Laux, J. M. 1992. “Gnôme et Rhône. An Aviation Engine Firm in the First World War.” in The French Home Front. Edited by Fridenson. Providence: Berg. Manning, J. 1997. “Wages and Purchasing Power.” in Capital Cities at War. Edited by Winter and Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robert, J.L. 1997. “The image of the profiteer.” in Capital Cities at War. Edited by Winter and Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
WOMEN Downs, L.L. 1995. Manufacturing Inequality: Gender Division in the French and British Metalworking Industries, 1914-1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Dubesset, M., Thébaud, F., Vincent, C. 1992. “The Female Munition Workers of the Seine.” in The French Home Front. Edited by Fridenson. Providence: Berg. – 171 –
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Suggestions for Further Reading
Grayzel, S.R. 1997. “Mothers, Marraines, and Prostitutes: Morale and Morality in First World War France.” International History Review xix, 1: 66-82. Higonnet, M. et al. (eds.) 1987. Behind the Lines. Gender and the World Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press. McMillan, J. F. 1981. Housewife or Harlot: The Place of Women in French Society, 1870-1940. New York: St. Martin‘s. ______. 1988. “World War I and Women in France.” in Total War and Social Change. Edited by Arthur Marwick. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Robert, J.L. 1988. “Women and Work in France During the First World War.” in The Upheaval of War. Edited by Wall and Winter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roberts, M.L. 1994. Civilization Without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, P. 1996. Feminism and the Third Republic. Women’s Political and Civil Rights in France, 1918-1945. New York: Oxford University Press. Stewart, M.L. 1989. Women, Work, and the French State. Labour, Protection and Social Patriarchy, 1879-1919. Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press. Thébaud, F. 1986. La femme au temps de la guerre de 14. Paris: Stock\L.Pernoud.
CHILDREN Audoin-Rouzeau, S. 1995. L‘Enfant de l‘ennemi, 1914-1918. Paris: Aubier. Dehay, V. 1995. “L‘Ecole et l‘enfance dans la Somme pendant la Grande Guerre.” Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 179: 99-113. Harris, R. 1993. “The Child of the Barbarian: Rape, Race and Nationalism in France during World War One.” Past and Present 141: 170-205.
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Suggestions for Further Reading
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Huss, M.M. 1988. “Pronatalism and the popular ideology of the child in wartime France: the evidence of the picture postcard.” in The Upheaval of War. Edited by Wall and Winter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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APPENDIX The Writers
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GERTRUDE ATHERTON Born in 1857 in California, Gertrude Atherton became one of the most prominent writers of her day. Journalist and historian, she was best known for a steady stream of novels which appeared between 1889 and 1942, most of them featuring intelligent, strong-minded heroines. In The White Morning (1918), a work accented by her dislike of Germany, she anticipated the overthrow of the Kaiser’s government by German women. During the war she was actively engaged in fund-raising for a variety of benevolent causes, and she contributed many newspaper articles to the American press. Particular note should be made of her Life in the War Zone (1916), The Living Present (1917) and her autobiography Adventures of a Novelist (1932). A recipient of honorary degrees from Mills College and the University of California at Berkeley, Gertrude Atherton died in June 1948.
JAMES O. BENNETT Born in 1870 in Michigan, James O’Donnell Bennett began his career in journalism at the age of ten, collecting information for an uncle who edited the Jackson Patriot. After several years at the University of Michigan, Bennett secured jobs as a reporter with several – 174 –
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Chicago papers. He was an especially well regarded theater critic and features writer. In 1914 he joined the Chicago Tribune and was posted to London from where he wrote a celebrated piece on England’s entry into war. In the early years of the war, he reported from Belgium and Germany, but spent 1917-18 in Stockholm. He returned to Chicago after the war, where he continued his career with the Tribune and completed two books, notably an edited work entitled “Private Joe” Fifer: Memories of War and Peace (1936). He died in February 1940, when he was described by the New York Times as “one of the best known of American newspaper men.”
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WILLIAM H. CRAWFORD Born in 1856, William Henry Crawford was an ordained Methodist minister. Early in his career he held pastorates in Chicago, following which he turned to an academic career. He became a Theology Professor at Gammon Theological Seminary in 1889, and subsequently served as President of Allegheny College between 1893 and 1920. During the First World War he was posted to France as a secretary for the Young Men’s Christian Association. He died in March 1944 at the age of 88.
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS Born in 1864, the son of a Philadelphia journalist, Richard Harding Davis attended Lehigh University and Johns Hopkins. His first job was with the Philadelphia Record, his second with the Philadelphia Press. In 1889 he moved to New York where he worked, with the Evening Sun (1889-93), Harper’s Weekly (1890-95), the Journal (1896-97), and the Herald (1897-1900). Through the 1890s the itinerant Davis covered a host of international stories from Havana to Budapest, London to Athens, and from the Spanish-American War, and the Boer War, to the Russo-Japanese War. He wrote for the New York Herald, the London Times and the Daily Mail, and for magazines like Scribner’s and Collier’s. When the European war began in – 175 –
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1914, Davis resumed his work as war correspondent, writing mainly from Belgium, Germany and France, including pieces for the New York Times. He returned to America early in 1916, owing to ill health; and he died, at the age of 52, in April of that year. A prolific writer of short stories, plays and novels, Davis also left three memoir-like works from the war years: With the Allies (1914), Somewhere in France (1915) and With the French in France and Salonika (1916).
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WILBUR S. FORREST Born in 1887, the son of a surgeon, Wilbur Studley Forrest graduated from the Bradley Polytechnic Institute (Illinois) and promptly embarked on a career in journalism. From Peoria’s Journal, he moved to Chicago with the United Press. Following a brief stint in Washington as reporter for UP, Forrest was posted to London in 1915 to serve as assistant general European manager. He left London in 1917 to spend a year as manager in France, where he had a posting to French General Staff Headquarters. In 1918, for the closing months of the war, he joined the Paris staff of the New York Herald. After the war, Forrest returned to France as the paper’s chief correspondent (1921-1927). In 1930 he became executive assistant to the President of the New York Herald Tribune (a merger of the Herald and the Tribune having taken place in 1924); and in 1939 he became assistant editor of the paper. In 1934 Forrest published Behind the Front Page a memoir principally of his war-time career.
CHARLES H. GRASTY Born in 1863, Grasty started his journalism career at the age of 17. By 21 he had become managing editor of the Kansas City Star, and by 30 the publisher of a Baltimore paper, in which city he resided until the war. In 1915 he accepted the position of war correspondent in France for the Kansas City Star, as well as for the Associated Press and, subsequently, for the New York Times. The Baltimore Sun, – 176 –
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which also published his war-time reports, described him “as probably the best-informed journalist in Europe.” In Europe he stayed, working as a travelling correspondent for the Times, returning to America only for a few weeks each year. He died in London, in 1924, at the age of sixty. His work as a war-time reporter was revisited in his Flashes from the Front (1918).
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ROLLIN L. HART Born in 1870 on the Cornell University campus, where his father was a Professor of Geology, Rollin Lynde Hart graduated from Williams College in 1892 and was ordained a Congregational minister at Andover Theological Seminary in 1896. His journalism career started shortly thereafter in the form of a series of articles for Atlantic Monthly. He worked for the Boston Transcript from 1900 to 1917, including a period as Paris correspondent. Between 1917 and 1918 he also wrote a column for the Chicago Tribune entitled “Why America Is At War.” He spent the early 1920s with the Literary Digest, before securing a position with a New York publicity firm (1926-32). He died in June 1944 at the age of 76. He was the author of several books, including Understanding the French (1914).
STERLING HEILIG Born in 1864, Heilig graduated with a law degree from the University of Pennslyvania. His early career was spent in government secretarial posts including work in Europe. In 1892 he became a Paris-based correspondent for the New York Sun, and began syndicating “Paris-Illustrated” features for a variety of American Sunday newspapers. A founding member of the Anglo-American Press Association (1907), Heilig was a war correspondent on both the English and French fronts in 1914-1917, and then was accredited to the American Expeditionary Force in the last two years of the war. He spent the remainder of his career in France. – 177 –
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ROBERT HERRICK Born in 1868, the son of an old New England family, Robert Herrick was educated in law at Harvard University; but his interest lay in writing. Having written for the university’s newspapers, and taught writing at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, he joined the English faculty at the University of Chicago in 1893. From that position he wrote a dozen variously received novels prior to the outbreak of the European war in 1914. During that conflict, he was a regular correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, typically writing pieces that were sympathetic to the allied cause. After the war, he returned to writing novels, with less success than had marked his pre-war career, and to political analyses for the New Republic. In 1935 he was appointed government secretary of the Virgin Islands, where he died in December 1938. Notable among his many book publications are those inspired by the war: the novella The Conscript Mother (1916) and the non-fiction The World Decision (1916).
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Dr. GEORGE B. McCLELLAN The son of a Civil War general, George Brinton McClellan was born in Germany in 1865. A graduate of Princeton (1889), where he had written articles for the New York Journal and the New York Herald, McClellan turned immediately to professional journalism in New York. His work as a reporter soon led him to politics, first as an alderman, then as a member of Congress (1895-1903), and subsequently as Mayor of New York (1903-1909). In 1917 he was commissioned as a major in the United States Army, and soon after was promoted to colonel. He served in France, where he was engaged on the Meuse-Argonne front in 1917-18. Between 1912 and 1930, he was Professor of Economic History at Princeton. The author of several books in Italian history, he retired to Washington where he died in November 1940.
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JOSEPH PIERSON Joined the Chicago Tribune around 1910, and spent the early war years as assistant city editor. In 1917 he was asked to create an overseas edition of the paper, principally for distibution among American troops. That servicemen’s edition became the post-war Paris edition of the Tribune. Pierson served as cable editor of the paper in Chicago between 1919 and 1929, following which he was assigned responsibility for overseas news reporting by radio. He served as president of Press Wireless Inc. between 1929 and 1944. After the war he left the paper and became involved in a number of business enterprises. He died in 1967.
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HENRY J. REILLY Born in 1881, Reilly died in December 1963, after a distinguished career as soldier and journalist. The son of a soldier who had died during the Chinese Boxer rebellion in 1900, Reilly graduated from West Point in 1904. He spent much of the next decade on mission abroad, in Asia and Europe. Prior to the war, he also started writing a weekly military column for the Chicago Tribune. He extended his journalistic career in war-time France, where he also served in both British and French ambulance units. In 1917, when America entered the war, he assumed command of an American field artillery regiment in France, a regiment which became known as “Reilly’s Bucks.” After the war, holding the rank of Brigadier General, Reilly published and edited the Army-Navy Journal, and continued to write on military affairs for the Tribune and many others newspapers and magazines. He was also the author of several military-related books, including Why Preparedness (1916).
CHARLES N. WHEELER Ohio-born, Charles Wheeler died in December 1949 at the age of 75. He was employed by the Chicago Tribune between 1914 and – 179 –
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1920, during which time he was chief of the London bureau and war correspondent in France in the closing months of the war. Most of his subsequent career was spent as a journalist in Chicago, notably as political editor of the Chicago Daily News between 1939 and 1949. Despite his fifty-three years as a reporter, Wheeler claimed to be Chicago’s youngest reporter, “from the neck up.”
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WYTHE WILLIAMS Born in 1881, Williams began his journalism career with papers in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago, before joining the New York World in 1909. After three years with that paper, including a posting as London correspondent, he joined the New York Times in 1912. The following year he became that paper’s Paris correspondent, a post he retained until 1917. Between 1918 and 1927, Williams worked for several American and British newspapers, before returning to the New York Times, for whom he wrote until the mid-1930s. He then became an editor for the Greenwich Times in Connecticut (1937-40), following which he enjoyed an acclaimed, war-time radio broadcasting career. He died in July 1956 at the age of 74. Among his book publications are Passed by the Censor (1916) and his biography of Georges Clemenceau, The Tiger of France (1949).
CAROLYN A. WILSON Little is known of this talented war-time journalist. She was sent to France by the Chicago Tribune to provide stories on the American Expeditionary Force from a woman’s perspective. After the war she covered developments in China, and then left journalism in the mid1920s in order to set up a clothing business between Shanghai and Chicago. She settled in Mystic, Connecticut after the Second World War, where she died in 1960 from an overdose of barbituates.
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INDEX
Subject Index A Alphaud, Gabriel, 37 Anti-German sentiment, 8-9, 28-30 Army billeting, 39 Arts Community, 11-12, 27-28, 51-52 Astruc, Gabriel, xxiii Atherton, Gertrude, 158-63, 174 Atrocities, 35-37
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B Bazin, René, 23-24, 164 Bennett, James O’Donnell, 81-82, 174-75 Bilodeau, Ernest, 73 Birth rate, 131-32 Bordeaux, Henry, 139 Briand, Aristide, 100-01 Brion, Hélène, 138-39, 166
C Caillaux, Madame, xxi Cappellani, Paul, 51 Carpentier, Georges, xxi Carrel, Dr.Alexis, 95-96 Censorship, 5, 10-11, 32, 50-51, 55, 91, 100, 163 Charpentier, Gustave, xxiv Chenal, Marthe, 33-34 Chevillard, Camille, 57
Children: German-fathered, 94-95, 11618 German occupation, 56-57 Orphans, 61-63, 113 Refugees, 110-11, 139-40 Schools, 44 Clemenceau, Georges, 120-22, 157-58 Constant, Baron d’Estournelles de, 39 Coudert, Frederick B., 17 Courlander, Alphonse, 9 Crawford, William H., 141, 175
D Davis, Richard Harding, xvii, 58, 175-76 Debussy, Claude, xxiii Defeatism, 130-31, 138-39 Delcassé, Théophile, 26 Dufresne, George, 14
E Employment, 6, 86-87, 111-12 Aviation, 82-84 Munitions, 80-81, 102 Espionage, 4, 21-22 Eugénie, Empress, xx Expressionism, xx
F Fallières, Armand, 84 Fashion Industry, 6 Finances: Consumer, 6, 7-8 – 181 –
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Subject Index Government, 37-38, 67 Foch, Marshal Ferdinand, 157-58, 163 Food Provision, 6, 7, 11, 12-13, 21, 46-47, 99-100, 105-06, 109, 113, 114, 118-19, 119-20, 126, 128-29, 132, 133-34, 140, 147 Forrest, Wilbur, 136, 176 Fuel Provision, 84-85, 98-99 Futurists, xxviii
G Galliéni, General Joseph, 115 Gerbéviller, 44-46, 164 Government: Civil defence, 135 Economic Measures, 84-85, 86-87, 99-101, 114, 11920, 126, 128-29, 108, 133-34, 151-53 Military call-up, 96-97 Mobilization, 1-2, 4-5 Move from Paris, 12, 26 Parliament, 157-58 Tourist industry, 87, 102-03 Grasty, Charles H., 109, 176-77
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H Hartt, Rollin Lynde, 123-24, 177 Heilig, Sterling, 70, 102, 105, 177 Herrick, Robert, xvii, 42, 47, 48, 90-92, 97-99, 102, 104, 166, 178 Hospitals, 18, 43, 66, 88, 90, 95-96 Hotels, 18, 42
J Joffre, Marshal Joseph, 159 Johnson, Owen, 53
K Kerby, Philip, 63, 64, 68, 166 Klotz, Louis-Lucien, 153
L Lamartine, Alphonse, xxiii Laurent, E., 55 Lauzanne, Stéphane, 141, 144 Lavedan, Henri, 67 Lenglen, Suzanne, xxi Lescouvé, Théodore, xxv Loti, Pierre, 65, 164
M Martial Law, 4, 5, 10-11, 12, 15, 2122, 29, 32-33, 50-51, 55 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 107, 165 Mantle, Burns, xxv McClellan, George B., 50, 178 Moore, Monica, 149 Mutilés de guerre, 89, 111-12
P Paris: Air menace, 18-19, 21, 31-33, 41-44, 68-71, 129-30, 134, 137 Cemeteries, 25-26 Churches, 9-10, 135-36 Crime, 26-27, 55 Defences, 13-15, 32-33 Economic revival, 151-53 Entertainment, 28-30, 33, 57, 71 German shelling, 135-36 Health concerns, 40-41, 88 National Holiday, 74-76 Stations, 4, 7, 18, 42-43, 64-65 Street Scenes, 4, 5, 6, 7-9, 1213, 18-19, 20-21, 39-40, 4244, 54, 74-76, 89, 111-12, 134, 137, 151-53, 156-57 Telephones, 97, 109 Transportation, 4, 5, 7, 13-14, 97-98
I Invaded France: 76-77, 92-93, 104-05, 123, 149-50, 150-51 Amiens, 110-11 Arras, 58-59 Cambrai, 81-82, 155 Courrières, 156 Gerbéviller, 44-46 Lens, 156 Reims, 48-50, 63-64, 85-86, 164 Vitry-le-François, 47 Vouziers, 56
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Subject Index Pershing, General John, 148 Pétain, General Philippe, 115 Pierson, Joseph, 110, 179 Picquart, Colonel Georges, xx Pitney, Fred B., 128 Poincaré, 2, 26, 148, 158 Public Moods, 6-7, 7-9, 16, 17-19, 21, 22-23, 23-24, 59-60, 67-68, 154-55, 156-58
Factory, 80-81, 83, 102 Farm, 73, 74 Marriage, 4-5, 12, 78 Mothers, 107-08 Gift Donors, 19-20 Nurses, 53-54, 71-73 Spies, 21-22 State allowances, 38-39, 46-47 Women’s Patriotic League, xxv
R
Y
Railroads, 106-07 Red Cross, 4, 12, 57, 71-72, 110-11, 147 Refugees, 35-37, 43, 47-48, 76-77, 110-11, 146, 149-50, 150-51 Rents, 46 Reilly, Henry J., 18, 38, 96, 106, 179 Rodin, Auguste, 27-28
Ypres, 126-28
S Saint-Point, Madame de, xxiii Sardou, Victorien, xxiv Sembat, Marcel, 6, 84, 87 Soissons, 40, 164 Système D., 102
Copyright © 2000. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
T Taylor, Annie Neland, 74 Toplitz, Frances Boullion, 146
V Verdun, 16, 115 Viviani, 26, 51, 100
W Warner, Arthur H., 114 Wartime expressions, 114-16 Wheeler, Charles N., 156, 179-80 Williams, Wythe, xviii, 33, 44, 55, 180 Wilson, Carolyn, xvii, 6, 7, 10, 22, 40, 46, 79 86, 88, 89, 111, 113, 118, 132, 137, 164, 180 Women: 8, 9-10, 141-44, 144-45, 158-61
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Geographical Index
Geographical Index
F
A
Ferté-sous-Jouarre, 16 Fontainebleau, 87
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Aisne River, 92 Aix-les-Bains, 90 Altengrabow, 36 Amiens, 87, 110, 165 Argonne Forest, 16 Arras, xxvii, 58, 59, 72, 87, 164 Auxerre, 90
G Gardelegen, 36 Gennevilliers, 94 Gerbéviller, 44, 45, 164 Ghyvelde, 73 Gustrow, 36
B
H
Bar-le-Duc, 103 Bordeaux, 12, 26, 53, 81 Britanny, 79
Holzminden, 36
C
Joigny, 90
Calais, 28 Cambrai, 81, 82, 155, 164 Châlons-sur-Marne, 15 Chambéry, 90 Chambly, 95, 117, 165 Châteaudun, 150 Château-Thierry, 16, 150 Chelles, 15 Compiègne, 40, 41, 95, 130 Courrières, 156, 164
L
J
Lunéville, 46, 72 Laon, 135 Lens, 139, 156, 164 Lievin, 156 Lille, 77 Lyons, 18, 146
M Maison-de-Champagne, 73 Marseilles, 18, 81 Meaux, 16, 87
D Darmstadt, 36 Departments: Aisne, 117 Haute-Savoie, 35 Isère, 35 Marne, 73 Nord, 73 Savoie, 35, 74, 90 Seine, 6 Somme, 117 Dol, 80 Dunkirk, 87, 93
N Nancy, 149
P Parchim, 36 Paris: Auteuil, 18 Belleville, 20 Chambre des Députés, 89, 157 Champs Elysées, 17, 20, 21, 40, 75 Comédie Française, 11 Ecole Militaire, 8 Gare Montparnasse, 7, 64 Garde de Lyons, 18, 42 Grand Opera, 12, 57, 137
E Epernay, 16 Etretat, 62, 165 Evian, 139, 165
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Geographical Index Invalides, 39, 89 Institute, 40 Longchamps, 18 Montmartre, 20 Notre Dame, 9, 44 Opéra Comique, 33, 34 Place de la Concorde, 75, 137, 157 Place de l’Etoile, 21 Place de la République, 75 Place Vendôme, 137 Porte Dauphine, 32 Rue de la Paix, 19 Saint-Cloud, 13 Saint-Sulpice, 74 Salon, 11 Suresnes, 13 Poitiers, 53 Pontoise, 17
Versailles, 87 Vitry-le-François, 47, 164 Vosges, 44, 90, 93 Vouziers, 56
W Wahn, 36
Y Yonne River, 90 Ypres, 126-28, 155
Q Quimper, 80
R
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Reims, xxvii, 48, 49, 50, 63, 85, 87, 103, 164 Roubaix, 77, 139
S Saint-Etienne, 16, 131 Saint-Hillaire-au-Temple, 16 Saint-Mâlo, 80 Saint-Quentin, 139 Sallaumines, 156 Seine River, 39 Senlis, 87 Sens, 90 Soissons, 40, 92, 164
T Thorluc, 63 Toulon, 81 Tourcoing, 77
V Valmy, 16 Verdun, 16, 76, 85, 90, 103, 115
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Copyright © 2000. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
09-Indexes
Under Siege : Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2000.