I went up to Paris on the 19th, and had to stay over one night.  The trip up was long and tedious, but interesting.  There were soldiers everywhere.  It amused me almost to tears to see the guards all along the line.  We hear so much of the wonderful equipment of the German army.  Germany has been spending fortunes for years on its equipment.  French taxpayers have kicked for years against spending public moneys on war preparations.  The guards all along the railroad were not a jot better got up than those in our little commune.  There they stand all along the track in their patched trousers and blouses and sabots, with a band round the left arm, a broken soldier cap, and a gun on the shoulder.  Luckily the uniform and shaved head do not make the soldier.

Just before we reached Chelles we saw the first signs of actual war preparations, as there we ran inside the wire entanglements that protect the approach to the outer fortifications at Paris, and at Pantin we saw the first concentration of trains—­miles and miles of made-up trains all carrying the Red Cross on their doors, and line after line of trucks with gray ammunition wagons, and cannons.  We were being constantly held up to let trainloads of soldiers and horses pass.  In the station we saw a long train being made up of men going to some point on the line to join their regiments.  It was a crowd of men who looked the lower laboring class.  They were in their working clothes, many of them almost in rags, each carrying in a bundle, or a twine bag, his few belongings, and some of them with a loaf of bread under the arm.  It looked as little martial as possible but for the stern look in the eyes of even the commonest of them.  I waited on the platform to see the train pull out.  There was no one to see these men off.  They all seemed to realize.  I hope they did.  I remembered the remark of the woman regarding her husband when she saw him go:  “After all, I am only his wife.  France is his mother”; and I hoped these poor men, to whom Fate seemed not to have been very kind, had at least that thought in the back of their minds.

I found Paris quiet, and every one calm—­that is to say, every one but the foreigners, struggling like people in a panic to escape.  In spite of the sad news—­Brussels occupied Thursday, Namur fallen Monday—­there is no sign of discouragement, and no sign of defeat.  If it were not for the excitement around the steamship offices the city would be almost as still as death.  But all the foreigners, caught here by the unexpectedness of the war, seemed to be fighting to get off by the same train and the same day to catch the first ship, and they seemed to have little realization that, first of all, France must move her troops and war material.  I heard it said—­it may not be true—­that some of the consular officers were to blame for this, and that there was a rumor abroad among foreigners that Paris was sure to be invested, and that foreigners