At daylight only was the dead silence broken; France was marching to war at that hour.  Will any one who was here forget that daily daybreak tramp, that measured march of the thousands going to the front?  Cavalry with the sun striking the helmets; infantry with their scarlet overcoats too large; aviators with their boxed machines, the stormy petrels of modern war; and the dogs, veritably the dogs of war, going on the humanest mission of all, to search for the wounded in the woods of battle.

And, side by side with the marching millions, on the pavement, were the women belonging to them; the women who were to stay behind.

As though the Judgment Trumpet had sounded, France was changed in the twinkling of an eye.  And added to that subconscious terror that lurked in every American soul of another revolution—­a terror that was dispelled after the third day when France reached out her long arm and mobilized her people into a strong component whole with but one heart, was an inexplainable dread of this terrible calm.

We knew about trained armies going to war, but here was a situation where the Biblical description of the Last Day was carried out, the man at the wheel dropped his work and was taken; he who was at the plowshare left his furrow....

First we were afraid we would not have enough to eat.  A famine was prophesied, and the credulous who know nothing of the vast sources which supply France with food clamored to get to England.  Then there were frenzied stories of hotels closing and prices soaring.  None of which happened or had any chance of happening.  Food was never better, and today we have fruit that melts in the mouth; fish that swims in the sauce, the lack of which Talleyrand deplored in England; little green string beans that no other country produces or knows how to cook.

Prices never rose for the fraction of a sou.  If one had a credit at a hotel, all was well, but unless one had ready money in small notes, none of the restaurants would accept an order.  Here, and here only, was a snag concerning food.  It is true that women went for twenty-four hours without food, but the reason was the lack of small change, not of eatables.

After the panic caused by a thousand rumors annexed to a dozen disheartening and revolutionary conditions, after the people felt that the Commune was the figment of imagination, not inspired prophecy; that money was getting easier; that, above all, America was looking after its own, though her move toward that end seemed to take months instead of days, and because we counted by heart-beats, not calendars; after all this, we found time and interest to observe the phenomena around us.  We began to feel ashamed of our petty madness on the worldly subject of money and ships and safe passage home; our passionate, twentieth century, overindulged selves who were neither fighting nor giving our beloveds in battle, and who were harassing those who were in a death struggle.  Never throughout the centuries to come, whether the map of Europe is changed or not, should the stranger within her gates ever forget the courtesy of Paris.