“Messieurs et Mesdames,—–­My fellow-manager has just been arrested on a charge of espionage.  I have been forbidden to speak more than these few words, to express my personal regret that I am unable to give my personal attention to your needs and pleasure.”

With a bow this typical French “patron”—­surely not a German spy!—­ turned away and retreated from the room.  A look of surprise passed over the faces of the French soldiers.  The ladies raised their pencilled eyebrows, and then—­so quickly does this drama of war stale after its first experience—­continued their conversation through whiffs of cigarette smoke.

5

But it was not of German spies that the French Government was most afraid.  Truth to tell, Paris was thronged with Germans, naturalized a week or two before the war and by some means or other on the best of terms with the police authorities, in spite of spy-hunts and spy-mania, which sometimes endangered the liberty of innocent Englishmen, and Americans more or less innocent.  It was only an accident which led to the arrest of a well-known milliner whose afternoon-tea parties among her mannequins were attended by many Germans with business in Paris of a private character.  When this lady covered up the Teutonic name of her firm with a Red Cross flag and converted her showrooms into a hospital ward, excellently supplied except with wounded men, the police did not inquire into the case until a political scandal brought it into the limelight of publicity.

The French Government was more afraid of the true Parisians.  To sober them down in case their spirit might lead to trouble, the streets of Paris were kept in darkness and all places of amusement were closed as soon as war was declared.  In case riots should break forth from secret lairs of revolutionary propaganda, squadrons of Gardes Republicains patrolled the city by day and night, and the agents de police were reinforced by fusiliers marins with loaded rifles, who—­ simple fellows as they are—­could hardly direct a stranger to the Place de la Concorde or find their own way to the Place de la Bastille.

At all costs Paris was not to learn the truth about the war if there were any unpleasant truths to tell.  For Paris there must always be victories and no defeats.  They must not even know that in war time there were wounded men; otherwise they might get so depressed or so enraged that (thought the French Government) there might be the old cry of “Nous sommes trahis!” with a lopping off of Ministers’ heads and dreadful orgies in which the streets of Paris would run red with blood.  This reason alone—­so utterly unreasonable, as we now know—­may explain the farcical situation of the hospitals in Paris during the first two months of the war.  Great hotels like the Astoria, Claridge’s, and the Majestic had been turned into hospitals magnificently equipped and over-staffed.  Nothing that money could buy was left unbought, so that these great palaces might