In normal times life is made up of the sum of little things, but at great moments the little things cease to count.  How true this is in Paris today one may judge from the correspondence and records of the “Secours National”; they reveal an intense and widespread impulse of personal pride in self-denial, and prove that the heart of the Parisian bourgeoisie is sound to the core.

To a foreigner, accustomed to the Paris of literary and artistic traditions, perhaps the most remarkable feature in the life of the city today lies in the absence of articulate public opinion, and apparently of public interest, in everything outside the immediate issues of the war.  With one or two exceptions, such as the Temps and the Debats, the press of the capital practically confines itself to recording the events and progress of the campaign; nothing else matters.  So far as Paris is concerned, all the rest of the world, from China to Peru, might be non-existent.  Neither the political nor the economic consequences of the war are seriously examined or discussed; the sole business of the newspapers consists in supplementing, to the best of their abilities, the meagre war news supplied through official channels.  Some interest attaches, of course, to the attitude of Italy; but, beyond that, all things sublunary seem to have faded into a remote distance of unreality—­sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

The explanation [Transcriber:  original ‘explaantion’] of this attitude of complete detachment lies, no doubt, chiefly in the fact that the men who make and exchange political opinions have gone to Bordeaux, while most of those who create and guide public (as distinct from political) opinion, have exchanged the pen for the sword.  Just as Paris, for want of bakers, has only one kind of bread, so, for want of the men who usually inspire public opinion, her press has concentrated upon one absorbing idea, ecraser les allemands.  Moreover, for want of printers and of advertisers, most of the daily papers have now dwindled to microscopic proportions.  The virile intelligence of Paris journalism and the nimble and adventurous inquisitiveness, which are its normally distinguishing characteristics, have gone, like everything else, to the front.  As the editor of the Gil Blas says in a farewell poster to his subscribers:  “Youth has only one duty to perform in these days.  Our chief and all the staff have joined the colors.  Whenever events shall permit, Gil Blas will resume its cheerful way.  A bien-tot.”

France and England As Seen in War Time

An Interview With F. Hopkinson Smith.

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY MAGAZINE, Dec. 6, 1914.]

F. Hopkinson Smith was in France when the war broke out, he spent September in London, and is now back in New York.  He has brought home many sketches.  Not sketches which suggest war in the least, but which were made with the thought of the war lurking in the background.