A Sunday of relief, with a radiant September sun shining, followed a Sunday of depression.  The old taxicabs and the horse vehicles with their venerable steeds and drivers too old for service at the front, exhumed from the catacomb of the hours of doubt, ran up and down the Champs Elysees with airing parties.  At Notre Dame the religious rejoicing was expressed.  A great service of prayer was held by the priests who were not away fighting for France, as three thousand are, while joyful prayers of thanks shone on the faces of that democratic people who have not hesitated to discipline the church as they have disciplined their rulers.  Groups gathered in the cafes or sauntered slowly, talking less than usual, gesticulating little, rolling over the good news in their minds as something beyond the power of expression.  How banal to say, “C’est chic, ca!” or “C’est epatant!” Language is for little things.

That pile of posters at the American Embassy had already become historical souvenirs which won a smile.  The name of every American resident in Paris and his address had been filled in the blank space.  He had only to put up the warning over his door that the premises were under the Embassy’s protection.  Ambassador Herrick, suave, decisive, resourceful, possessed the gift of acting in a great emergency with the same ease and simplicity as in a small one, which is a gift sometimes found wanting when a crisis breaks upon the routine of official life.

He had the courage to act and the ability to secure a favour for an American when it was reasonable; and the courage to say “No” if it were unreasonable or impracticable.  No one of the throngs who had business with him was kept long at the door in uncertainty.  In its organization for facilitating the home-going of the thousands of Americans in Paris and the Americans coming to Paris from other parts of Europe, the American Embassy in Paris seemed as well mobilized for its part in the war as the German army.

In spite of ’70, France still lived.  You noted the faces of the women in fresh black for their dead at the front, a little drawn but proud and victorious.  The son or brother or husband had died for the country.  When a fast motor-car bearing officers had a German helmet or two displayed, the people stopped to look.  A captured German in the flesh on a front seat beside a soldier-chauffeur brought the knots to a standstill.  “Voila C’est un Allemand!” ran the exclamation.  But Paris soon became used to these stray German prisoners, left-overs from the German retreat coming in from the fields to surrender.  The batches went through by train without stopping for Paris, southward to the camps where they were to be interned; and the trains of wounded to winter resorts, whose hotels became hospitals, the verandas occupied by convalescents instead of gossiping tourists.  It is tres a la mode to be wounded, monsieur—­tres a la mode all over Europe.