At night powerful searchlights backed up by artillery guard the city from the monster of the air.

This is fiction come true.  It is Conan Doyle, Kipling, Wells come to measure.  From the moment of sunset until sunrise those comets with an orbit patrol the skies.  Pointing with blazing fingers to the moon and the stars, to the horizon, they proclaim that Paris watches while her people sleep.

The idea has given comfort to thousands.  You, in your safe, tranquil homes, cannot know the pleasure it gives to look out of the window in the wakeful nights and watch those wheeling comets circling, circling to catch the Zeppelin that may come.

And behind the light is the gun.  Rooftop artillery!  The new warfare!  On the roof of the fashionable Automobile Club on the Place de la Concorde the little blue firing guns wheel with the blazing fingers.  Always ready to send shot and shell into a bulging speck in the sky that does not return the luminous signals.  So on the roof of the Observatoir, so on the encircling environs; sometimes three, sometimes six, they are always going.  People stand in the streets to watch, hypnotized by the moment into horizon gazing.  There will be a speck in the sky; people grow tense; the comet catches it; is that wigwagging on the roof, those challenges in fire, returned?  No.  The speck passes; we breathe again.  And so it goes:  a ceaseless centre of interest.  It is the novelty of the world war.

The highest artillery in the world is on the Eiffel Tower.  At its dizzy top, pointing to the sky, are machine guns that are trained to fire at an enemy’s balloon.  It is an answer to the prayer of the people that these guns have not yet been used.

But it is not only in the artillery on the top of the Eiffel Tower that interest centres; it is in the wireless that sends the messages to land and sea, safeguarding armies and navies, patrolling the earth and water.  Strange, isn’t it, that the plaything of a nation has become its safeguard?

That was a stirring day when Paris sang “God Save the King.”  Gen. French arrived from London, coming quietly to confer with M. Viviani, the Minister for War, and with President Poincare.  He was the first English General to come to the aid of France since Cromwell commissioned the British Ambassador to go to the aid of Anne of Austria.  And the French heart responded as only it can; the people stood, with raised hats, in quadruple rows wherever he passed, as English, French, and foreign voices sang a benediction to Britain’s King.  History was made there.

That night Gen. French dined at the Ritz among a few friends.  Even the newspapers seemed not to know it, and those of us who had the good chance to be there enjoyed him at leisure.  He wore his field uniform of khaki in strong contrast to the French Generals, who are always in glittering gold, although he represents an empire and they a republic.  He is an admirable looking soldier, somewhat small of stature, firmly knit, bronzed, white haired, blue eyed, calm.  He spoke of their responsibilities without exaggeration or amelioration.  He did not make light of the task before his soldiers, and his grave manner seemed a prophecy of that terrible fight near Mons, above the French frontier, which was so soon to take place and where English blood was freely spilled for France’s sake.