physicians in Aix are serving in the hospitals.  The rich men—­the men of affairs—­are acting as military clerks at headquarters or driving Red Cross cars.  The local censor of the telegraph is over eighty years old—­a splendid-looking old white giant, who won the Iron Cross in the Franco-Prussian War and retired with the rank of general years and years ago.  Now, in full uniform, he works twelve hard hours a day.  The head waiter at this hotel told me yesterday that he expected to be summoned to the colors in a day or two.  He has had his notice and is ready to go.  He is more than forty years old.  I know my room waiter kept watch on me until he satisfied himself I was what I claimed to be—­an American—­and not an English spy posing as an American.

So, at first, did the cheery little girl cashier in the Arcade barber shop downstairs.  For all I know, she may still have me under suspicion and be making daily reports on me to the secret-service people.  The women help, too—­and the children.  The wives and daughters of the wealthiest men in the town are minding the sick and the wounded.  The mothers and the younger girls meet daily to make hospital supplies.  Women come to you in the cafes at night, wearing Red Cross badges on their left arms, and shaking sealed tin canisters into which you are expected to drop contributions for invalided soldiers.

Since so many of their teachers are carrying rifles or wearing swords, the pupils of the grammar schools and the high schools are being organized into squads of crop-gatherers.  Beginning next week, so I hear, they will go out into the fields and the orchards to assist in the harvesting of the grain and the fruit.  For lack of hands to get it under cover the wheat has already begun to suffer; but the boys and girls will bring it in.

It is now half-past eleven o’clock in the forenoon.  At noon, sharp, an excellent orchestra will begin to play in the big white casino maintained by the city, just opposite my hotel.  It will play for an hour then, and again this afternoon, and again, weather permitting, to-night.

The townspeople will sit about at small, white tables and listen to the music while they sip their beer or drink their coffee.  They will be soberer and less vivacious than I imagine they were two months ago; but then these North Germans are a sober-minded race anyhow, and they take their amusements quietly.  Also, they have taken the bad tidings of the last few days from France very quietly.

During the afternoon crowds will gather on the viaduct, just above the principal railroad station, where they will stand for hours looking down over the parapet into the yards below.  There will be smaller crowds on the heights of Ronheide, on the edge of the town, where the tracks enter the long tunnel under one of the hills that etch the boundary between Germany and Belgium.

Rain or shine, these two places are sure to be black with people, for here they may see the trains shuttle by, like long bobbins in a loom that never ceases from its weaving—­trains going west loaded with soldiers and naval reservists bound for the front, and trains headed east bearing prisoners and wounded.  The raw material passes one way—­ that’s the new troops; the finished product passes the other—­the wounded and the sick.