When I saw these headquarters in May, 1916, the oeuvre was a year old and in running order.  In one room were the high chests of narrow drawers one sees in offices and public libraries.  These were for card indexes and each drawer contained the dossiers of widows who had applied for assistance or had been discovered suffering in lonely pride by a member of the committee.  Each dossier included a methodical account of the age and condition of the applicant, of the number of her children, and the proof that her husband was either dead or “missing.”  Also, her own statement of the manner in which she might, if assisted, support herself.

Branches of this great work—­Association d’Aide aux Veuves Militaires de la Grande Guerre—­have been established in every department of France; there is even one in Lille.  The Central Committee takes care of Paris and environs, the number of widows cared for by them at that time being two thousand.  No doubt the number has doubled since.

In each of the rooms I visited a young widow sat before a table, and I wondered then, as I wondered many times, if all the young French widows really were beautiful or only created the complete illusion in that close black-hung toque with its band of white crepe just above the eyebrows and another from ear to ear beneath the chin.  When the eyes are dark, the eyebrows heavily marked, no hair visible, and the profile regular, the effect is one of poignant almost sensational beauty.  Madame Goujon looks like a young abbess.

I do not wish to be cynical but it occurred to me that few of these young widows failed to be consoled when they stood before their mirrors arrayed for public view, however empty their hearts.  Before I had left Paris I had concluded that it was the mothers who were to be pitied in this accursed war.  Life is long and the future holds many mysteries for handsome young widows.  Nevertheless the higher happiness is sometimes found in living with a sacred memory and I have an idea that one or two of these young widows I met will be faithful to their dead.

Smooth as this oeuvre appeared on the surface it had not been easy to establish and every day brought its frictions and obstacles.  The French temperament is perhaps the most difficult in the world to deal with, even by the French themselves.  Our boasted individuality is merely in the primal stage compared with the finished production in France.  Even the children are far more complex and intractable than ours.  They have definite opinions on the subject of life, character, and the disposition of themselves at the age of six.

Madame Goujon told me that every widow in need of help, no matter how tormented or however worthy, had to be approached with far more tact than possible donors, and her idiosyncrasies studied and accepted before anything could be done with her, much less for her.

Moreover there was the great problem of the women who would not work.  These were either of the industrial class, or of that petite bourgeoisie whose husbands, called to the colors, had been small clerks and had made just enough to keep their usually childless wives in a certain smug comfort.