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Title: The Living Present

Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

Release date: November 28, 2004 [eBook #14197]
                Most recently updated: December 18, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Asad Razzaki and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIVING PRESENT ***




Produced by Asad Razzaki and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team






THE LIVING PRESENT

BY

GERTRUDE ATHERTON


NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS


[Illustration: THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ
President Le Bien--Être du Blessé]


TO

"ETERNAL FRANCE"




CONTENTS


BOOK I

FRENCH WOMEN IN WAR TIME


CHAPTER

   I  MADAME BALLI AND THE "COMFORT PACKAGE"

  II  THE SILENT ARMY

 III  THE MUNITION MAKERS

  IV  MADEMOISELLE JAVAL AND THE ÉCLOPÉS

   V  THE WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY

  VI  MADAME PIERRE GOUJON

 VII  MADAME PIERRE GOUJON (_Continued_)

VIII  VALENTINE THOMPSON

  IX  MADAME WADDINGTON

   X  THE COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE

  XI  THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ

 XII  MADAME CAMILLE LYON

XIII  BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK:
        THE DUCHESSE D'UZÈS;
        THE DUCHESSE DE ROHAN;
        COUNTESS GREFFULHE;
        MADAME PAQUIN;
        MADAME PAUL DUPUY

 XIV  ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS

  XV  THE MARRAINES

 XVI  PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE


BOOK II

FEMINISM IN PEACE AND WAR


CHAPTER

   I  THE THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE

  II  THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE

 III  THE REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY"

  IV  ONE SOLUTION OF A GREAT PROBLEM

   V  FOUR OF THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED:
        MARIA DE BARRIL;
        ALICE BERTA JOSEPHINE KAUSER;
        BELLE DA COSTA GREENE;
        HONORÉ WILLSIE

      ADDENDUM


ILLUSTRATIONS

The Marquise d'Andigné, President Le Bien--Être du Blessé

Madame Balli, President Réconfort du Soldat

Delivering the Milk in Rheims

Making the Shells

Société L'Eclairage Electrique, Usine de Lyon

Where the Artists Dine for Fifty Centimes

A Railway Depot Cantine

Delivering the Post




BOOK I


FRENCHWOMEN IN WAR TIME


If this little book reads more like a memoir than a systematic study
of conditions, my excuse is that I remained too long in France and was
too much with the people whose work most interested me, to be capable,
for a long while, at any rate, of writing a detached statistical
account of their remarkable work.

In the first place, although it was my friend Owen Johnson who
suggested this visit to France and personal investigation of the work
of her women, I went with a certain enthusiasm, and the longer I
remained the more enthusiastic I became. My idea in going was not to
gratify my curiosity but to do what I could for the cause of France as
well as for my own country by studying specifically the war-time work
of its women and to make them better known to the women of America.

The average American woman who never has traveled in Europe, or only
as a flitting tourist, is firm in the belief that all Frenchwomen are
permanently occupied with fashions or intrigue. If it is impossible to
eradicate this impression, at least the new impression I hope to
create by a recital at first hand of what a number of Frenchwomen (who
are merely carefully selected types) are doing for their country in
its present ordeal, should be all the deeper.

American women were not in the least astonished at the daily accounts
which reached them through the medium of press and magazine of the
magnificent war services of the British women. That was no more than
was to have been expected. Were they not, then, Anglo-Saxons, of our
own blood, still closer to the fountain-source of a nation that has,
with whatever reluctance, risen to every crisis in her fate with a
grim, stolid, capable tenacity that means the inevitable defeat of any
nation so incredibly stupid as to defy her?

If word had come over that the British women were quite indifferent to
the war, were idle and frivolous and insensible to the clarion voice
of their indomitable country's needs, that, if you like, would have
made a sensation. But knowing the race as they did--and it is the only
race of which the genuine American does know anything--he, or she,
accepted the leaping bill of Britain's indebtedness to her brave and
easily expert women without comment, although, no doubt, with a glow
of vicarious pride.

But quite otherwise with the women of France. In the first place there
was little interest. They were, after all, foreigners. Your honest
dyed-in-the-wool American has about the same contemptuous tolerance
for foreigners that foreigners have for him. They are not Americans
(even after they immigrate and become naturalized), they do not speak
the same language in the same way, and all accents, save perhaps a
brogue, are offensive to an ear tuned to nasal rhythms and to the rich
divergencies from the normal standards of their own tongue that
distinguish different sections of this vast United States of America.

But the American mind is, after all, an open mind. Such generalities
as, "The Frenchwomen are quite wonderful," "are doing marvelous things
for their country during this war," that floated across the expensive
cable now and again, made little or no impression on any but those who
already knew their France and could be surprised at no resource or
energy she might display; but Owen Johnson and several other men with
whom he talked, including that ardent friend of France, Whitney
Warren, felt positive that if some American woman writer with a
public, and who was capable through long practice in story writing, of
selecting and composing facts in conformance with the economic and
dramatic laws of fiction, would go over and study the work of the
Frenchwomen at first hand, and, discarding generalities, present
specific instances of their work and their attitude, the result could
not fail to give the intelligent American woman a different opinion of
her French sister and enlist her sympathy.

I had been ill or I should have gone to England soon after the
outbreak of the war and worked with my friends, for I have always
looked upon England as my second home, and I have as many friends
there as here. If it had not been for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Warren, no
doubt I should have gone to England within the next two or three
months. But their representations aroused my enthusiasm and I
determined to go to France first, at all events.

My original intention was to remain in France for a month, gathering
my material as quickly as possible, and then cross to England. It
seemed to me that if I wrote a book that might be of some service to
France I should do the same thing for a country to which I was not
only far more deeply attached but far more deeply indebted.

I remained three months and a third in France--from May 9th, 1916, to
August 19th--and I did not go to England for two reasons. I found that
it was more of an ordeal to get to London from Paris than to return to
New York and sail again; and I heard that Mrs. Ward was writing a book
about the women of England. For me to write another would be what is
somewhat gracelessly called a work of supererogation.

I remained in France so long because I was never so vitally interested
in my life. I could not tear myself away, although I found it
impossible to put my material into shape there. Not only was I on the
go all day long, seeing this and that oeuvre, having personal
interviews with heads of important organizations, taken about by the
kind and interested friends my own interest made for me, but when
night came I was too tired to do more than enter all the information I
had accumulated during the day in a notebook, and then go to bed. I
have seldom taken notes, but I was determined that whatever else my
book might be it should at least be accurate, and I also collected all
the literature (leaflets, pamphlets, etc.) of the various oeuvres (as
all these war relief organizations are called) and packed them into
carefully superscribed large brown envelopes with a meticulousness
that is, alas, quite foreign to my native disposition.

When, by the way, I opened my trunk to pack it and saw those dozen or
more large square brown envelopes I was appalled. They looked so
important, so sinister, they seemed to mutter of State secrets, war
maps, spy data. I knew that trunks were often searched at Bordeaux,
and I knew that if mine were those envelopes never would leave France.
I should be fortunate to sail away myself.

But I must have my notes. To remember all that I had from day to day
gathered was an impossibility. I have too good a memory not to
distrust it when it comes to a mass of rapidly accumulated
information; combined with imagination and enthusiasm it is sure to
play tricks.

But I had an inspiration. The Ministry of War had been exceedingly
kind to me. Convinced that I was a "Friend of France," they had
permitted me to go three times into the War Zone, the last time
sending me in a military automobile and providing an escort. I had
been over to the War Office very often and had made friends of several
of the politest men on earth.

I went out and bought the largest envelope to be found in Paris. Into
this I packed all those other big brown envelopes and drove over to
the Ministère de la Guerre. I explained my predicament. Would they
seal it with the formidable seal of the War Office and write
_Propagande_ across it? Of course if they wished I would leave my
garnerings for a systematic search. They merely laughed at this
unusual evidence on my part of humble patience and submission. The
French are the acutest people in the world. By this time these
preternaturally keen men in the War Office knew me better than I knew
myself. If I had, however unconsciously and in my deepest recesses,
harbored a treacherous impulse toward the country I so professed to
admire and to desire to serve, or if my ego had been capable of sudden
tricks and perversions, they would long since have had these
lamentable deformities, my spiritual hare-lip, ticketed and docketed
with the rest of my dossier.

As it was they complied with my request at once, gave me their
blessing, and escorted me to the head of the stair--no elevators in
this great Ministère de la Guerre and the Service de Santé is at the
top of the building. I went away quite happy, more devoted to their
cause than ever, and easy in my mind about Bordeaux--where, by the
way, my trunks were not opened.

Therefore, that remarkable experience in France is altogether still so
vivid to me that to write about it reportorially, with the personal
equation left out, would be quite as impossible as it is for me to
refrain from execrating the Germans. When I add that during that visit
I grew to love the French people (whom, in spite of many visits to
France, I merely had admired coolly and impersonally) as much as I
abominate the enemies of the human race, I feel that the last word has
been said, and that my apology for writing what may read like a
memoir, a chronicle of personal reminiscences, will be understood and
forgiven.

  G.A.




=THE LIVING PRESENT=

I

MADAME BALLI AND THE "COMFORT PACKAGE"


One of the most striking results of the Great War has been the
quickening in thousands of European women of qualities so long dormant
that they practically were unsuspected. As I shall tell in a more
general article, the Frenchwomen of the middle and lower bourgeoisie
and of the farms stepped automatically into the shoes of the men
called to the colors in August, 1914, and it was, in their case,
merely the wearing of two pairs of shoes instead of one, and both of
equal fit. The women of those clearly defined classes are their
husbands' partners and co-workers, and although physically they may
find it more wearing to do the work of two than of one, it entails no
particular strain on their mental faculties or change in their habits
of life. Moreover, France since the dawn of her history has been a
military nation, and generation after generation her women have been
called upon to play their important rôle in war, although never on so
vast a scale as now.

Contrary to the prevailing estimate of the French--an estimate formed
mainly from sensational novels and plays, or during brief visits to
the shops and boulevards of Paris--the French are a stolid, stoical,
practical race, abnormally acute, without illusions, and whose famous
ebullience is all in the top stratum. There is even a certain
melancholy at the root of their temperament, for, gay and pleasure
loving as they are on the surface, they are a very ancient and a very
wise people. Impatient and impulsive, they are capable of a patience
and tenacity, a deep deliberation and caution, which, combined with an
unparalleled mental alertness, brilliancy without recklessness,
bravery without bravado, spiritual exaltation without sentimentality
(which is merely perverted animalism), a curious sensitiveness of mind
and body due to over-breeding, and a white flame of patriotism as
steady and dazzling as an arc-light, has given them a glorious
history, and makes them, by universal consent, preëminent among the
warring nations to-day.

They are intensely conservative and their mental suppleness is quite
as remarkable. Economy is one of the motive powers of their existence,
the solid pillars upon which their wealth and power are built; and yet
Paris has been not only the home and the patron of the arts for
centuries, but the arbiter of fashion for women, a byword for
extravagance, and a forcing-house for a thousand varieties of
pleasure. No race is so paradoxical, but then France is the genius
among nations. Antiquity, and many invasions of her soil have given
her an inviolable solidity, and the temperamental gaiety and keen
intelligence which pervades all classes have kept her eternally young.
She is as far from decadence as the crudest community in the United
States of America.

To the student of French history and character nothing the French have
done in this war is surprising; nevertheless it seemed to me that I
had a fresh revelation every day during my sojourn in France in the
summer of 1916. Every woman of every class (with a few notable
exceptions seen for the most part in the Ritz Hotel) was working at
something or other: either in self-support, to relieve distress, or to
supplement the efforts and expenditures of the Government (two billion
francs a month); and it seemed that I never should see the last of
those relief organizations of infinite variety known as "oeuvres."

Some of this work is positively creative, much is original, and all is
practical and indispensable. As the most interesting of it centers in
and radiates from certain personalities whom I had the good fortune to
meet and to know as well as their days and mine would permit, it has
seemed to me that the surest way of vivifying any account of the work
itself is to make its pivot the central figure of the story. So I will
begin with Madame Balli.


II


To be strictly accurate, Madame Balli was born in Smyrna, of Greek
blood; but Paris can show no purer type of Parisian, and she has never
willingly passed a day out of France. During her childhood her brother
(who must have been many years older than herself) was sent to Paris
as Minister from Greece, filling the post for thirty years; and his
mother followed with her family. Madame Balli not only was brought up
in France, but has spent only five hours of her life in Greece; after
her marriage she expressed a wish to see the land of her ancestors,
and her husband--who was an Anglo-Greek--amiably took her to a hotel
while the steamer on which they were journeying to Constantinople was
detained in the harbor of Athens.

Up to the outbreak of the war she was a woman of the world, a woman of
fashion to her finger-tips, a reigning beauty always dressed with a
costly and exquisite simplicity. Some idea of the personal loveliness
which, united to her intelligence and charm, made her one of the
conspicuous figures of the capital, may be inferred from the fact that
her British husband, an art connoisseur and notable collector, was
currently reported deliberately to have picked out the most beautiful
girl in Europe to adorn his various mansions.

Madame Balli has black eyes and hair, a white skin, a classic profile,
and a smile of singular sweetness and charm. Until the war came she
was far too absorbed in the delights of the world--the Paris world,
which has more votaries than all the capitals of all the world--the
changing fashions and her social popularity, to have heard so much as
a murmur of the serious tides of her nature. Although no one disputed
her intelligence--a social asset in France, odd as that may appear to
Americans--she was generally put down as a mere _femme du monde_,
self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, dependent--what our more strident
feminists call parasitic. It is doubtful if she belonged to charitable
organizations, although, generous by nature, it is safe to say that
she gave freely.

[Illustration: MADAME BALLI President Réconfort du Soldat]

In that terrible September week of 1914 when the Germans were driving
like a hurricane on Paris and its inhabitants were fleeing in droves
to the South, Madame Balli's husband was in England; her
sister-in-law, an infirmière major (nurse major) of the First Division
of the Red Cross, had been ordered to the front the day war broke out;
a brother-in-law had his hands full; and Madame Balli was practically
alone in Paris. Terrified of the struggling hordes about the railway
stations even more than of the advancing Germans, deprived of her
motor cars, which had been commandeered by the Government, she did not
know which way to turn or even how to get into communication with her
one possible protector.

But her brother-in-law suddenly bethought himself of this too lovely
creature who would be exposed to the final horrors of recrudescent
barbarism if the Germans entered Paris; he determined to put public
demands aside for the moment and take her to Dinard, whence she could,
if necessary, cross to England.

He called her on the telephone and told her to be ready at a certain
hour that afternoon, and with as little luggage as possible, as they
must travel by automobile. "And mark you," he added, "no dogs!" Madame
Balli had seven little Pekinese to which she was devoted (her only
child was at school in England). She protested bitterly at leaving her
pets behind, but her brother was inexorable, and when he called for
her it was with the understanding that all seven were yelping in the
rear, at the mercy of the concièrge.

There were seven passengers in the automobile, however, of which the
anxious driver, feeling his way through the crowded streets and
apprehensive that his car might be impressed at any moment, had not a
suspicion. They were in hat boxes, hastily perforated portmanteaux, up
the coat sleeves of Madame Balli and her maid, and they did not begin
to yelp until so far on the road to the north that it was not worth
while to throw them out.


III


At Dinard, where wounded soldiers were brought in on every train,
Madame Balli was turned over to friends, and in a day or two, being
bored and lonely, she concluded to go with these friends to the
hospitals and take cigarettes and smiles into the barren wards. From
that day until I left Paris on the seventeenth of August, 1916, Madame
Balli had labored unceasingly; she is known to the Government as one
of its most valuable and resourceful aids; and she works until two in
the morning, during the quieter hours, with her correspondence and
books (the police descend at frequent and irregular intervals to
examine the books of all oeuvres, and one mistake means being haled to
court), and she had not up to that time taken a day's rest. I have
seen her so tired she could hardly go on, and she said once quite
pathetically, "I am not even well-groomed any more." I frequently
straightened her dress in the back, for her maids work almost as hard
as she does. When her husband died, a year after the war broke out,
and she found herself no longer a rich woman, her maids offered to
stay with her on reduced wages and work for her oeuvres, being so
deeply attached to her that they would have remained for no wages at
all if she had really been poor. I used to beg her to go to Vichy for
a fortnight, but she would not hear of it. Certain things depended
upon her alone, and she must remain at her post unless she broke down
utterly.[A]

  [A] She is still hard at work, June, 1917.

One of her friends said to me: "Hélène must really be a tremendously
strong woman. Before the war we all thought her a semi-invalid who
pulled herself together at night for the opera, or dinners, or balls.
But we didn't know her then, and sometimes we feel as if we knew her
still less now."

It was Madame Balli who invented the "comfort package" which other
organizations have since developed into the "comfort bag," and founded
the oeuvre known as "Réconfort du Soldat." Her committee consists of
Mrs. Frederick H. Allen of New York, who has a home in Paris and is
identified with many war charities; Mrs. Edward Tuck, who has lived in
and given munificently to France for thirty years; Madame Paul Dupuy,
who was Helen Brown of New York and has her own oeuvre for supplying
war-surgeons with rubber, oil-cloth, invalid chairs, etc.; the
Marquise de Noialles, President of a large oeuvre somewhat similar to
Madame Dupuy's; the Comtesse de Fels, Madame Brun, and Mr.
Holman-Black, an American who has lived the greater part of his life
in France. Mrs. Willard sends her supplies from New York by every
steamer.

Madame Balli also has a long list of contributors to this and her
other oeuvres, who sometimes pay their promised dues and sometimes do
not, so that she is obliged to call on her committee (who have a
hundred other demands) or pay the deficit out of her own pocket. A
certain number of American contributors send her things regularly
through Mrs. Allen or Mrs. Willard, and occasionally some generous
outsider gives her a donation. I was told that the Greek Colony in
Paris had been most generous; and while I was there she published in
one of the newspapers an appeal for a hundred pillows for a hospital
in which she was interested, and received in the course of the next
three days over four hundred.


IV


I went with her one day to one of the éclopé stations and to the Dépôt
des Isolés, outside of Paris, to help her distribute comfort
packages--which, by the way, covered the top of the automobile and
were piled so high inside that we disposed ourselves with some
difficulty. These packages, all neatly tied, and of varying sizes,
were in the nature of surprise bags of an extremely practical order.
Tobacco, pipes, cigarettes, chocolate, toothbrushes, soap,
pocket-knives, combs, safety-pins, handkerchiefs, needles-and-thread,
buttons, pocket mirrors, post-cards, pencils, are a few of the
articles I recall. The members of the Committee meet at her house
twice a week to do up the bundles, and her servants, also, do a great
deal of the practical work.

It was a long drive through Paris and to the dépôts beyond. A year
before we should have been held up at the point of the bayonet every
few yards, but in 1916 we rolled on unhindered. Paris is no longer in
the War Zone, although as we passed the fortifications we saw men
standing beside the upward pointing guns, and I was told that this
vigilance does not relax day or night.

Later, I shall have much to say about the éclopés, but it is enough
to explain here that "éclopé," in the new adaptation of the word,
stands for a man who is not wounded, or ill enough for a military
hospital, but for whom a brief rest in comfortable quarters is
imperative. The stations provided for them, principally through the
instrumentality of another remarkable Frenchwoman, Mlle. Javal, now
number about one hundred and thirty, and are either behind the lines
or in the neighborhood of Paris or other large cities. The one we
visited, Le Bourget, is among the largest and most important, and the
Commandant, M. de L'Horme, is as interested as a father in his
children. The yard when we arrived was full of soldiers, some about to
march out and entrain for the front, others still loafing, and M. de
L'Horme seemed to know each by name.

The comfort packages are always given to the men returning to their
regiments on that particular day. They are piled high on a long table
at one side of the barrack yard, and behind it on the day of my visit
stood Madame Balli, Mrs. Allen, Mr. Holman-Black and myself, and we
handed out packages with a "Bonne chance" as the men filed by. Some
were sullen and unresponsive, but many more looked as pleased as
children and no doubt were as excited over their "grabs," which they
were not to open until in the train. They would face death on the
morrow, but for the moment at least they were personal and titillated.

Close by was a small munition factory, and a large loft had been
turned into a rest-room for such of the éclopés as it was thought
advisable to put to bed for a few days under medical supervision. To
each of these we gave several of the black cigarettes dear to the
tobacco-proof heart of the Frenchman, a piece of soap, three picture
post-cards, and chocolate. I think they were as glad of the visits as
of the presents, for most of them were too far from home to receive
any personal attention from family or friends. The beds looked
comfortable and all the windows were open.

From there we went to the Dépôt des Isolés, an immense enclosure where
men from shattered regiments are sent for a day or two until they can
be returned to the front to fill gaps in other regiments. Nowhere, not
even in the War Zone, did war show to me a grimmer face than here. As
these men are in good health and tarry barely forty-eight hours,
little is done for their comfort. Soldiers in good condition are not
encouraged to expect comforts in war time, and no doubt the discipline
is good for them--although, heaven knows, the French as a race know
little about comfort at any time.

There were cots in some of the barracks, but there were also large
spaces covered with straw, and here men had flung themselves down as
they entered, without unstrapping the heavy loads they carried on
their backs. They were sleeping soundly. Every bed was occupied by a
sprawling figure in his stained, faded, muddy uniform. I saw one
superb and turbaned Algerian sitting upright in an attitude of extreme
dignity, and as oblivious to war and angels of mercy as a dead man in
the trenches.

Two English girls, the Miss Gracies, had opened a cantine at this
dépôt. Women have these cantines in all the éclopé and isolé stations
where permission of the War Office can be obtained, and not only give
freely of hot coffee and cocoa, bread, cakes and lemonade, to those
weary men as they come in, but also have made their little sheds look
gaily hospitable with flags and pictures. The Miss Gracies had even
induced some one to build an open air theater in the great barrack
yard where the men could amuse themselves and one another if they felt
inclined. A more practical gift by Mrs. Allen was a bath house in
which were six showers and soap and towels.

It was a dirty yard we stood in this time, handing out gifts, and when
I saw Mrs. Allen buying a whole wheelbarrow-load of golden-looking
doughnuts, brought by a woman of the village close by, I wondered with
some apprehension if she were meaning to reward us for our excessive
virtue. But they were an impromptu treat for the soldiers standing in
the yard--some already lined up to march--and the way they disappeared
down those brown throats made me feel blasée and over-civilized.

I did not hand out during this little fête, my place being taken by
Mrs. Thayer of Boston, so I was better able to appreciate the picture.
All the women were pretty, and I wondered if Madame Balli had chosen
them as much for their esthetic appeal to the exacting French mind as
for their willingness to help. It was a strange sight, that line of
charming women with kind bright eyes, and, although simply dressed,
stamped with the world they moved in, while standing and lying about
were the tired and dirty poilus--even those that stood were slouching
as if resting their backs while they could--with their uniforms of
horizon blue faded to an ugly gray, streaked and patched. They had not
seen a decent woman for months, possibly not a woman at all, and it
was no wonder they followed every movement of these smiling
benefactresses with wondering, adoring, or cynical eyes.

But, I repeat, to me it was an ill-favored scene, and the fact that it
was a warm and peaceful day, with a radiant blue sky above, merely
added to the irony. Although later I visited the War Zone three times
and saw towns crowded with soldiers off duty, or as empty as old gray
shells, nothing induced in me the same vicious stab of hatred for war
as this scene. There is only one thing more abominable than war and
that is the pacificist doctrine of non-resistance when duty and honor
call. Every country, no doubt, has its putrescent spots caused by
premature senility, but no country so far has shown itself as wholly
crumbling in an age where the world is still young.


V


A few days later I went with Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black to the
military hospital, Chaptal, devoted to the men whose faces had been
mutilated. The first room was an immense apartment with an open space
beyond the beds filled to-day with men who crowded about Madame Balli,
as much to get that personal word and smile from her, which the French
soldier so pathetically places above all gifts, as to have the first
choice of a pipe or knife.

After I had distributed the usual little presents of cigarettes,
chocolate, soap, and post-cards among the few still in bed, I sat on
the outside of Madame Balli's mob and talked to one of the
infirmières. She was a Frenchwoman married to an Irishman who was
serving in the British navy, and her sons were in the trenches. She
made a remark to me that I was destined to hear very often:

"Oh, yes, we work hard, and we are only too glad to do what we can for
France; but, my God! what would become of us if we remained idle and
let our minds dwell upon our men at the Front? We should go mad. As it
is, we are so tired at night that we sleep, and the moment we awaken
we are on duty again. I can assure you the harder we have to work the
more grateful we are."

She looked very young and pretty in her infirmière uniform of white
linen with a veil of the same stiff material and the red cross on her
breast, and it was odd to hear that sons of hers were in the trenches.

After that nearly all the men in the different wards we visited were
in bed, and each room was worse than the last, until it was almost a
relief to come to the one where the men had just been operated on and
were so bandaged that any features they may have had left were
indistinguishable.

For the uncovered faces were horrible. I was ill all night, not only
from the memory of the sickening sights with which I had remained
several hours in a certain intimacy--for I went to assist Madame Balli
and took the little gifts to every bedside--but from rage against the
devilish powers that unloosed this horror upon the world. One of the
grim ironies of this war is that the Hohenzollerns and the junkers are
so constituted mentally that they never will be haunted with awful
visions like those that visited the more plastic conscience of Charles
IX after St. Bartholomew; but at least it will be some compensation to
picture them rending the air with lamentations over their own downfall
and hurling curses at their childish folly.

It is the bursting of shrapnel that causes the face mutilations,
and although the first room we visited at Chaptal was a witness
to the marvelous restorative work the surgeons are able to
accomplish--sometimes--many weeks and even months must elapse while
the face is not only red and swollen, but twisted, the mouth almost
parallel with the nose--and often there is no nose--a whole cheek
missing, an eye gone, or both; sometimes the whole mouth and chin have
been blown away; and I saw one face that had nothing on its flat
surface but a pipe inserted where the nose had been. Another was so
terrible that I did not dare to take a second look, and I have only a
vague and mercifully fading impression of a hideousness never before
seen in this world.

On the other hand I saw a man propped up in bed, with one entire side
of his face bandaged, his mouth twisted almost into his right ear, and
a mere remnant of nose, reading a newspaper with his remaining eye and
apparently quite happy.

The infirmière told me that sometimes the poor fellows would cry--they
are almost all very young--and lament that no girl would have them
now; but she always consoled them by the assurance that men would be
so scarce after the war that girls would take anything they could get.

In one of the wards a young soldier was sitting on the edge of his
cot, receiving his family, two women of middle age and a girl of about
seventeen. His face was bandaged down to the bridge of his nose, but
the lower part was uninjured. He may or may not have been permanently
blind. The two older women--his mother and aunt, no doubt--looked
stolid, as women of that class always do, but the girl sat staring
straight before her with an expression of bitter resentment I shall
never forget. She looked as if she were giving up every youthful
illusion, and realized that Life is the enemy of man, and more
particularly of woman. Possibly her own lover was in the trenches. Or
perhaps this mutilated boy beside her was the first lover of her
youth. One feels far too impersonal for curiosity in these hospitals
and it did not occur to me to ask.

Madame Balli had also brought several boxes of delicacies for the
private kitchen of the infirmières, where fine dishes may be concocted
for appetites still too weak to be tempted by ordinary hospital fare:
soup extract, jellies, compotes, cocoa, preserves, etc. Mr.
Holman-Black came staggering after us with one of these boxes, I
remember, down the long corridor that led to the private quarters of
the nurses. One walks miles in these hospitals.

A number of American men in Paris are working untiringly for Paris,
notably those in our War Relief Clearing House--H.O. Beatty, Randolph
Mordecai, James R. Barbour, M.P. Peixotto, Ralph Preston, Whitney
Warren, Hugh R. Griffen, James Hazen Hyde, Walter Abbott, Charles R.
Scott, J.J. Hoff, Rev. Dr. S.N. Watson, George Munroe, Charles
Carroll, J. Ridgeley Carter, H. Herman Harges--but I never received
from any the same sense of consecration, of absolute selflessness as I
did from Mr. Holman-Black. He and his brother have a beautiful little
hôtel, and for many years before the war were among the most brilliant
contributors to the musical life of the great capital; but there has
been no entertaining in those charming rooms since August, 1914. Mr.
Holman-Black is parrain (godfather) to three hundred and twenty
soldiers at the Front, not only providing them with winter and summer
underclothing, bedding, sleeping-suits, socks, and all the lighter
articles they have the privilege of asking for, but also writing from
fifteen to twenty letters to his filleuls daily. He, too, has not
taken a day's vacation since the outbreak of the war, nor read a book.
He wears the uniform of a Red Cross officer, and is associated with
several of Madame Balli's oeuvres.


VI


A few days later Madame Balli took me to another hospital--Hôpital
Militaire Villemin--where she gives a concert once a week. Practically
all the men that gathered in the large room to hear the music, or
crowded before the windows, were well and would leave shortly for the
front, but a few were brought in on stretchers and lay just below the
platform. This hospital seemed less dreary to me than most of those I
had visited, and the yard was full of fine trees. It was also an
extremely cheerful afternoon, for not only was the sun shining, but
the four artists Madame Balli had brought gave of their best and their
efforts to amuse were greeted with shouts of laughter.

Lyse Berty--the most distinguished vaudeville artist in France and who
is certainly funnier than any woman on earth--had got herself up in
horizon blue, and was the hit of the afternoon. The men forgot war and
the horrors of war and surrendered to her art and her selections with
an abandon which betrayed their superior intelligence, for she is a
very plain woman. Miss O'Brien, an Irish girl who has spent her life
in Paris and looks like the pictures in some old Book of
Beauty--immense blue eyes, tiny regular features, small oval face,
chestnut hair, pink-and-white skin, and a tall "willowy" figure--was
second in their critical esteem, because she did not relieve their
monotonous life with fun, but sang, instead, sweet or stirring songs
in a really beautiful voice. The other two, young entertainers of the
vaudeville stage, were not so accomplished but were applauded
politely, and as they possessed a liberal share of the grace and charm
of the Frenchwoman and were exquisitely dressed, no doubt men still
recall them on dreary nights in trenches.

I sat on the platform and watched at close range the faces of these
soldiers of France. They were all from the people, of course, but
there was not a face that was not alive with quick intelligence, and
it struck me anew--as it always did when I had an opportunity to see a
large number of Frenchmen together at close range--how little one face
resembled the other. The French are a race of individuals. There is no
type. It occurred to me that if during my lifetime the reins of all
the Governments, my own included, were seized by the people, I should
move over and trust my destinies to the proletariat of France. Their
lively minds and quick sympathies would make their rule tolerable at
least. As I have said before, the race has genius.

After we had distributed the usual gifts, I concluded to drive home in
the car of the youngest of the vaudeville artists, as taxis in that
region were nonexistent, and Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black would
be detained for another hour. Mademoiselle Berty was with us, and in
the midst of the rapid conversation--which never slackened!--she made
some allusion to the son of this little artist, and I exclaimed
involuntarily:

"You married? I never should have imagined it."

Why on earth I ever made such a banal remark to a French
vaudevilliste, whose clothes, jewels, and automobile represented an
income as incompatible with fixed salaries as with war time, I cannot
imagine. Automatic Americanism, no doubt.

Mlle. Berty lost no time correcting me. "Oh, Hortense is not married,"
she merely remarked. "But she has a splendid son--twelve years old."

Being the only embarrassed member of the party, I hastened to assure
the girl that I had thought she was about eighteen and was astonished
to hear that she had a child of any age. But twelve! She turned to me
with a gentle and deprecatory smile.

"I loved very young," she explained.


VII


Chaptal and Villemin are only two of Madame Balli's hospitals. I
believe she visits others, carrying gifts to both the men and the
kitchens, but the only other of her works that I came into personal
contact with was an oeuvre she had organized to teach convalescent
soldiers, mutilated or otherwise, how to make bead necklaces. These
are really beautiful and are another of her own inventions.

Up in the front bedroom of her charming home in the Avenue Henri
Martin is a table covered with boxes filled with glass beads of every
color. Here Madame Balli, with a group of friends, sits during all her
spare hours and begins the necklaces which the soldiers come for and
take back to the hospital to finish. I sat in the background and
watched the men come in--many of them with the _Croix de Guerre,_ the
_Croix de la Legion d'Honneur,_ or the _Medaille Militaire_ pinned on
their faded jackets. I listened to brief definite instructions of
Madame Balli, who may have the sweetest smile in the world, but who
knows what she wants people to do and invariably makes them do it. I
saw no evidence of stupidity or slackness in these young soldiers;
they might have been doing bead-work all their lives, they combined
the different colors and sizes so deftly and with such true artistic
feeling.

Madame Balli has sold hundreds of these necklaces. She has a case at
the Ritz Hotel, and she has constant orders from friends and their
friends, and even from dressmakers; for these trinkets are as nearly
works of art as anything so light may be. The men receive a certain
percentage of the profits and will have an ample purse when they leave
the hospital. Another portion goes to buy delicacies for their less
fortunate comrades--and this idea appeals to them immensely--the rest
goes to buy more beads at the glittering shops on the Rue du Rivoli.
The necklaces bring from five to eight or ten dollars. The soldiers in
many of the hospitals are doing flat beadwork, which is ingenious and
pretty; but nothing compares with these necklaces of Madame Balli, and
some of the best dressed American women in Paris are wearing them.


VIII


On the twentieth of July (1916) _Le Figaro_ devoted an article to
Madame Balli's Réconfort du Soldat, and stated that it was
distributing about six hundred packages a week to soldiers in
hospitals and éclopé dépôts, and that during the month of January
alone nine thousand six hundred packages were distributed both behind
the lines and among the soldiers at the Front. This may go on for
years or it may come to an abrupt end; but, like all the Frenchwomen
to whom I talked, and who when they plunged into work expected a short
war, she is determined to do her part as long as the soldiers do
theirs, even if the war marches with the term of her natural life. She
not only has given a great amount of practical help, but has done her
share in keeping up the morale of the men, who, buoyant by nature as
they are, and passionately devoted to their country, must have many
discouraged moments in their hospitals and dépôts.

Once or twice when swamped with work--she is also a marraine
(godmother) and writes regularly to her filleuls--Madame Balli has
sent the weekly gifts by friends; but the protest was so decided, the
men declaring that her personal sympathy meant more to them than
cigarettes and soap, that she was forced to adjust her affairs in such
a manner that no visit to a hospital at least should be missed.

It is doubtful if any of these men who survive and live to tell tales
of the Great War in their old age will ever omit to recall the
gracious presence and lovely face of Madame Balli, who came so often
to make them forget the sad monotony of their lives, even the pain in
their mutilated limbs, the agony behind their disfigured faces, during
those long months they spent in the hospitals of Paris. And although
her beauty has always been a pleasure to the eye, perhaps it is now
for the first time paying its great debt to Nature.




II

THE SILENT ARMY

I


Madame Paquin, the famous French dressmaker, told me casually an
incident that epitomizes the mental inheritance of the women of a
military nation once more plunged abruptly into war.

Her home is in Neuilly, one of the beautiful suburbs of Paris, and for
years when awake early in the morning it had been her habit to listen
for the heavy creaking of the great wagons that passed her house on
their way from the gardens and orchards of the open country to the
markets of Paris. Sometimes she would arise and look at them, those
immense heavy trucks loaded high above their walls with the luscious
produce of the fertile soil of France. On the seats were always three
or four sturdy men: the farmer, and the sons who would help him unload
at the "Halles."

All these men, of course, were reservists. Mobilization took place on
Sunday. On Monday morning Madame Paquin, like many others in that
anxious city, was tossing restlessly on her bed when she heard the
familiar creaking of the market wagons which for so many years had
done their share in feeding the hungry and fastidious people of Paris.
Knowing that every able-bodied man had disappeared from his usual
haunts within a few hours after the Mobilization Order was posted, she
sprang out of bed and looked through her blinds.

There in the dull gray mist of the early morning she saw the familiar
procession. There were the big trucks drawn by the heavily built cart
horses and piled high with the abundant but precisely picked and
packed produce of the market gardens. Paris was to be fed as usual.
People must eat, war or no war. In spite of the summons which had
excited the brains and depressed the hearts of a continent those
trucks were playing their part in human destiny, not even claiming the
right to be five minutes late. The only difference was that the seats
on this gloomy August morning of 1914 were occupied by large stolid
peasant women, the wives and sisters and sweethearts of the men called
to the colors. They had mobilized themselves as automatically as the
Government had ordered out its army when the German war god deflowered
our lady of peace.

These women may have carried heavy hearts under their bright coifs and
cotton blouses, but their weather-beaten faces betrayed nothing but
the stoical determination to get their supplies to the Halles at the
usual hour. And they have gone by every morning since. Coifs and
blouses have turned black, but the hard brown faces betray nothing,
and they are never late.


II


Up in the Champagne district, although many of the vineyards were in
valleys between the two contending armies, the women undertook to care
for the vines when the time came, risking their lives rather than
sacrifice the next year's vintage. Captain Sweeney of the Foreign
Legion told me that when the French soldiers were not firing they
amused themselves watching these women pruning and trimming as
fatalistically as if guns were not thundering east and west of them,
shells singing overhead. For the most part they were safe enough, and
nerves had apparently been left out of them; but once in a while the
Germans would amuse themselves raking the valley with the guns. Then
the women would simply throw themselves flat and remain
motionless--sometimes for hours--until "Les Boches" concluded to waste
no more ammunition.

In Rheims the women have never closed their shops. They have covered
their windows with sandbags, and by the light of lamp or candle do a
thriving business while the big guns thunder. The soldiers, both
British and French, like their trinkets and post-cards, to say nothing
of more practical objects, and, admiring their inveterate pluck, not
only patronize them liberally but sit in their coverts and gossip or
flirt with the pretty girls for whom shells bursting in the street are
too old a story for terror.

[Illustration: DELIVERING THE MILK IN RHEIMS]


III


Many of the women of the industrial classes who have been accustomed
all their hard dry lives to live on the daily wage of father or
husband have refused to work since the war began, preferring to
scrape along on the Government allocation (allowance) of
one-franc-twenty-five a day for the wives of soldiers, plus fifty
centimes for each child (seventy-five in Paris). These notable
exceptions will be dealt with later. France, like all nations,
contains every variety of human nature, and, with its absence of
illusions and its habit of looking facts almost cynically in the face,
would be the last to claim perfection or even to conceal its
infirmities. But the right side of its shield is very bright indeed,
and the hands of many millions of women, delicate and toil-hardened,
have labored to make it shine once more in history.

The Mayoress of a small town near Paris told me of three instances
that came within her personal observation, and expressed no surprise
at one or the other. She probably would not have thought them worth
mentioning if she had not been asked expressly to meet me and give me
certain information. One was of a woman whose husband had been a
wage-earner, and, with six or eight children, had been able to save
nothing. The allocation was not declared at once and this woman lost
no time bewailing her fate or looking about for charitable groups of
ladies to feed her with soup. She simply continued to run her
husband's estaminet (wine-shop), and, as the patronage was
necessarily diminished, was one of the first to apply when munition
factories invited women to fill the vacant places of men. She chose to
work at night that she might keep the estaminet open by day for the
men too old to fight and for the rapidly increasing number of
"réformés": those who had lost a leg or arm or were otherwise
incapacited for service.

A sister, who lived in Paris, immediately applied for one of the
thousand vacant posts in bakeries, cut bread and buttered it and made
toast for a tea-room in the afternoon, and found another job to sweep
out stores. This woman had a son still under age but in training at
the Front. He had been in the habit of paying her periodical visits,
until this woman, already toiling beyond her strength to support her
other children, sat down one day and wrote to the boy's commanding
officer asking him to permit no more leaves of absence, as the ordeal
was too much for both of them.

The third story was of a woman whom the Mayoress had often
entertained in her homes, both official and private. When this
woman, who had lived a life of such ease as the mother of eleven
children may, was forced to take over the conduct of her husband's
business (he was killed immediately) she discovered that he had been
living on his capital, and when his estate was settled her only
inheritance was a small wine-shop in Paris. She packed her trunks,
spent what little money she had left on twelve railway tickets for
the capital, and settled her brood in the small quarters behind the
estaminet--fortunately the lessee, who was unmarried, had also been
swept off to the Front.

The next morning she reopened the doors and stood smiling behind the
counter. The place was well stocked. It was a long while before she
was obliged to spend any of her intake on aught but food and lights.
So charming a hostess did she prove that her little shop was never
empty and quickly became famous. She had been assured of a decent
living long since.


IV


When I arrived in Paris in May (1916) a little girl had just been
decorated by the President of the Republic. Her father, the village
baker, had made one of those lightning changes from citizen to soldier
and her mother had died a few weeks before. She was an only child. The
bakery had supplied not only the village but the neighboring inn,
which had been a favorite lunching place for automobilists. Traveling
for pleasure stopped abruptly, but as the road that passed the inn was
one of the direct routes to the Front, it still had many hasty calls
upon its hospitality.

Now, bread-making in France is a science, the work of the expert, not
of the casual housewife. The accomplished cook of the inn knew no more
about mixing and baking bread than he did of washing clothes; and
there was but this one bakery, hitherto sufficient, for the baker and
his wife had been strong and industrious. The inn was in despair. The
village was in despair. A Frenchman will go without meat, but life
without bread is unthinkable.

No one thought of the child.

It is possible that in her double grief she did not think of
herself--for twenty-four hours. But the second day after mobilization
her shop window was piled high with loaves as usual. The inn was
supplied. The village was supplied. This little girl worked steadily
and unaided at her task, until her father, a year later, returned
minus a leg to give her assistance of a sort.

The business of the bakery was nearly doubled during that time.
Automobiles containing officers, huge camions with soldiers packed
like coffee-beans, foot-weary marching regiments, with no time to stop
for a meal, halted a moment and bought the stock on hand. But with
only a few hours' sleep the girl toiled on valiantly and no applicant
for bread was turned empty-handed from the now famous bakery.

How she kept up her childish strength and courage without a moment's
change in her routine and on insufficient sleep can only be explained
by the twin facts that she came of hardy peasant stock, and, like all
French children, no matter how individual, was too thoroughly imbued
with the discipline of "The Family" to shirk for a moment the
particular task that war had brought her. This iron discipline of The
Family, one of the most salient characteristics of the French, is
largely responsible for the matter-of-fact way in which every soldier
of France, reservist or regular, and whatever his political
convictions, has risen to this ordeal. And in him as been inculcated
from birth patience and perseverance as well as loyalty to his beloved
flag.

The wives of hotel and shop keepers as well as the women of the farms
have by far the best of it in time of war. The former are always their
husband's partners, controlling the money, consulted at ever step.
When the tocsin rings and the men disappear they simply go on. Their
task may be doubled and they may be forced to employ girls instead of
men, but there is no mental readjusting.

The women of the farms have always worked as hard as the men. Their
doubled tasks involve a greater drain on their physical energies than
the petite bourgeoise suffers, especially in those districts
devastated by the first German invasion--the valley of the Marne. But
they are very hardy, and they too hang on, for stoicism is the
fundamental characteristic of the French.

This stoicism as well as the unrivaled mental suppleness was
illustrated early in the war by the highly typical case of a laundress
whose business was in one of the best districts of Paris.

In France no washing is done in the house. This, no doubt, is one of
the reasons why one's laundry bills, even on a brief visit, are among
the major items, for _les blanchisseuses_ are a power in the land.
When I was leaving Paris the directrice of the École Feminine in
Passy, which had been my home for three months, suggested delicately
that I leave a tip for the laundress, for, said this practical person,
herself a sufferer from many forms of imposition, "she has been
extremely complaisante in coming every week for Madame's wash." I
remarked that the laundress might reasonably feel some gratitude to me
for adding weekly to her curtailed income; but my smiling directrice
shook her head. The favor, it appeared, was all on the other side. So,
although I had tipped the many girls of my unique boarding-place with
pleasure I parted with the sum designated for my patronizing laundress
with no grace whatever.

But to return to the heroine of the story told me by Mrs. Armstrong
Whitney, one of the many American women living in Paris who are
working for France.

This laundress had a very large business, in partnership with her
husband. Nobody was expected to bring the family washing to her door,
nor even to send a servant. The linen was called for and delivered,
for this prosperous firm owned several large trucks and eight or ten
strong horses.

War was declared. This woman's husband and all male employees were
mobilized. Her horses were commandeered. So were her trucks. Many of
her wealthier patrons were already in the country and remained there,
both for economy's sake and to encourage and help the poor of their
villages and farms. The less fortunate made shift to do their washing
at home. Nevertheless there were patrons who still needed her
services at least once a fortnight.

This good woman may have had her moments of despair. If so, the world
never knew it. She began at once to adjust herself to the new
conditions and examine her resources. She importuned the Government
until, to be rid of her, they returned two of her horses. She rented a
cart and employed girls suddenly thrown out of work, to take the place
of the vanished men. The business limped on but it never ceased for a
moment; and as the months passed it assumed a firmer gait. People
returned from the country, finding that they could be more useful in
Paris as members of one or other of a thousand oeuvres; and they were
of the class that must have clean linen if the skies fall. Also, many
Americans who had fled ignominiously to England returned and plunged
into work. And Americans, with their characteristic extravagance in
lingerie, are held in high esteem by _les blanchisseuses_.

Further assaults upon the amiable Government resulted in the return of
more horses and one or two trucks. To-day, while the business by no
means swaggers, this woman, thanks to her indomitable courage and
energy, combined with the economical habit and the financial genius of
the French, has ridden safely over the rocks into as snug a little
harbor as may be found in any country at war.


III

THE MUNITION MAKERS

I


Aside from the industrial class the women who suffered most at the
outbreak of the war were those that worked in the shops. Paris is a
city of little shops. The average American tourist knows them not, for
her hectic experiences in the old days were confined to the Galeries
Lafayette, the Louvre, the Bon Marché, and the Trois Quartièrs. But
during the greater part of 1915 street after street exhibited the
dreary picture of shuttered windows, where once every sort of
delicate, solid, ingenious, costly, or catch-penny ware was displayed.
Some of these were closed because the owner had no wife, many because
the factories that supplied them were closed, or the workmen no longer
could be paid. To-day one sees few of these wide iron shutters except
at night, but the immediate consequence of the sudden change of the
nation's life was that thousands of girls and women were thrown out of
work: clerks, cashiers, dressmakers' assistants, artificial flower
makers, florists, confectioners, workers in the fancy shops, makers of
fine lingerie, extra servants and waitresses in the unfashionable but
numerous restaurants. And then there were the women of the opera
chorus, and those connected with the theater; and not only the
actresses' and the actors' families, but the wives of scene shifters
sent off to the trenches, and of all the other humble folk employed
about theaters, great and small.

The poor of France do not invest their money in savings' banks. They
buy bonds. On the Monday after mobilization the banks of France
announced that they would buy no bonds. These poor bewildered women
would have starved if the women of the more fortunate classes had not
immediately begun to organize relief stations and ouvroirs.

Madame Lepauze, better known to the reading public of France as Daniel
Lesauer, who is also the wife of the curator of the Petit Palais, was
the first to open a restaurant for soup, and this was besieged from
morning until night even before the refugees from Belgium and the
invaded districts of France began to pour in. Her home is in the Petit
Palais, and in the public gardens behind was Le Pavillion, one of the
prettiest and most popular restaurants of Paris. She made no bones
about asking the proprietor to place the restaurant and all that
remained of his staff at her disposal, and hastily organizing a
committee, began at once to ladle out soup. Many other dépôts were
organized almost simultaneously (and not only in Paris but in the
provincial towns), and when women were too old or too feeble to come
for their daily ration it was left at their doors by carts containing
immense boilers of that nourishing soup only the French know how to
make.

Madame Lepauze estimates that her station alone fed a million women
and children. Moreover, she and all the other women engaged in this
patriotic duty had soon depleted their wardrobes after the refugees
began streaming down from the north; it was generally said that not a
lady in Paris had more than one useful dress left and that was on her
back.

Many of these charitable women fled to the South during that
breathless period when German occupation seemed inevitable, but
others, like Madame Pierre Goujon, of whom I shall have much to say
later, and the Countess Greffuhle (a member of the valiant Chimay
family of Belgium), stuck to their posts and went about publicly in
order to give courage to the millions whose poverty forced them to
remain.


II


The next step in aiding this army of helpless women was to open
ouvroirs, or workrooms. Madame Paquin never closed this great branch
of her dressmaking establishment, and, in common with hundreds of
other ouvroirs that sprang up all over France, paid the women a wage
on which they could exist (besides giving them one meal) in return for
at least half a day's work on necessary articles for the men in the
trenches: underclothing, sleeping bags, felt slippers, night garments;
sheets and pillow-cases for the hospitals. As the vast majority of
the peasant farmers and petite bourgeoisie had been used to sleeping
in airtight rooms they suffered bitterly during that first long winter
and spring in the open. If it had not been for these bee-hive ouvroirs
and their enormous output there would have been far more deaths from
pneumonia and bronchitis, and far more cases of tuberculosis than
there were.

A good many of these ouvroirs are still in existence, but many have
been closed; for as the shops reopened the women not only went back to
their former situations but by degrees either applied for or were
invited to fill those left vacant by men of fighting age.


III


And then there were the munition factories! The manager of one of
these _Usines de Guerre_ in Paris told me that he made the experiment
of employing women with the deepest misgiving. Those seeking positions
were just the sort of women he would have rejected if the sturdy women
of the farms had applied and given him any choice. They were girls or
young married women who had spent all the working years of their lives
stooping over sewing-machines; sunken chested workers in artificial
flowers; confectioners; florists; waitresses; clerks. One and all
looked on the verge of a decline with not an ounce of reserve vitality
for work that taxed the endurance of men. But as they protested that
they not only wished to support themselves instead of living on
charity, but were passionately desirous of doing their bit while their
men were enduring the dangers and privations of active warfare, and as
his men were being withdrawn daily for service at the Front, he made
up his mind to employ them and refill their places as rapidly as they
collapsed.

He took me over his great establishment and showed me the result. It
was one of the astonishing examples not only of the grim courage of
women under pressure but of that nine-lived endowment of the female in
which the male never can bring himself to believe save only when
confronted by practical demonstration.

In the correspondence and card-indexing room there was a little army
of young and middle-aged women whose superior education enabled them
to do a long day's work with the minimum output of physical energy,
and these for the most part came from solid middle-class families
whose income had been merely cut by the war, not extinguished. It was
as I walked along the galleries and down the narrow passages between
the noisy machinery of the rest of that large factory that I asked the
superintendent again and again if these women were of the same class
as the original applicants. The answer in every case was the same.

The women had high chests and brawny arms. They tossed thirty-and
forty-pound shells from one to the other as they once may have tossed
a cluster of artificial flowers. Their skins were clean and often
ruddy. Their eyes were bright. They showed no signs whatever of
overwork. They were almost without exception the original applicants.

[Illustration: MAKING THE SHELLS]

I asked the superintendent if there were no danger of heart strain. He
said there had been no sign of it so far. Three times a week they were
inspected by women doctors appointed by the Government, and any little
disorder was attended to at once. But not one had been ill a day.
Those that had suffered from chronic dyspepsia, colds, and tubercular
tendency were now as strong as if they had lived their lives on farms.
It was all a question of plenty of fresh air, and work that
strengthened the muscles of their bodies, developed their chests and
gave them stout nerves and long nights of sleep.

As I looked at those bare heavily muscled arms I wondered if any man
belonging to them would ever dare say his soul was his own again. But
as their heads are always charmingly dressed (an odd effect
surmounting greasy overalls) and as they invariably powder before
filing out at the end of the day's work, it is probable that a
comfortable reliance may still be placed upon the ineradicable
coquetry of the French woman. And the scarcer the men in the future
the more numerous, no doubt, will be the layers of powder.

I asked one pretty girl if she really liked the heavy, dirty,
malodorous work, and she replied that making boutonnières for
gentlemen in a florist-shop was paradise by contrast, but she was only
too happy to be doing as much for France in her way as her brother
was in his. She added that when the war was over she should take off
her blue linen apron streaked with machine grease once for all, not
remain from choice as many would. But meanwhile it was not so bad! She
made ten francs a day. Some of the women received as high as fifteen.
Moreover, they bossed the few men whose brawn was absolutely
indispensable and must be retained in the _usine_ at all costs.

These men took their orders meekly. Perhaps they were amused. The
French are an ironic race. Perhaps they bided their time. But they
never dreamed of disobeying those Amazons whose foot the Kaiser of all
the Boches had placed on their necks.


IV


One of the greatest of these _Usines de Guerre_ is at Lyons, in the
buildings of the Exposition held shortly before the outbreak of the
war. I went to this important Southern city (a beautiful city, which I
shall always associate with the scent of locust[B]-blossoms) at the
suggestion of James Hazen Hyde. He gave me a letter to the famous
Mayor, M. Herriot, who was a member of the last Briand Cabinet.

  [B] It is called acacia in Europe.

M. Herriot was also a Senator, and as he was leaving for Paris a few
hours after I presented my letter he turned me over to a friend of his
wife, Madame Castell, a native of Lyons, the daughter of one silk
merchant and the widow of another. This charming young woman, who had
spent her married life in New York, by the way, took me everywhere,
and although we traversed many vast distances in the Mayor's
automobile, it seemed to me that I walked as many miles in hospitals,
factories, ateliers (workrooms for teaching the mutilated new trades),
and above all in the _Usine de Guerre_.

Here not only were thousands of women employed but a greater variety
of classes. The women of the town, unable to follow the army and too
plucky to live on charity, had been among the first to ask for work.
The directeur beat his forehead when I asked him how they behaved when
not actually at the machines, but at least they had proved as faithful
and skillful as their more respectable sisters.

Lyons was far more crowded and lively than Paris, which is so quiet
that it calls to mind the lake that filled the crater of Mont Pelée
before the eruption of 1902. But this fine city of the South--situated
almost as beautifully as Paris on both sides of a river--is not only a
junction, it not only has industries of all sorts besides the greatest
silk factories in the world, but every train these days brings down
wounded for its many hospitals, and the next train brings the family
and friends of these men, who, when able to afford it, establish
themselves in the city for the period of convalescence. The
restaurants and cafés were always crowded and this handsome city on
the Rhône was almost gay.

There were practically no unemployed. The old women of the poor went
daily to an empty court-room where they sat in the little amphitheater
sewing or knitting. In countless other ouvroirs they were cutting and
making uniforms with the same facility that men had long since
acquired, or running sleeping bags through sewing-machines at the rate
of thousands a day. M. Herriot "mobilized" Lyons early in the war, and
its contribution to the needs of the Front has been enormous.

The réformés (men too badly mutilated to be of further use at the
front) are being taught many new trades in the ateliers: toy-making,
wooden shoes with leather tops for the trenches, cigarette packages,
baskets, typewriting, stenography, weaving, repairing. In one of the
many ateliers I visited with Madame Castell I saw a man who had only
one arm, and the left at that, and only a thumb and little finger
remaining of the ten he had taken into war, learning to write anew.
When I was shown one of his exercises I was astounded. He wrote far
better than I have ever done, and I can recall few handwritings so
precise and elegant. One may imagine what a man accomplishes who still
has a good hand and arm. It was both interesting and pathetic to see
these men guiding their work with their remaining hand and
manipulating the machinery with the stump of the other arm. Those who
come out from the battlefields with health intact will be no charge to
the state, no matter what their mutilations.

[Illustration: SOCIÉTÉ L'ECLAIRAGE ELECTRIQUE, USINE DE LYON]

One poor fellow came in to the École Joffre while I was there. He was
accompanied by three friends of the Mayor's, who hoped that some one
of the new occupations might suit his case. He was large and strong
and ruddy and he had no hands. Human ingenuity had not yet evolved far
enough for him. He was crying quietly as he turned away. But his case
is by no means hopeless, for when his stumps are no longer sensitive
he will be fitted with a mechanical apparatus that will take the place
of the hands he has given to France.

Madame Castell's work is supplying hospitals with anything, except
food, they may demand, and in this she has been regularly helped by
the Needlework Guild of Pennsylvania.

Madame Harriot's ouvroir occupies the magnificent festal salon of the
Hôtel de Ville, with its massive chandeliers and its memories of a
thousand dinners and balls of state from the days of Louis XIV down to
the greatest of its mayors. She supplies French prisoners in Germany
with the now famous comfort packages. Some of them she and her
committee put up themselves; others are brought in by members of the
family or the friends of the unfortunate men in Germany. The pièce de
résistance had always been a round loaf of bread, but on the day I
first visited the salon consternation was reigning. Word had come from
Germany that no more bread nor any sort of food stuff should be sent
in the packages, and hundreds were being unpacked. Crisp loaves of
bread that would have brought comfort to many a poor soul were lying
all over the place.

The secret of the order was that civilian Germans were begging bread
of the French prisoners, and this, of course, was bad for the tenderly
nursed German morale.




IV

MADEMOISELLE JAVAL AND THE ÉCLOPÉS

I


Mlle. Javal, unlike Madame Balli, was not a member of the fashionable
society of Paris, a _femme du monde_, or a reigning beauty. But in
certain respects their cases were not dissimilar. Born into one of the
innumerable sets-within-sets of the upper bourgeoisie, living on
inherited wealth, seeing as little as possible of the world beyond her
immediate circle of relatives and friends, as curiously indifferent to
it as only a haughty French bourgeoisie can be, growing up in a large
and comfortable home--according to French ideas of comfort--governing
it, when the duty descended to her shoulders, with all the native and
practised economy of the French woman, but until her mother's illness
without a care, and even then without an extra contact, Mlle. Javal's
life slipped along for many years exactly as the lives of a million
other girls in that entrenched secluded class slipped along before the
tocsin, ringing throughout the land on August 2, 1914, announced that
once more the men of France must fight to defend the liberty of all
classes alike.

Between wars the great central mass of the population in France known
as the bourgeoisie--who may be roughly defined as those that belong
neither to the noblesse at one end nor to the industrials and peasant
proprietors at the other, but have capital, however minute, invested
in _rentes_ or business, and who, beginning with the grande
bourgeoisie, the haughty possessors of great inherited fortunes,
continuing through the financial and commercial magnates, down to the
petite bourgeoisie who keep flourishing little shops, hotels,
etc.--live to get the most out of life in their narrow, traditional,
curiously intensive way. They detest travel, although at least once in
their lives they visit Switzerland and Italy; possibly, but with no
such alarming frequency as to suggest an invasion, England.

The most aspiring read the literature of the day, see the new plays
(leaving the _jeune fille_ at home), take an intelligent interest in
the politics of their own country, visit the annual salons, and if
really advanced discuss with all the national animation such violent
eruptions upon the surface of the delicately poised art life, which
owes its very being to France, as impressionism, cubism, etc. Except
among the very rich, where, as elsewhere, temptations are many and
pressing, they have few scandals to discuss, but much gossip, and
there is the ever recurrent flutter over births, marriages, deaths.
They have no snobbery in the climber's sense. When a bourgeois,
however humble in origin, graduates as an "intellectual" he is
received with enthusiasm (if his table manners will pass muster) by
the noblesse; but it is far more difficult for a nobleman to enter the
house of a bourgeois. It is seldom that he wants to, but sometimes
there are sound financial reasons for forming this almost illegitimate
connection, and then his motives are penetrated by the keen French
mind--a mind born without illusions--and interest alone dictates the
issue. The only climbers in our sense are the wives of politicians
suddenly risen to eminence, and even then the social ambitions of
these ladies are generally confined to arriving in the exclusive
circles of the haute bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie are as proud of their class as the noblesse of theirs,
and its top stratum regards itself as the real aristocracy of the
Republique Française, the families bearing ancient titles as
anachronistic; although oddly enough they and the ancient noblesse are
quite harmonious in their opinion of the Napoleonic aristocracy! One
of the leaders in the grande bourgeoisie wrote me at a critical moment
in the affairs of Greece: "It looks as if Briand would succeed in
placing the lovely Princess George of Greece on the throne, and
assuredly it is better for France to have a Bonaparte there than no
one at all!"

It is only when war comes and the men and women of the noblesse rise
to the call of their country as automatically as a reservist answers
the tocsin or the printed order of mobilization, that the bourgeoisie
is forced to concede that there is a tremendous power still resident
in the prestige, organizing ability, social influence, tireless
energy, and self-sacrifice of the disdained aristocracy.

During the war oeuvres have been formed on so vast a scale that one
sees on many committee lists the names of noblesse and bourgeois side
by side. But it is a defensive alliance, bred of the stupendous
necessities of war, and wherever possible each prefers to work without
the assistance of the other. The French Army is the most democratic in
the world. French society has no conception of the word, and neither
noblesse nor bourgeoisie has the faintest intention of taking it up as
a study. There is no active antagonism between the two classes--save,
to be sure, when individual members show their irreconcilable
peculiarities at committee meetings--merely a profound indifference.


II


Mlle. Javal, although living the usual restricted life before the war,
and far removed from that section of her class that had begun to
astonish Paris by an unprecedented surrender to the extravagancies in
public which seemed to obsess the world before Europe abruptly
returned to its normal historic condition of warfare, was as highly
educated, as conversant with the affairs of the day, political,
intellectual, and artistic, as any young woman in Europe. But the war
found her in a semi-invalid condition and heartbroken over the death
of her mother, whom she had nursed devotedly through a long illness;
her girlhood intimacies broken up not only by the marriage of her
friends, but also by her own long seclusion; and--being quite
French--feeling too aged, at a little over thirty, ever to interest
any man again, aside from her fortune. In short she regarded her life
as finished, but she kept house dutifully for her brother--her only
close relation--and surrendered herself to melancholy reflections.

Then came the war. At first she took merely the languid interest
demanded by her intelligence, being too absorbed in her own low
condition to experience more than a passing thrill of patriotic
fervor. But she still read the newspapers, and, moreover, women in
those first anxious days were meeting and talking far more frequently
than was common to a class that preferred their own house and garden
to anything their friends, or the boulevards, or even the parks of
Paris, could offer them. Mlle. Javal found herself seeing more and
more of that vast circle of inherited friends as well as family
connections which no well-born bourgeoise can escape, and gradually
became infected with the excitement of the hour; despite the fact that
she believed her poor worn-out body never would take a long walk
again.

Then, one day, the thought suddenly illuminated her awakening mind:
"How fortunate I am! I have no one to lose in this terrible war!" (Her
brother was too delicate for service.) "These tears I see every day
after news has come that a father, a brother, a husband, a son, has
fallen on the battlefield or died of horrible agony in hospital, I
shall never shed. Almost alone of the many I know, and the millions of
women in France, I am mercifully exempt from an agony that has no end.
If I were married, and were older and had sons, I should be suffering
unendurably now. I am fortunate indeed and feel an ingrate that I have
ever repined."

Then naturally enough followed the thought that it behooved her to do
something for her country, not only as a manifest of thanksgiving but
also because it was her duty as a young woman of wealth and leisure.

Oddly enough considering the delicate health in which she firmly
believed, she tried to be a nurse. There were many amateurs in the
hospitals in those days when France was as short of nurses as of
everything else except men, and she was accepted.

But nursing then involved standing all day on one's feet and sometimes
all night as well, and her pampered body was far from strong enough
for such a tax in spite of her now glowing spirit. While she was
casting about for some work in which she might really play a useful
and beneficent rôle a friend invited her to drive out to the environs
of Paris and visit the wretched éclopés, to whom several charitable
ladies occasionally took little gifts of cigarettes and chocolate.

Then, at last, Mlle. Javal found herself; and from a halting
apprehensive seeker, still weary in mind and limb, she became almost
abruptly one of the most original and executive women in
France--incidentally one of the healthiest. When I met her, some
twenty months later, she had red cheeks and was the only one of all
those women of all classes slaving for France who told me she never
felt tired; in fact felt stronger every day.


III


The éclopés, in the new adaptation of the word, are men who are not
ill enough for the military hospitals and not well enough to fight.
They may have slight wounds, or temporary affections of the sight or
hearing, the effect of heavy colds; or rheumatism, debilitating sore
throat, or furiously aching teeth; or they may be suffering too
severely from shock to be of any use in the trenches.

There are between six and seven thousand hospitals in France to-day
(possibly more: the French never will give you any exact military
figures; but certainly not less); but their beds are for the severely
wounded or for those suffering from dysentery, fevers, pneumonia,
bronchitis, tuberculosis. In those first days of war before France,
caught unprepared in so many ways, had found herself and settled down
to the business of war; in that trying interval while she was ill
equipped to care for men brought in hourly to the base hospitals,
shattered by new and hideous wounds; there was no place for the merely
ailing. Men with organic affections, suddenly developed under the
terrific strain, were dismissed as Réformés Numéro II--unmutilated in
the service of their country; in other words, dismissed from the army
and, for nearly two years, without pension. But the large number of
those temporarily out of condition were sent back of the lines, or to
a sort of camp outside of Paris, to rest until they were in a
condition to fight again.

If it had not been for Mlle. Javal it is possible that more men than
one cares to estimate would never have fought again. The éclopés at
that time were the most abject victims of the war. They remained
together under military discipline, either behind the lines or on the
outskirts of Paris, herded in barns, empty factories, thousands
sleeping without shelter of any sort. Straw for the most part composed
their beds, food was coarse and scanty; they were so wretched and
uncomfortable, so exposed to the elements, and without care of any
sort, that their slight ailments developed not infrequently into
serious and sometimes fatal cases of bronchitis, pneumonia, and even
tuberculosis.

This was a state of affairs well known to General Joffre and none
caused him more distress and anxiety. But--this was between August and
November, 1914, it must be remembered, when France was anything but
the magnificent machine she is to-day--it was quite impossible for the
authorities to devote a cell of their harassed brains to the
temporarily inept. Every executive mind in power was absorbed in
pinning the enemy down, since he could not be driven out, feeding the
vast numbers of men at the Front, reorganizing the munition
factories, planning for the vast supplies of ammunition suddenly
demanded, equipping the hospitals--when the war broke out there were
no installations in the hospitals near the Front except
beds--obtaining the necessary amount of surgical supplies, taking care
of the refugees that poured into the larger cities by every train not
only from Belgium but from the French towns invaded or bombarded--to
mention but a few of the problems that beset France suddenly forced to
rally and fight for her life, and, owing to the Socialist majority in
the Chamber of Deputies, criminally unprepared.

There were plenty of able minds in France that knew what was coming;
months before the war broke out (a year, one of the infirmière majors
told me; but, as I have said, it is difficult to pin a French official
down to exact statements) the Service de Santé (Health Department of
the Ministry of War) asked the Countess d'Haussonville, President of
the Red Cross, to train as many nurses as quickly as possible, for
there was not an extra nurse in a military hospital of France--in many
there was none at all. But these patriotic and far-sighted men were
powerless. The three years' service bill was the utmost result of
their endeavors, and for six months after the war began they had not a
gun larger than the famous Seventy-fives but those captured at the
Battle of the Marne.

As for the poor éclopés, there never was a clearer example of the
weaker going to the wall and the devil taking the hindmost. They had
been turned out to grass mildly afflicted, but in a short time they
were progressing rapidly toward the grave or that detestable status
known as Réformés Numéro II. And every man counts in France. Quite
apart from humanity it was a terribly serious question for the Grand
Quartier Général, where Joffre and his staff had their minds on the
rack.


IV


The Curé of St. Honoré d'Eylau was the first to discover the éclopés,
and not only sent stores to certain of the dépôts where they were
herded, but persuaded several ladies of Paris to visit and take them
little presents. But practically every energetic and patriotic woman
in France was already mobilized in the service of her country. As I
have explained elsewhere, they had opened ouvroirs, where working
girls suddenly deprived of the means of livelihood could fend off
starvation by making underclothing and other necessaries for the men
at the Front. Upon these devoted women, assisted by nearly all the
American women resident in Paris, fell to a great extent the care of
the refugees; and many were giving out rations three times a day, not
only to refugees but to the poor of Paris, suddenly deprived of their
wage earners. It was some time before the Government got round to
paying the daily allowance of one-franc-twenty-five to the wives and
seventy-five centimes (fifty outside of Paris) for each child, known
as the allocation. Moreover, in those dread days when the Germans
were driving straight for Paris, many fled with the Government to
Bordeaux (not a few Americans ignominiously scampered off to England)
and did not return for three weeks or more; during which time those
brave enough to remain did ten times as much work as should be
expected even of the nine-lived female.

They knew at this critical time as well as later when they were
breathing normally again that the poor éclopés beyond the barrier were
without shelter in the autumn rains and altogether in desperate
plight; but it was only now and again that a few found time to pay
them a hasty visit and cheer them with those little gifts so dear to
the imaginative heart of the French soldier. Sooner or later, of
course, the Government would have taken them in hand and organized
them as meticulously as they have organized every conceivable angle of
this great struggle; but meanwhile thousands would have died or
shambled home to litter the villages as hopeless invalids. Perhaps
hundreds of thousands is a safer computation, and these hundreds of
thousands Mlle. Javal saved for France.


V


Today there are over one hundred and thirty Éclopé Dépôts in France;
two or three are near Paris, the rest in the towns and villages of the
War Zone. The long baraques are well built, rain-proof and
draught-proof, but with many windows which are open when possible,
and furnished with comfortable beds. In each dépôt there is a hospital
baraque for those that need that sort of rest or care, a diet kitchen,
and a fine large kitchen for those that can eat anything and have
appetites of daily increasing vigor.

These dépôts are laid out like little towns, the streets of the large
ones named after famous generals and battles. Down one side is a row
of low buildings in which the officers, doctors and nurses sleep; a
chemist shop; a well-fitted bathroom; storerooms for supplies; and
consulting offices. There is also, almost invariably, a cantine set up
by young women--English, American, French--where the men are supplied
at any time with cocoa, coffee, milk, lemonade, cakes; and the little
building itself is gaily decorated to please the color-loving French
eye.

Mlle. Javal took me out to the environs of Paris to visit one of the
largest of these dépôts, and there the men in hospital were nursed by
Sisters of Charity. There was a set of well-filled bookshelves and a
stage in the great refectory, where the men could sit on rainy days,
read, write letters, sing, smoke, recite, and get up little plays. I
saw a group of very contented looking poilus in the yard playing cards
and smoking under a large tree.

The surroundings were hideous--a railroad yard if I am not
mistaken--but the little "town" itself was very pleasing to the eye,
and certainly a haven of refuge for soldiers whose bodies and minds
needed only repose, care, and kind words to send them back to the
Front sounder by far than they had been in their unsanitary days
before the war.

Here they are forced to sleep with their windows open, to bathe, eat
good food, instead of mortifying the body for the sake of filling the
family stocking; and they are doctored intelligently, their teeth
filled, their tonsils and adenoids taken out, their chronic
indigestion cured. Those who survive the war will never forget the
lesson and will do missionary work when they are at home once more.

All that was dormant in Mlle. Javal's fine brain seemed to awake under
the horrifying stimulus of that first visit to the wretches herded
like animals outside of Paris, where every man thought he was drafted
for death and did not care whether he was or not; where, in short,
morale, so precious an asset to any nation in time of war, was
practically nil.

The first step was to get a powerful committee together. Mlle. Javal,
although wealthy, could not carry through this gigantic task alone.
The moratorium had stopped the payment of rents, factories were
closed, tenants mobilized. Besides, she had already given right and
left, as everybody else had done who had anything to give. It was
growing increasingly difficult to raise money.

But nothing could daunt Mlle. Javal. She managed to get together with
the least possible delay a committee of three hundred, and she
obtained subscriptions in money from one thousand five hundred firms,
besides donations of food and clothing from eight hundred others,
headed by the King of Spain.

Her subscription list was opened by President Poincaré with a gift of
one thousand francs; the American War Relief Clearing House gave her
four thousand three hundred francs, Madame Viviani contributed four
thousand francs; the Comédie Française one thousand, and Raphael Weill
of San Francisco seven thousand seven hundred and fifty; Alexander
Phillips of New York three thousand; and capitalists, banks, bank
clerks, civil servants, colonials, school children, contributed sums
great and small.

Concerts were given, bazaars hastily but successfully organized,
collections taken up. There was no end to Mlle. Javal's resource, and
the result was an almost immediate capital of several hundred thousand
francs. When public interest was fairly roused, les pauvres éclopés
became one of the abiding concerns of the French people, and they have
responded as generously as they did to the needs of the more
picturesque refugee or the starving within their gates.

This great organization, known as "L'Assistance aux Dépôts d'Éclopés,
Petits Blessés et Petites Malades, et aux Cantonments de Repos," was
formally inaugurated on November 14, 1914, with Madame Jules Ferry as
President, and Madame Viviani as Vice-President. Mlle. Javal shows
modestly on the official list as Secrétaire Genérale.

The Government agreed to put up the baraques, and did so with the
least possible delay. Mlle. Javal and her Committee furnish the beds
(there were seven hundred in one of the dépôts she showed me), support
the dietary kitchen and the hospital baraques, and supply the
bathrooms, libraries, and all the little luxuries. The Government
supports the central kitchen (_grand régime_), the doctors, and, when
necessary, the surgeons.


VI


Mlle. Javal took me twice through the immense establishment on the
Champs Élysées, where she has not only her offices but workrooms and
storerooms. In one room a number of ladies--in almost all of these
oeuvres women give their services, remaining all day or a part of
every day--were doing nothing but rolling cigarettes. I looked at them
with a good deal of interest. They belonged to that class of French
life I have tried to describe, in which the family is the all
important unit; where children rarely play with other children,
sometimes never; where the mother is a sovereign who is content to
remain within the boundaries of her own small domain for months at a
time, particularly if she lives not in an apartment, but in an hôtel
with a garden behind it. Thousands of these exemplary women of the
bourgeoisie--hundreds of thousands--care little or nothing for
"society." They call at stated intervals, upon which ceremonious
occasion they drink coffee and eat pastry; give their young people
dances when the exact conventional moment has arrived for putting them
on the market, and turn out in force at the great periodicities of
life, but otherwise to live and die in the bosom of The Family is the
measure of their ambition.

I shall have a good deal to say later of the possible results of the
vast upheaval of home life caused by this war; but of these women
sitting for hours on end in a back room of Mlle. Javal's central
establishment in Paris it is only necessary to state that they looked
as intent upon making cigarettes in a professional manner, beyond
cavil by the canny poilu, as if they were counting the family linen or
superintending one of the stupendous facts of existence, a daughter's
trousseau. Only the one to whom I was introduced raised her eyes, and
I should not have been expected to distract her attention for a moment
had not she told Mlle. Javal that she had read my books (in the
Tauchnitz edition) and would like to meet me when I called.

It seemed to me that everything conceivable was in those large
storerooms. I had grown used to seeing piles of sleeping-suits,
sleeping-bags, trench slippers, warm underclothes, sabots, all that is
comprised in the word _vêtement_; but here were also immense boxes of
books and magazines, donated by different firms and editors, about to
be shipped to the dépôts; games of every sort; charming photogravures,
sketches, prints, pictures, that would make the baraques gay and
beloved--all to be interspersed, however, with mottoes from famous
writers calculated to elevate not only the morale but the morals of
the idle.

Then there were cases of handkerchiefs, of pens and paper, pencils,
songs with and without music, knives, pipes, post-cards, razors,
parasiticides, chocolate, vaseline, perfumes (many of these articles
are donations from manufacturers), soap in vast quantities; books
serious and diverting; pamphlets purposed to keep patriotism at fever
pitch, or to give the often ignorant peasant soldier a clear idea of
the designs of the enemy.

In small compartments at one end of the largest of the rooms were
exhibited the complete installations of the baraques, the portable
beds, kitchen and dining-room utensils and dishes, all extraordinarily
neat and compact. In another room was a staff engaged in
correspondence with officers, doctors and surgeons at the Front,
poilus, or the hundred and one sources that contribute to the great
oeuvre. Girls, young widows, young and middle-aged married women whose
husbands and sons were fighting, all give their days freely and work
far harder and more conscientiously than most women do for hire.

All of these presents, when they arrive at the dépôts, are given out
personally by the officers, and this as much as the genuine democracy
of the men in command has served to break down the suspicious or surly
spirit of the French peasant on his first service, to win over the
bumptious industrial, and even to subdue the militant anarchist and
predatory Apache. This was Mlle. Javal's idea, and has solved a
problem for many an anxious officer.

She said to me with a shrug: "My brother and I are now run by our
servants. I have quite lost control. Our home is like a bachelor
apartment. After the war is over I must turn them all out and get a
new staff."

And this is but one of the minor problems for men and women the Great
War has bred.


VII


Magic lanterns and cinemas are also among the presents sent to the
éclopé dépôts in the War Zone; some of which, by the way, are
charmingly situated. I visited one just outside of a town which by a
miracle had escaped the attention of the enemy during the retreat
after the Battle of the Marne. The buildings of the dépôt have been
built in the open fields but heavily ambushed by fine old trees. Near
by is a river picturesquely winding and darkly shaded. Here I saw a
number of éclopés fishing as calmly as if the roar of the guns that
came down the wind from Verdun were but the precursor of an evening
storm.

In the large refectory men were writing home; reading not only books
but the daily and weekly newspapers with which the dépôts are
generously supplied by the editors of France. Others were exercising
in a gymnasium or playing games with that childish absorption that
seems to be as natural to a soldier at the Front when off duty as the
desire for a bath or a limbering of the muscles when he leaves the
trenches.

Another of Mlle. Javal's ideas was to send to the War Zone automobiles
completely equipped with a dental apparatus in charge of a competent
dentist. These automobiles travel from dépôt to dépôt and even give
their services to hospitals where there are no dental installations.

Other automobiles have a surgeon and the equipment for immediate
facial operations; and there are migratory pedicures, masseurs, and
barbers. So heavy has been the subscription, so persistent and
intelligent the work of all connected with this great oeuvre, so
increasingly fertile the amazing brain of Mlle. Javal, that
practically nothing is now wanted to make these Dépôts d'Éclopés
perfect instruments for saving men for the army by the hundred
thousand. I once heard the estimate of the army's indebtedness placed
as high as a million and a half.

The work of M. Frederic Masson must not be ignored, and Madame Balli
assisted him for a short time, until compelled to concentrate on her
other work; but it is not comparable in scope to that of Mlle. Javal.
Hers is unprecedented, one of the greatest achievements of France
behind the lines, and of any woman at any time.




V

THE WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY

I


Madame Vérone, one of the leading lawyers and feminists of Paris, told
me that without the help of the women France could not have remained
in the field six months. This is no doubt true. Probably it has been
true of every war that France has ever waged. Nor has French history
ever been reluctant to admit its many debts to the sex it admires,
without idealization perhaps, but certainly in more ways than one. As
far back as the reign of Louis XI memoirs pay their tribute to the
value of the French woman both in peace and in war. This war has been
one of the greatest incentives to women in all the belligerent
countries that has so far occurred in the history of the world, and
the outcome is a problem that the men of France, at least, are already
revolving in their vigilant brains.

On the other hand the inept have just managed to exist. Madame Vérone
took me one day to a restaurant on Montmartre. It had been one of the
largest cabarets of that famous quarter, and at five or six tables
running its entire length I saw seven hundred men and women eating a
substantial déjeuner of veal swimming in spinach, dry purée of
potatoes, salad, apples, cheese, and coffee. For this they paid ten
cents (fifty centimes) each, the considerable deficit being made up by
the ladies who had founded the oeuvre and run it since the beginning
of the war.

[Illustration: WHERE THE ARTISTS DINE FOR FIFTY CENTIMES]

Nearly all of these people escaping charity by so narrow a margin had
been second-rate actors and scene shifters, or artists--of both
sexes--the men being either too old or otherwise ineligible for the
army. This was their only square meal during twenty-four hours. They
made at home such coffee as they could afford, and went without dinner
more often than not. The daughter of this very necessary charity, a
handsome strongly built girl, told me that she had waited on her table
without a day's rest for eighteen months.

I am frank to say that I could not eat the veal and spinach, and
confined myself to the potatoes and bread. But no doubt real hunger is
a radical cure for fastidiousness.

Later in the day Madame Vérone took me to the once famous Abbaye, now
a workroom for the dressers of dolls, a revived industry which has
given employment to hundreds of women. Some of the wildest revels of
Paris had taken place in the restaurant now incongruously lined with
rows of dolls dressed in every national costume of Allied Europe. They
sat sedately against the walls, Montenegrins, Serbians, Russians,
Italians, Sicilians, Roumanians, Poilus, Alsatians, Tommies,[C] a
strange medley, correctly but cheaply dressed. At little tables, mute
records of disreputable nights, sat women stitching, and outside the
streets of Montmartre were as silent as the grave.

  [C] No doubt there are now little Uncle Sams.


II


A few days later I was introduced to a case of panurgy that would have
been almost extreme in any but a Frenchwoman.

Madame Camille Lyon took me to call on Madame Pertat, one of the most
successful doctors in Paris. I found both her history and her
personality highly interesting, and her experience no doubt will be a
severe shock to many Americans who flatter themselves that we alone of
all women possess the priceless gift of driving initiative.

Madame Pertat was born in a provincial town, of a good family, and
received the usual education with all the little accomplishments that
were thought necessary for a young girl of the comfortable
bourgeoisie. She confessed to me naively that she had coquetted a good
deal. As her brother was a doctor and brought his friends to the house
it was natural that she should marry into the same profession; and as
she continued to meet many doctors and was a young woman of much
mental curiosity and a keen intelligence it was also natural that she
should grow more and more deeply interested in the science of medicine
and take part in the learned discussions at her table.

One day her husband, after a warm argument with her on the new
treatment of an old disease, asked her why she did not study medicine.
She had ample leisure, no children, and, he added gallantly, a mind to
do it justice.

The suggestion horrified her, as it would have horrified her large
family connection and circle of friends in that provincial town where
standards are as slowly undermined as the cliffs of France by the
action of the sea.

Shortly afterward they moved to Paris, where her husband, being a man
of first-rate ability and many friends, soon built up a lucrative
practice.

Being childless, full of life, and fond of variety, they spent far
more money than was common to their class, saving practically nothing.
They had a handsome apartment with the usual number of servants;
Madame Pertat's life was made up of a round of dressmakers, bridge,
calls during the daytime, and companioning her husband at night to any
one of the more brilliant restaurants where there was dancing.
Sometimes they dined early and went to the opera or the play.

Suddenly the really serious mind of this woman revolted. She told me
that she said to her husband: "This is abominable. I cannot stand this
life. I shall study medicine, which, after all, is the only thing that
really interests me."

She immediately entered upon the ten years' course, which included
four years as an interne. France has now so far progressed that she
talks of including the degree of baccalaureate in the regular school
course of women, lest they should wish to study for a profession
later; but at that time Madame Pertat's course in medicine was long
drawn out, owing to the necessity of reading for this degree.

She was also obliged to interrupt her triumphal progress in order to
bring her first and only child into the world; but finally graduated
with the highest honors, being one of the few women of France who have
received the diploma to practice.

To practice, however, was the least of her intentions, now that she
had a child to occupy her mind and time. Then, abruptly, peace ended
and war came. Men disappeared from their usual haunts like mist. It
was as if the towns turned over and emptied their men on to the
ancient battlefields, where, generation after generation, war rages on
the same historic spots but re-naming its battles for the benefit of
chronicler and student.

M. le Docteur Pertat was mobilized with the rest. Madame's bank
account was very slim. Then once more she proved that she was a woman
of energy and decision. Without any formalities she stepped into her
husband's practice as a matter of course. On the second day of the war
she ordered out his runabout and called on every patient on his
immediate list, except those that would expect attention in his office
during the usual hours of consultation.

Her success was immediate. She lost none of her husband's patients and
gained many more, for every doctor of military age had been called
out. Of course her record in the hospitals was well known, not only to
the profession but to many of Dr. Pertat's patients. Her income, in
spite of the war, is larger than it ever was before.

She told me that when the war was over she should resign in her
husband's favor as far as her general practice was concerned, but
should have a private practice of her own, specializing in skin
diseases and facial blemishes. She could never be idle again, and if
it had not been for the brooding shadow of war and her constant
anxiety for her husband, she should look back upon those two years of
hard medical practice and usefulness as the most satisfactory of her
life.

She is still a young woman, with vivid yellow hair elaborately
dressed, and it was evident that she had none of the classic
professional woman's scorn of raiment. Her apartment is full of old
carved furniture and objets d'art, for she had always been a
collector. Her most conspicuous treasure is a rare and valuable
Russian censer of chased silver. This was on the Germans' list of
valuables when they were sure of entering Paris in September, 1914.
Through their spies they knew the location of every work of art in the
most artistic city in the world.

Madame Pertat is one of the twenty-five women doctors in Paris. All
are flourishing. When the doctors return for leave of absence
etiquette forbids them to visit their old patients while their
brothers are still at the Front; and the same rule applies to doctors
who are stationed in Paris but are in Government service. The women
are having a magnificent inning, and whether they will be as
magnanimous as Madame Pertat and take a back seat when the men return
remains to be seen. The point is, however, that they are but another
example of the advantage of technical training combined with courage
and energy.


III


On the other hand, I heard of many women who, thrown suddenly out of
work, or upon their own resources, developed their little
accomplishments and earned a bare living. One daughter of an avocat,
who had just managed to keep and educate his large family and was
promptly mobilized, left the Beaux Arts where she had studied for
several years, and after some floundering turned her knowledge of
designing to the practical art of dress. She goes from house to house
designing and cutting out gowns for women no longer able to afford
dressmakers but still anxious to please. She hopes in time to be
employed in one of the great dressmakers' establishments, having
renounced all thought of being an artist in a more grandiose sense.
Meanwhile she keeps the family from starving while her mother and
sisters do the housework. Her brothers are in the military colleges
and will be called out in due course if the war continues long enough
to absorb all the youth of France.

Mlle. E., the woman who told me her story, was suffering from the
effects of the war herself. I climbed five flights to talk to her, and
found her in a pleasant little apartment looking out over the roofs
and trees of Passy. Formerly she had taken a certain number of
American girls to board and finish off in the politest tongue in
Europe. The few American girls in Paris to-day (barring the
anachronisms that paint and plume for the Ritz Hotel) are working with
the American Ambulance, the American Fund for French Wounded, or Le
Bien-Être du Blessé, and she sits in her high flat alone.

But she too has adapted herself, and kept her little home. She
illuminates for a Bible house, and paints exquisite Christmas and
Easter cards. Of course she had saved something, for she was the
frugal type and restaurants and the cabaret could have no call for
her.

But alas! said she, there were the taxes, and ever more taxes. And who
could say how long the war would last? I cheerfully suggested that we
might have entered upon one of those war cycles so familiar in history
and that the world might not know peace again for thirty years.
Although the French are very optimistic about the duration of this war
(and, no doubt prompted by hope, I am myself) she agreed with me, and
reiterated that one must not relax effort for a moment.

Of course she has her filleul (godson) at the Front, a poor poilu who
has no family; and when he goes out the captain finds her another. She
knits him socks and vests, and sends him such little luxuries as he
asks for, always tobacco, and often chocolate.

The French bourgeoisie--or French women of any class for that
matter--do not take kindly to clubs. For this reason their
organizations limped somewhat in the earlier days and only their
natural financial genius, combined with the national practice of
economy, enabled them to develop that orderly team work so natural to
the Englishwoman. Mlle. E. told me with a wry face that she detested
the new clubs formed for knitting and sewing and rolling bandages. "It
is only old maids like myself," she added, "who go regularly. After
marriage French women hate to leave their homes. Of course they go
daily to the ouvroirs, where they have their imperative duties, but
they don't like it. I shall belong to no club when the war is over and
my American girls have returned to Paris."




VI

MADAME PIERRE GOUJON

I


Madame Pierre Goujon is another young Frenchwoman who led not only a
life of ease and careless happiness up to the Great War, but also, and
from childhood, an uncommonly interesting one, owing to the kind fate
that made her the daughter of the famous Joseph Reinach.

M. Reinach, it is hardly worth while to state even for the benefit of
American readers, is one of the foremost "Intellectuals" of France.
Born to great wealth, he determined in his early youth to live a life
of active usefulness, and began his career as private secretary to
Gambetta. His life of that remarkable Gascon is the standard work. He
was conspicuously instrumental in securing justice for Dreyfus,
championing him in a fashion that would have wrecked the public career
of a man less endowed with courage and personality: twin gifts that
have carried him through the stormy seas of public life in France.

His history of the Dreyfus case in seven volumes is accepted as an
authoritative however partisan report of one of the momentous crises
in the French Republic. He also has written on alcoholism and
election reforms, and he has been for many years a Member of the
Chamber of Deputies, standing for democracy and humanitarianism.

On a memorable night in Paris, in June, 1916, it was my good fortune
to sit next to Monsieur Reinach at a dinner given by Mr. Whitney
Warren to the American newspaper men in Paris, an equal number of
French journalists, and several "Intellectuals" more or less connected
with the press. The scene was the private banquet room of the Hotel de
Crillon, a fine old palace on the Place de la Concorde; and in that
ornate red and gold room where we dined so cheerfully, grim despots
had crowded not so many years before to watch from its long windows
the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

I was the only woman, a whim of Mr. Warren's, and possibly that is the
reason I found this dinner in the historic chamber above a dark and
quiet Paris the most interesting I ever attended! Perhaps it was
because I sat at the head of the room between Monsieur Reinach and
Monsieur Hanotaux; perhaps merely because of the evening's climax.

Of course we talked of nothing but the war (one is bored to death in
Paris if any other subject comes up). Only one speech was made, an
impassioned torrent of gratitude by Monsieur Hanotaux directed at our
distinguished host, an equally impassioned "Friend of France." I
forget just when it was that a rumor began to run around the room and
electrify the atmosphere that a great naval engagement had taken
place in the North Sea; but it was just after coffee was served that a
boy from the office of _Le Figaro_ entered with a proof-sheet for
Monsieur Reinach to correct--he contributes a daily column signed
"Polybe." Whether the messenger brought a note from the editor or
merely whispered his information, again I do not know, but it was
immediately after that Monsieur Reinach told us that news had come
through Switzerland of a great sea fight in which the Germans had lost
eight battleships.

"And as the news comes from Germany," he remarked dryly, "and as the
Germans admit having lost eight ships we may safely assume that they
have lost sixteen." And so it proved.

The following day in Paris was the gloomiest I have ever experienced
in any city, and was no doubt one of the gloomiest in history. Not a
word had come from England. Germany had claimed uncontradicted an
overwhelming victory, with the pride of Britain either at the bottom
of the North Sea or hiding like Churchill's rats in any hole that
would shelter them from further vengeance. People, both French and
American, who had so long been waiting for the Somme drive to commence
that they had almost relinquished hope went about shaking their heads
and muttering: "Won't the British even fight on the sea?"

I felt suicidal. Presupposing the continued omnipotence of the British
Navy, the Battle of the Marne had settled the fate of Germany, but if
that Navy had proved another illusion the bottom had fallen out of the
world. Not only would Europe be done for, but the United States of
America might as well prepare to black the boots of Germany.

When this war is over it is to be hoped that all the censors will be
taken out and hanged. In view of the magnificent account of itself
which Kitchener's Army has given since that miserable day, to say
nothing of the fashion in which the British Navy lived up to its best
traditions in that Battle of Jutland, it seems nothing short of
criminal that the English censor should have permitted the world to
hold Great Britain in contempt for twenty-four hours and sink poor
France in the slough of despond. However, he is used to abuse, and
presumably does not mind it.

On the following day he condescended to release the truth. We all
breathed again, and I kept one of my interesting engagements with
Madame Pierre Goujon.


II


This beautiful young woman's husband was killed during the first month
of the war. Her brother was reported missing at about the same time,
and although his wife has refused to go into mourning there is little
hope that he will ever be seen alive again or that his body will be
found. There was no room for doubt in the case of Pierre Goujon.

Perhaps if the young officer had died in the natural course of events
his widow would have been overwhelmed by her loss, although it is
difficult to imagine Madame Goujon a useless member of society at any
time. Her brilliant black eyes and her eager nervous little face
connote a mind as alert as Monsieur Reinach's. As it was, she closed
her own home--she has no children--returned to the great hôtel of her
father in the Parc Monceau, and plunged into work.

It is doubtful if at any period of the world's history men have failed
to accept (or demand) the services of women in time of war, and this
is particularly true of France, where women have always counted as
units more than in any European state. Whether men have heretofore
accepted these invaluable services with gratitude or as a
matter-of-course is by the way. Never before in the world's history
have fighting nations availed themselves of woman's co-operation in as
wholesale a fashion as now; and perhaps it is the women who feel the
gratitude.

Of course the first duty of every Frenchwoman in those distracted days
of August, 1914, was, as I have mentioned before, to feed the poor
women so suddenly thrown out of work or left penniless with large
families of children. Then came the refugees pouring down from Belgium
and the invaded districts of France; and these had to be clothed as
well as fed.

In common with other ladies of Paris, both French and American, Madame
Goujon established ouvroirs after the retreat of the Germans, in order
to give useful occupation to as many of the destitute women as
possible. But when these were in running order she joined the
Baroness Lejeune (born a Princess Murat and therefore of Napoleon's
blood) in forming an organization both permanent and on the grand
scale.

The Baroness Lejeune also had lost her husband early in the war. He
had been detached from his regiment and sent to the Belgian front to
act as bodyguard to the Prince of Wales. Receiving by a special
messenger a letter from his wife, to whom he had been married but a
few months, he separated himself from the group surrounding the
English Prince and walked off some distance alone to read it. Here a
bomb from a taube intended for the Prince hit and killed him
instantly.

Being widows themselves it was natural they should concentrate their
minds on some organization that would be of service to other widows,
poor women without the alleviations of wealth and social eminence,
many of them a prey to black despair. Calling in other young widows of
their own circle to help (the number was already appalling), they went
about their task in a business-like way, opening offices in the Rue
Vizelly, which were subsequently moved to 20 Rue Madrid.

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 crêpe 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.

These women, whose economical parents had married them into their own
class, or possibly boosted them one step higher, with the aid of the
indispensable dot, never had done any work to speak of, and many of
them manifested the strongest possible aversion from working, even
under the spur of necessity. They had one-franc-twenty-five a day from
the Government and much casual help during the first year of the war,
when money was still abundant, from charitable members of the noblesse
or the haute bourgeoisie. As their dot had been carefully invested in
_rentes_ (bonds) if it continued to yield any income at all this was
promptly swallowed up by taxes.

As for the women of the industrial class, they not only received
one-franc-twenty-five a day but, if living in Paris, seventy-five
centimes for each child--fifty if living in the provinces; and
families in the lower classes of France are among the largest in the
world. Five, ten, fifteen children; I heard these figures mentioned
daily, and, on one or two occasions, nineteen. Mrs. Morton Mitchell of
San Francisco, who lives in Paris in the Avenue du Bois de Bologne,
discovered after the war broke out that the street-sweeper to whom she
had often given largesse left behind him when called to the Front
something like seventeen dependents. Indeed, they lost no time
acquainting her with the fact; they called on her in a body, and she
has maintained them ever since.

While it was by no means possible in the case of the more moderate
families to keep them in real comfort on the allocation, the women,
many of them, had a pronounced distaste for work outside of their
little homes, as they had their liberty for the first time in their
drab and overworked lives and proposed to enjoy it. No man to dole
them out just enough to keep a roof over their heads and for bread and
stew, while he spent the rest on tobacco, at the wine-shops, or for
dues to the Socialist or Syndicalist Club. Every centime that came in
now was theirs to administer as they pleased.

The Mayoress of a small town near Paris told me that she had heard
these women say more than once they didn't care how long the war
lasted; owing to the prevalence of the alcoholism octopus which has
fastened itself on France of late years the men often beat their wives
as brutally as the low-class Englishmen, and this vice added to the
miserliness of their race made their sojourn in the trenches a welcome
relief. Of course these were the exceptions, for the Frenchman in the
main is devoted to his family, but there were enough of them to emerge
into a sudden prominence after the outbreak of the war when charitable
women were leaving no stone unturned to relieve possible distress.

There is a story of one man with thirteen children who was called to
the colors on August second, and whose wife received allocation
amounting to more than her husband's former earnings. It was some time
after the war began that the rule was made exempting from service
every man with more than six children. When it did go into effect the
fathers of large flocks hastened home, anticipating a joyful reunion.
But the wife of this man, at least, received him with dismay and
ordered him to enlist--within the hour.

"Don't you realize," she demanded, "that we never were so well off
before? We can save for the first time in our lives and I can get a
good job that would not be given me if you were here. Go where you
belong. Every man's place is in the trenches."

There is not much romance about a marriage of that class, nor is there
much romance left in the harried brain of any mother of thirteen.


III


Exasperating as those women were who preferred to live with their
children on the insufficient allocation, it is impossible not to feel
a certain sympathy for them. In all their lives they had known nothing
but grinding work; liberty is the most precious thing in the world and
when tasted for the first time after years of sordid oppression it
goes to the head. Moreover, the Frenchwoman has the most extraordinary
faculty for "managing." The poorest in Paris would draw their skirts
away from the slatterns and their dirty offspring in our own tenement
districts.

One day I went with Madame Paul Dupuy over to what she assured me was
one of the poorest districts of Paris. Our visit had nothing to do
with the war. She belonged to a charitable organization which for
years had paid weekly visits to the different parishes of the capital
and weighed a certain number of babies. The mothers that brought their
howling offspring (who abominated the whole performance) were given
money according to their needs--vouched for by the priest of the
district--and if the babies showed a falling off in weight they were
sent to one of the doctors retained by the society.

The little stone house (situated, by the way, in an old garden of a
hunting-lodge which is said to have been the _rendezvous de chasse_ of
Madame du Barry), where Madame Dupuy worked, with an apron covering
her gown and her sleeves rolled up, was like an ice-box, and the naked
babies when laid on the scales shrieked like demons. One male child, I
remember, sat up perfectly straight and bellowed his protest with an
insistent fury and a snorting disdain at all attempts to placate him
that betokened the true son of France and a lusty long-distance
recruit for the army. All the children, in fact, although their
mothers were unmistakably poor, looked remarkably plump and healthy.

After a time, having no desire to contract peritonitis, I left the
little house and went out and sat in the car. There I watched for
nearly an hour the life of what we would call a slum. The hour was
about four in the afternoon, when even the poor have a little leisure.
The street was filled with women sauntering up and down, gossiping,
and followed by their young. These women and children may have had on
no underclothes: their secrets were not revealed to me; but their
outer garments were decent. The children had a scrubbed look and their
hair was confined in tight pigtails. The women looked stout and
comfortable.

They may be as clean to-day but I doubt if they are as stout and as
placid of expression. The winter was long and bitter and coal and food
scarce, scarcer, and more scarce.


IV


The two classes of women with whom Madame Goujon and her friends have
most difficulty are in the minority and merely serve as the shadows in
the great canvas crowded with heroic figures of French women of all
classes who are working to the limit of their strength for their
country or their families. They may be difficult to manage and they
may insist upon working at what suits their taste, but they do work
and work hard; which after all is the point. Madame Goujon took me
through several of the ouvroirs which her society had founded to teach
the poor widows--whose pension is far inferior to the often brief
allocation--a number of new occupations under competent teachers.

Certainly these young benefactors had exercised all their ingenuity.
Some of the women, of course, had been fit for nothing but manual
labor, and these they had placed as scrub-women in hospitals or as
servants in hôtels or families. But in the case of the more
intelligent or deft of finger no pains were being spared to fit them
to take a good position, or, as the French would say, "situation," in
the future life of the Republic.

In a series of rooms lent to the society by one of the great
dressmakers, I saw keen-looking women of all ages learning to retouch
photographs, to wind bobbins by electricity, to dress hair and fashion
wigs, to engrave music scores, articulate artificial limbs, make
artificial flowers, braces for wounded arms and legs, and artificial
teeth! Others are taught nursing, bookkeeping, stenography, dentistry.

One of Madame Goujon's most picturesque revivals is the dressing of
dolls. Before the Franco-Prussian war this great industry belonged to
France. Germany took it away from France while she was prostrate,
monopolizing the doll trade of the world, and the industry almost
ceased at its ancient focus. Madame Goujon was one of the first to see
the opportunity for revival in France, and with Valentine Thompson and
Madame Vérone, to mention but two of her rivals, was soon employing
hundreds of women. A large room on the ground floor of M. Reinach's
hotel is given over as a storeroom for dolls, all irreproachably
dressed and indisputably French.

It will take a year or two of practice and the co-operation of male
talent after the war to bring the French doll up to the high standard
attained by the Germans throughout forty years of plodding efficiency.
The prettiest dolls I saw were those arrayed in the different national
costumes of Europe, particularly those that still retain the styles of
musical comedy. After those rank the Red Cross nurses, particularly
those that wear the blue veil over the white. And I never saw in real
life such superb, such imperturbable brides.


V


Another work in which Madame Goujon is interested and which certainly
is as picturesque is Le Bon Gite. The gardens of the Tuilleries when
regarded from the quay present an odd appearance these days. One sees
row after row of little huts, models of the huts the English Society
of Friends have built in the devastated valley of the Marne. Where
hundreds of families were formerly living in damp cellars or in the
ruins of large buildings, wherever they could find a sheltering wall,
the children dying of exposure, there are now a great number of these
portable huts where families may be dry and protected from the
elements, albeit somewhat crowded.

The object of Le Bon Gite is to furnish these little temporary
homes--for real houses cannot be built until the men come back from
the war--and these models in the Tuilleries Gardens show to the
visitor what they can do in the way of furnishing a home that will
accommodate a woman and two children, for three hundred francs (sixty
dollars).

It seems incredible, but I saw the equipment of several of these
little shelters (which contain several rooms) and I saw the bills.
They contained a bed, two chairs, a table, a buffet, a stove, kitchen
furnishings, blankets, linen, and crockery. There were even window
curtains. The railway authorities had reduced freight rates for their
benefit fifty per cent; and at that time (July, 1916) they had rescued
the poor of four wrecked villages from reeking cellars and filthy
straw and given some poor poilus a home to come to during their six
days' leave of absence from the Front.

The Marquise de Ganay and the Comtesse de Bryas, two of the most
active members, are on duty in the offices of their neat little
exhibition for several hours every day, and it was becoming one of the
cheerful sights of Paris.

There is little left of the Tuilleries to-day to recall the ornate
splendors of the Second Empire, when the Empress Eugenie held her
court there, and gave garden parties under the oaks and the chestnuts.
There is a vast chasm between the pomp of courts and huts furnished
for three hundred francs for the miserable victims of the war; but
that chasm, to be sure, was bridged by the Commune and this war has
shown those that have visited the Military Zone that a palace makes a
no more picturesque ruin than a village.


VI


A more curious contrast was a concert given one afternoon in the
Tuilleries Gardens for the purpose of raising money for one of the war
relief organizations. Madame Paul Dupuy asked me if I would help her
take two blind soldiers to listen to it. We drove first out to Reuilly
to the Quinze Vingts, a large establishment where the Government has
established hundreds of their war blind (who are being taught a score
of new trades), and took the two young fellows who were passed out to
us. The youngest was twenty-one, a flat-faced peasant boy, whose eyes
had been destroyed by the explosion of a pistol close to his face. The
older man, who may have been twenty-six, had a fine, thin, dark face
and an expression of fixed melancholy. He had lost his sight from
shock. Both used canes and when we left the car at the entrance to the
Tuilleries we were obliged to guide them.

The garden was a strange assortment of fashionable women, many of them
bearing the highest titles in France, and poilus in their faded
uniforms, nearly all maimed--réformés, mutilés! The younger of our
charges laughed uproariously, with the other boys, at the comic song,
but my melancholy charge never smiled, and later when, under the
thawing influence of tea, he told us his story, I was not surprised.

He had been the proprietor before the war of a little business in the
North, prosperous and happy in his little family of a wife and two
children. His mother was dead but his father and sister lived close
by. War came and he left for the Front confident that his wife would
run the business. It was only a few months later that he heard his
wife had run away with another man, that the shop was abandoned, and
the children had taken refuge with his father.

Then came the next blow. His sister died of successive shocks and his
father was paralyzed. Then he lost his sight. His children were living
anyhow with neighbors in the half ruined village, and he was learning
to make brushes.

So much for the man's tragedy in war time. It is said that as time
goes on there are more of them. On the other hand, during the first
year, when the men were not allowed to go home, they formed abiding
connections with women in the rear of the army, and when the six days'
leave was granted preferred to take these ladies on a little jaunt
than return to the old drab existence at home.

These are what may be called the by-products of war, but they may
exercise a serious influence on a nation's future. When the hundreds
of children born in the North of France, who are half English, or half
Scotch, or half Irish, or half German, or half Indian, or half
Moroccan, grow up and begin to drift about and mingle with the general
life of the nation, the result may be that we shall have been the last
generation to see a race that however diversified was reasonably proud
of its purity.




VII

MADAME PIERRE GOUJON (Continued)

I


I had gone to Lyons to see the war relief work of that flourishing
city and Madame Goujon went South at the same time to visit her
husband's people. We agreed to meet in the little town of Bourg la
Bresse, known to the casual tourist for its church erected in the
sixteenth century by Margaret of Austria and famous for the carvings
on its tombs.

Otherwise it is a picturesque enlarged village with a meandering
stream that serves as an excuse for fine bridges; high-walled gardens,
ancient trees, and many quaint old buildings.

Not that I saw anything in detail. The Mayor, M. Loiseau, and Madame
Goujon met me at the station, and my ride to the various hospitals
must have resembled the triumphal progress of chariots in ancient
Rome. The population leaped right and left, the children even
scrambling up the walls as we flew through the narrow winding streets.
It was apparent that the limited population of Bourg did not in the
least mind being scattered by their Mayor, for the children shrieked
with delight, and although you see few smiles in the provinces of
France these days, and far more mourning than in Paris, at least we
encountered no frowns.

The heroine of Bourg is Madame Dugas. Once more to repeat history:
Before the war Madame Dugas, being a woman of fashion and large
wealth, lived the usual life of her class. She had a château near
Bourg for the autumn months: hunting and shooting before 1914 were as
much the fashion on the large estates of France as in England. She had
a villa on the Rivera, a hôtel in Paris, and a cottage at Dinard. But
as soon as war broke out all these establishments were either closed
or placed at the disposal of the Government. She cleaned out a large
hotel in Bourg and installed as many beds as it was possible to buy at
the moment. Then she sent word that she was ready to accommodate a
certain number of wounded and asked for nurses and surgeons.

The Government promptly took advantage of her generous offer, and her
hospital was so quickly filled with wounded men that she was obliged
to take over and furnish another large building. This soon overflowing
as well as the military hospitals of the district, she looked about in
vain for another house large enough to make extensive installations
worth while.

During all those terrible months of the war, when the wounded arrived
in Bourg by every train, and household after household put on its
crêpe, there was one great establishment behind its lofty walls that
took no more note of the war than if the newspapers that never passed
its iron gates were giving daily extracts from ancient history. This
was the Convent de la Visitation. Its pious nuns had taken the vow
never to look upon the face of man. If, as they paced under the great
oaks of their close, or the stately length of their cloisters telling
their beads, or meditating on the negation of earthly existence and
the perfect joys of the future, they heard an echo of the conflict
that was shaking Europe, it was only to utter a prayer that the souls
of those who had obeyed the call of their country and fallen
gloriously as Frenchmen should rest in peace. Not for a moment did the
idea cross their gentle minds that any mortal force short of invasion
by the enemy could bring them into contact with it.

But that force was already in possession of Bourg. Madame Dugas was a
woman of endless resource. Like many another woman in this war the
moment her executive faculties, long dormant, were stirred, that
moment they began to develop like the police microbes in fevered
veins.

She had visited that convent. She knew that its great walls sheltered
long rooms and many of them. It would make an ideal hospital and she
determined that a hospital it should be.

There was but one recourse. The Pope. Would she dare? People wondered.
She did. The Pope, who knew that wounded men cannot wait, granted the
holy nuns a temporary dispensation from their vows; and when I walked
through the beautiful Convent of the Visitation with Madame Dugas,
Madame Goujon, and M. Loiseau, there were soldiers under every tree
and nuns were reading to them.

Nuns were also nursing those still in the wards, for nurses are none
too plentiful in France even yet, and Madame Dugas had stipulated for
the nuns as well as for the convent.

It was a southern summer day. The grass was green. The ancient trees
were heavy with leaves. Younger and more graceful trees drooped from
the terrace above a high wall in the rear. The sky was blue. The
officers, the soldiers, looked happy, the nuns placid. It was an oasis
in the desert of war.

I leave obvious ruminations to the reader.

When I met Madame Dugas, once more I wondered if all Frenchwomen who
were serving or sorrowing were really beautiful or if it were but one
more instance of the triumph of clothes. Madame Dugas is an infirmière
major, and over her white linen veil flowed one of bright blue,
transparent and fine. She wore the usual white linen uniform with the
red cross on her breast, but back from her shoulders as she walked
through the streets with us streamed a long dark blue cloak. She is a
very tall, very slender woman, with a proud and lofty head, a profile
of that almost attenuated thinness that one sees only on a
Frenchwoman, and only then when the centuries have done the chiseling.
As we walked down those long, narrow, twisted streets of Bourg between
the high walls with the trees sweeping over the coping, she seemed to
me the most strikingly beautiful woman I had ever seen. But whether I
shall still think so if I see her one of these days in a Paris
ballroom I have not the least idea.

Madame Dugas runs three hospitals at her own expense and is her own
committee. Like the rest of the world she expected the war to last
three months, and like the rest of her countrywomen who immediately
offered their services to the state she has no intention of resigning
until what is left of the armies are in barracks once more. She lives
in a charming old house in Bourg, roomy and well furnished and with a
wild and classic garden below the terrace at the back. (Some day I
shall write a story about that house and garden.) Here she rests when
she may, and here she gave us tea.

One wonders if these devoted Frenchwomen will have anything left of
their fortunes if the war continues a few years longer. Madame Dugas
made no complaint, but as an example of the increase in her necessary
expenditures since 1914 she mentioned the steadily rising price of
chickens. They had cost two francs at the beginning of the war and
were now ten. I assumed that she gave her grands blessés chicken
broth, which is more than they get in most hospitals.

Many of the girls who had danced in her salons two years before, and
even their younger sisters, who had had no chance to "come out," are
helping Madame Dugas, both as nurses and in many practical ways;
washing and doing other work of menials as cheerfully as they ever
played tennis or rode in la chasse.


II


Curiously enough, the next woman whose work has made her notable, that
Madame Goujon took me to see, was very much like Madame Dugas in
appearance, certainly of the same type.

Val de Grace is the oldest military hospital in Paris. It covers
several acres and was begun by Louis XIII and finished by Napoleon.
Before the war it was run entirely by men, but one by one or group by
group these men, all reservists, were called out and it became a
serious problem how to keep it up to its standard. Of course women
were all very well as nurses, but it took strong men and many of them
to cook for thousands of wounded, and there was the problem of keeping
the immense establishment of many buildings well swept and generally
clean. But the men had to go, réformés were not strong enough for the
work, every bed was occupied--one entire building by tuberculars--and
they must both eat and suffer in sanitary conditions.

Once more they were obliged to have recourse to Woman.

Madame Olivier, like Madame Dugas a _dame du monde_ and an infirmière
major, went to one of the hospitals at the Front on the day war broke
out, nursed under fire, of course, but displayed so much original
executive ability as well as willingness to do anything to help, no
matter what, that she was soon put in charge of the wounded on trains.
After many trips, during which she showed her uncommon talent for
soothing the wounded, making them comfortable even when they were
packed like sardines on the floor, and bringing always some sort of
order out of the chaos of those first days, she was invited to take
hold of the problem of Val de Grace.

She had solved it when I paid my visit with Madame Goujon. She not
only had replaced all the men nurses and attendants with women but was
training others and sending them off to military hospitals suffering
from the same sudden depletions as Val de Grace. She also told me that
three women do the work of six men formerly employed, and that they
finished before ten in the morning, whereas the men never finished.
The hospital when she arrived had been in a condition such as men
might tolerate but certainly no woman. I walked through its weary
miles (barring the tuberculosis wards) and I never saw a hospital look
more sanitarily span.

But the kitchen was the show place of Val de Grace, little as the
women hard at work suspected it. Where Madame Olivier found those
giantesses I cannot imagine; certainly not in a day. She must have
sifted France for them. They looked like peasant women and no doubt
they were. Only the soil could produce such powerful cart-horse
females. And only such cart-horses could have cooked in the great
kitchen of Val de Grace. On a high range that ran the length of the
room were copper pots as large as vats, full of stew, and these the
Brobdinagians stirred with wooden implements that appeared to my
shattered senses as large as spades. No doubt they were of inferior
dimensions, but even so they were formidable. How those women stirred
and stirred those steaming messes! I never shall forget it. And they
could also move those huge pots about, those terrible females. I
thought of the French Revolution.

Madame Olivier, ruling all this force, giantesses included, with a rod
of iron, stood there in the entrance of the immaculate kitchen looking
dainty and out of place, with her thin proud profile, her clear dark
skin, beautifully tinted in the cheeks, her seductive infirmière
uniform. But she has accomplished one of the minor miracles of the
war.

I wonder if all these remarkable women of France will be decorated one
of these days? They have earned the highest _citations_, but perhaps
they have merely done their duty as Frenchwomen. C'est la guerre.




VIII

VALENTINE THOMPSON

I


Fortunate are those women who not only are able to take care of
themselves but of their dependents during this long period of
financial depression; still more fortunate are those who, either
wealthy or merely independent, are able both to stand between the
great mass of unfortunates and starvation and to serve their country
in old ways and new.

More fortunate still are the few who, having made for themselves by
their talents and energy a position of leadership before the war, were
immediately able to carry their patriotic plans into effect.

In March, 1914, Mlle. Valentine Thompson, already known as one of the
most active of the younger feminists, and distinctly the most
brilliant, established a weekly newspaper which she called _La Vie
Feminine_. The little journal had a twofold purpose: to offer every
sort of news and encouragement to the by-no-means-flourishing party
and to give advice, assistance, and situations to women out of work.

Mlle. Thompson's father at the moment was in the Cabinet, holding the
portfolio of Ministre du Commerce. Her forefathers on either side had
for generations been in public life. She and her grandmother had both
won a position with their pen and therefore moved not only in the best
political but the best literary society of Paris. Moreover Mlle.
Thompson had a special penchant for Americans and knew more or less
intimately all of any importance who lived in Paris or visited it
regularly. Mrs. Tuck, the wealthiest American living in France--it has
been her home for thirty years and she and her husband have spent a
fortune on charities--was one of her closest friends. All Americans
who went to Paris with any higher purpose than buying clothes or
entertaining duchesses at the Ritz, took letters to her. Moreover, she
is by common consent, and without the aid of widow's bonnet or Red
Cross uniform, one of the handsomest women in Paris. She is of the
Amazon type, with dark eyes and hair, a fine complexion, regular
features, any expression she chooses to put on, and she is always the
well-dressed Parisienne in detail as well as in effect. Her carriage
is haughty and dashing, her volubility racial, her enthusiasm, while
it lasts, bears down every obstacle, and her nature is imperious. She
must hold the center of the stage and the reins of power. I should say
that she was the most ambitious woman in France.

She is certainly one of its towering personalities and if she does not
stand out at the end of the war as Woman and Her Achievements
personified it will be because she has the defects of her genius. Her
restless ambition and her driving energy hurl her headlong into one
great relief work after another, until she has undertaken more than
any mere mortal can carry through in any given space of time. She is
therefore in danger of standing for no one monumental work (as will be
the happy destiny of Mlle. Javal, for instance), although no woman's
activities or sacrifices will have been greater.

It may be imagined that such a woman when she started a newspaper
would be in a position to induce half the prominent men and women in
France either to write for it or to give interviews, and this she did,
of course; she has a magnificent publicity sense. The early numbers of
_La Vie Feminine_ were almost choked with names known to "tout Paris."
It flourished in both branches, and splendid offices were opened on
the Avenue des Champs Elysées. Women came for advice and employment
and found both, for Mlle. Thompson is as sincere in her desire to help
the less fortunate of her sex as she is in her feminism.


II


Then came the War.

Mlle. Thompson's plans were formed in a day, her Committees almost as
quickly. _La Vie Feminine_ opened no less than seven ouvroirs, where
five hundred women were given work. When the refugees began pouring in
she was among the first to ladle out soup and deplete her wardrobe.
She even went to the hastily formed hospitals in Paris and offered her
services. As she was not a nurse she was obliged to do the most
menial work, which not infrequently consisted in washing the filthy
poilus wounded after weeks of fighting without a bath or change of
clothing. Sometimes the dirt-caked soldiers were natives of Algiers.
But she performed her task with her accustomed energy and
thoroughness, and no doubt the mere sight of her was a God-send to
those men who had for so long looked upon nothing but blood and death
and horrors.

Then came the sound of the German guns thirty kilometers from Paris.
The Government decided to go to Bordeaux. Mlle. Thompson's father
insisted that his daughter accompany himself and her mother. At first
she refused. What should she do with the five hundred women in her
ouvroirs, the refugees she fed daily? She appealed to Ambassador
Herrick. But our distinguished representative shook his head. He had
trouble enough on his hands. The more beautiful young women who
removed themselves from Paris before the Boche entered it the simpler
would be the task of the men forced to remain. It was serious enough
that her even more beautiful sister had elected to remain with her
husband, whose duties forbade him to flee. Go, Mademoiselle, and go
quickly.

Mlle. Thompson yielded but she made no precipitate flight. Collecting
the most influential and generous members of her Committees, she
raised the sum needed for a special train of forty cars. Into this she
piled the five hundred women of her ouvroirs and their children, a
large number of refugees, and an orphan asylum--one thousand in all.
When it had steamed out of Paris and was unmistakably on its way to
the South she followed. But not to sit fuming in Bordeaux waiting for
General Joffre to settle the fate of Paris. She spent the three or
four weeks of her exile in finding homes or situations for her
thousand helpless charges, in Blanquefort, Lourdes, Bayonne,
Marseilles, Bordeaux and other southern cities and small towns,
forming in each a Committee to look out for them.


III


Soon after her return to Paris she conceived and put into operation
the idea of an École Hôtelière.

Thousands of Germans and Austrians, employed as waiters or in other
capacities about the hotels, either had slunk out of Paris just before
war was declared or were interned. Even the Swiss had been recalled to
protect their frontiers. The great hotels supplied the vacancies with
men hastily invited from neutral countries, very green and very
exorbitant in their demands. Hundreds of the smaller hotels were
obliged to close, although the smallest were, as ever, run by the wife
of the proprietor, and her daughters when old enough.

But that was only half of the problem. After the war all these hotels
must open to accommodate the tourists who would flock to Europe. The
Swiss of course could be relied upon to take the first train to Paris
after peace was declared, but the Germans and Austrians had been as
thick in France as flies on a battlefield, and it will be a generation
before either will fatten on Latin credulity again. Even if the people
of the Central Powers revolt and set up a republic it will be long
before the French, who are anything but volatile in their essence,
will be able to look at a Boche without wanting to spit on him or to
kick him out of the way as one would a vicious cur.

To Mlle. Thompson, although men fall at her feet, the answer to every
problem is Woman.

She formed another powerful Committee, roused the enthusiasm of the
Touring Club de France, rented a dilapidated villa in Passy, and after
enlisting the practical sympathies of furnishers, decorators,
"magazins," and persons generally whose business it is to make a house
comfortable and beautiful, she advertised not only in the Paris but in
all the provincial newspapers for young women of good family whose
marriage prospects had been ruined by the war and who would wish to
fit themselves scientifically for the business of hotel keeping. Each
should be educated in every department from directrice to scullion.

The answers were so numerous that she was forced to deny many whose
lovers had been killed or whose parents no longer could hope to
provide them with the indispensable dot. The repairs and installations
of the villa having been rushed, it was in running order and its
dormitories were filled by some thirty young women in an incredibly
short time. Mlle. Jacquier, who had presided over a somewhat similar
school in Switzerland, was installed as directrice.

Each girl, in addition to irreproachable recommendations and the
written consent of her parents, must pay seventy francs a month, bring
a specified amount of underclothing, etc.; and, whatever her age or
education, must, come prepared to submit to the discipline of the
school. In return they were to be taught not only how to fill all
positions in a hotel, but the scientific principles of domestic
economy, properties of food combined with the proportions necessary to
health, bookkeeping, English, correspondence, geography,
arithmetic--"calcul rapide"--gymnastics, deportment, hygiene.

Moreover, when at the end of the three months' course they had taken
their diplomas, places would be found for them. If they failed to take
their diplomas and could not afford another course, still would
places, but of an inferior order, be provided. After the first
students arrived it became known that an ex-pupil without place and
without money could always find a temporary refuge there. Even if she
had "gone wrong" she might come and ask for advice and help.


IV


When I arrived in Paris I had two letters to Mlle. Thompson and after
I had been there about ten days I went with Mr. Jaccaci to call on her
at the offices of _La Vie Feminine_, and found them both sumptuous
and a hive of activities. In the course of the rapid give-and-take
conversation--if it can be called that when one sits tight with the
grim intention of pinning Mlle. Thompson to one subject long enough to
extract definite information from her--we discovered that she had
translated one of my books. Neither of us could remember which it was,
although I had a dim visualization of the correspondence, but it
formed an immediate bond. Moreover--another point I had quite
forgotten--when her friend, Madame Leverrière, had visited the United
States some time previously to put Mlle. Thompson's dolls on the
market, I had been asked to write something in favor of the work for
the New York _Times_. Madame Leverrière, who was present, informed me
enthusiastically that I had helped her _énormément,_ and there was
another bond.

The immediate consequence was that, although I could get little that
was coherent from Mlle. Thompson's torrent of classic French, I was
invited to be an inmate of the École Hôtelière at Passy. I had
mentioned that although I was comfortable at the luxurious Hôtel de
Crillon, still when I went upstairs and closed my door I was in the
atmosphere of two years ago. And I must have constant atmosphere, for
my time was limited. I abominated pensions, and from what I had heard
of French families who took in a "paying guest," or, in their tongue,
_dame pensionnaire_, I had concluded that the total renouncement of
atmosphere was the lesser evil.

Would I go out and see the École Feminine? I would. It sounded
interesting and a visit committed me to nothing. Mlle. Thompson put it
charmingly. I should be conferring a favor. There was a guest chamber
and no guest for the pupils to practice on. And it would be an honor,
etc.

We drove out to Passy and I found the École Feminine in the Boulevard
Beauséjour all and more than Mlle. Thompson had taken the time to
portray in detail. The entrance was at the side of the house and one
approached it through a large gateway which led to a cul-de-sac lined
with villas and filled with beautiful old trees that enchanted my eye.
I cursed those trees later but at the moment they almost decided me
before I entered the house.

The interior, having been done by enthusiastic admirers of Mlle.
Thompson, was not only fresh and modern but artistic and striking. The
salon was paneled, but the dining-room had been decorated by Poiret
with great sprays and flowers splashed on the walls, picturesque
vegetables that had parted with their humility between the garden and
the palette. Through a glass partition one saw the shining kitchen
with its large modern range, its rows and rows of the most expensive
utensils--all donations by the omnifarious army of Mlle. Thompson's
devotees.

Behind the salon was the schoolroom, with its blackboard, its four
long tables, its charts for food proportions. All the girls wore blue
linen aprons that covered them from head to foot.

I followed Mlle. Thompson up the winding stair and was shown the
dormitories, the walls decorated as gaily as if for a bride, but
otherwise of a severe if comfortable simplicity. Every cot was as neat
as a new hospital's in the second year of the war, and there was an
immense lavatory on each floor.

Then I was shown the quarters destined for me if I would so far
condescend, etc. There was quite a large bedroom, with a window
looking out over a mass of green, and the high terraces of houses
beyond; the garden of a neighbor was just below. There was a very
large wardrobe, with shelves that pulled out, and one of those
wash-stands where a minute tank is filled every morning (when not
forgotten) and the bowl is tipped into a noisy tin just below.

The room was in a little hallway of its own which terminated in a
large bathroom with two enormous tubs. Of course the water was heated
in a copper boiler situated between the tubs, for although the École
Feminine was modern it was not too modern. The point, however, was
that I should have my daily bath, and that the entire school would
delight in waiting on me.

It did not take me any time whatever to decide. I might not be
comfortable but I certainly should be interested. I moved in that day.
Mlle. Thompson's original invitation to be her guest (in return for
the small paragraph I had written about the dolls) was not to be
entertained for a moment. I wished to feel at liberty to stay as long
as I liked; and it was finally agreed that at the end of the week
Mlle. Thompson and Mlle. Jacquier should decide upon the price.


V


I remained something like three months. There were three trolley
lines, a train, a cab-stand, a good shopping street within a few
steps, the place itself was a haven of rest after my long days in
Paris meeting people by the dozen and taking notes of their work, and
the cooking was the most varied and the most delicate I have ever
eaten anywhere. A famous retired chef had offered his services three
times a week for nothing and each girl during her two weeks in the
kitchen learned how to prepare eggs in forty different ways, to say
nothing of sauces and delicacies that the Ritz itself could not
afford. I received the benefit of all the experiments. I could also
amuse myself looking through the glass partition at the little master
chef, whose services thousands could not command, rushing about the
kitchen, waving his arms, tearing his hair, shrieking against the
incredible stupidity of young females whom heaven had not endowed with
the genius for cooking; and who, no doubt, had never cooked anything
at all before they answered the advertisement of Mlle. Thompson. Few
that had not belonged to well-to-do families whose heavy work had been
done by servants.

A table was given me in a corner by myself and the other tables were
occupied by the girls who at the moment were not serving their
fortnight in the kitchen or as waitresses. These were treated as
ceremoniously (being practiced on) as I was, although their food,
substantial and plentiful, was not as choice as mine. I could have had
all my meals served in my rooms if I had cared to avail myself of the
privilege; but not I! If you take but one letter to Society in France
you may, if you stay long enough, and are not personally disagreeable,
meet princesses, duchesses, marquises, countesses, by the dozen; but
to meet the coldly aloof and suspicious bourgeoisie, who hate the
sight of a stranger, particularly the petite bourgeoisie, is more
difficult than for a German to explain the sudden lapse of his country
into barbarism. Here was a unique opportunity, and I held myself to be
very fortunate.

Was I comfortable? Judged by the American standard, certainly not. My
bed was soft enough, and my breakfast was brought to me at whatever
hour I rang for it. But, as was the case all over Paris, the central
heat had ceased abruptly on its specified date and I nearly froze.
During the late afternoon and evenings all through May and the greater
part of June I sat wrapped in my traveling cloak and went to bed as
soon as the evening ceremonies of my two fortnightly attendants were
over. I might as well have tried to interrupt the advance of a German
taube as to interfere with any of Mlle. Jacquier's orthodoxies.

Moreover four girls, with great chattering, invariably prepared my
bath--which circumstances decided me to take at night--and I had to
wait until all their confidences--exchanged as they sat in a row on
the edge of the two tubs--were over. Then something happened to the
boiler, and as all the plumbers were in the trenches, and ubiquitous
woman seemed to have stopped short in her new accomplishments at
mending pipes, I had to wait until a permissionnaire came home on his
six days' leave, and that was for five weeks. More than once I decided
to go back to the Crillon, where the bathrooms are the last cry in
luxury, for I detest the makeshift bath, but by this time I was too
fascinated by the École to tear myself away.

Naturally out of thirty girls there were some antagonistic
personalities, and two or three I took such an intense dislike to that
I finally prevailed upon Mlle. Jacquier to keep them out of my room
and away from my table. But the majority of the students were "regular
girls." At first I was as welcome in the dining-room as a Prussian
sentinel, and they exchanged desultory remarks in whispers; but after
a while they grew accustomed to me and chattered like magpies. I could
hear them again in their dormitories until about half-past ten at
night. Mlle. Jacquier asked me once with some anxiety if I minded, and
I assured her that I liked it. This was quite true, for these girls,
all so eager and natural, and even gay, despite the tragedy in the
background of many, seemed to me the brightest spot in Paris.

It is true that I remonstrated, and frequently, against the terrific
noise they made every morning at seven o'clock when they clamped
across the uncarpeted hall and down the stairs. But although they
would tiptoe for a day they would forget again, and I finally resigned
myself. I also did my share in training them to wait on a guest in her
room! Not one when I arrived had anything more than a theoretical idea
of what to do beyond making a bed, sweeping, and dusting. I soon
discovered that the more exacting I was--and there were times when I
was exceeding stormy--the better Mlle. Jacquier was pleased.

She had her hands full. Her discipline was superb and she addressed
each with invariable formality as "Mademoiselle----"; but they were
real girls, full of vitality, and always on the edge of rebellion. I
listened to some stinging rebukes delivered by Mlle. Jacquier when she
would arise in her wrath in the dining-room and address them
collectively. She knew how to get under their skin, for they would
blush, hang their heads, and writhe.


VI


But Mlle. Jacquier told me that what really kept them in order was the
influence of Mlle. Thompson. At first she came every week late in the
afternoon to give them a talk; then every fortnight; then--oh là! là!

I listened to one or two of these talks. The girls sat in a
semicircle, hardly breathing, their eyes filling with tears whenever
Mlle. Thompson, who sat at a table at the head of the room, played on
that particular key.

I never thought Valentine Thompson more remarkable than during this
hour dedicated to the tuning and exalting of the souls of these girls.
Several told me that she held their hearts in her hands when she
talked and that they would follow her straight to the battlefield.
She, herself, assumed her most serious and exalted expression. I have
never heard any one use more exquisite French. Not for a moment did
she talk down to those girls of a humbler sphere. She lifted them to
her own. Her voice took on deeper tones, but she always stopped short
of being dramatic. French people of all classes are too keen and
clear-sighted and intelligent to be taken in by theatrical tricks, and
Mlle. Thompson made no mistakes. Her only mistake was in neglecting
these girls later on for other new enterprises that claimed her ardent
imagination.

She talked, I remember, of patriotism, of morale, of their duty to
excel in their present studies that they might be of service not only
to their impoverished families but to their beloved France. It was not
so much what she said as the lovely way in which she said it, her
impressive manner and appearance, her almost overwhelming but, for the
occasion, wholly democratic personality.

Once a week Mlle. Thompson and the heads of the Touring Club de
France had a breakfast at the École and tables were laid even in the
salon. I was always somebody's guest upon these Tuesdays, unless I was
engaged elsewhere, and had, moreover, been for years a member of the
Touring Club. Some of the most distinguished men and women of Paris
came to the breakfasts: statesmen, journalists, authors, artists,
people of _le beau monde_, visiting English and Americans as well as
French people of note. Naturally the students became expert waitresses
and chasseurs as well as cooks.

Altogether I should have only the pleasantest memories of the École
Feminine had it not been for the mosquitoes. I do not believe that New
Jersey ever had a worse record than Paris that summer. Every leaf of
every one of those beautiful trees beyond my window, over whose tops I
used to gaze at the airplanes darting about on the lookout for taubes,
was an incubator. I exhausted the resources of two chemist shops in
Passy and one in Paris. I tried every invention, went to bed reeking
with turpentine, and burned evil-smelling pastiles. Mlle. Jacquier
came in every night and slew a dozen with a towel as scientifically as
she did everything else. All of no avail. At one time I was so spotted
that I had to wear a still more heavily spotted veil. I looked as if
afflicted with measles.

Oddly enough the prettiest of the students, whose first name was
Alice, was the only one of us all ignored by the mosquitoes. She had
red-gold hair and a pink and white skin of great delicacy, and she
might have been the twin of Elsie Ferguson. A few of the other girls
were passably good-looking but she was the only one with anything like
beauty--which, it would seem, is practically confined to the noblesse
and grande bourgeoisie in France. Next to her in looks came Mlle.
Jacquier, who if she had a dot would have been snapped up long since.

Alice had had two fiancés (selected by her mother) and both young
officers; one, an Englishman, had been killed in the first year of the
war. She was only eighteen. At one time the northern town she lived in
was threatened by the Germans, and Mrs. Vail of Boston (whose daughter
is so prominent at the American Fund for French Wounded headquarters
in Paris), being on the spot and knowing how much there would be left
of the wildrose innocence that bloomed visibly on Alice's plump
cheeks, whisked her off to London. There she remained until she heard
of Mlle. Thompson's School, when Mrs. Vail brought her to Paris. As
she was not only pretty and charming but intelligent, I exerted myself
to find her a place before I left, and I believe she is still with
Mrs. Thayer in the Hotel Cecilia.


VII


The École Féminine, I am told, is no more. Mlle. Thompson found it
impossible to raise the necessary money to keep it going. The truth
is, I fancy, that she approached generous donators for too many
different objects and too many times. Perhaps the École will be
reopened later on. If not it will always be a matter of regret not
only for France but for Valentine Thompson's own sake that she did not
concentrate on this useful enterprise; it would have been a definite
monument in the center of her shifting activities.

I have no space to give even a list of her manifold oeuvres, but one
at least bids fair to be associated permanently with her name. What is
now known in the United States as the French Heroes' Fund was started
by Mlle. Thompson under the auspices of _La Vie Féminine_ to help the
réformés rebuild their lives. The greater number could not work at
their old avocations, being minus an arm or a leg. But they learned to
make toys and many useful articles, and worked at home; in good
weather, sitting before their doors in the quiet village street. A
vast number of these Mlle. Thompson and various members of her
Committee located, tabulated, encouraged; and, once a fortnight,
collected their work. This was either sold in Paris or sent to
America.

In New York Mrs. William Astor Chanler and Mr. John Moffat organized
the work under its present title and raised the money to buy
Lafayette's birthplace. They got it at a great bargain, $20,000; for a
large number of acres were included in the purchase. Another $20,000,
also raised by Mr. Moffatt, repaired and furnished the château, which
not only is to be a sort of French Mt. Vernon, with rooms dedicated to
relics of Lafayette and the present war, as well as a memorial room
for the American heroes who have fallen for France, but an orphanage
is to be built in the grounds, and the repairs as well as all the
other work is to be done by the blind and the mutilated, who will thus
not be objects of charity but made to feel themselves men once more
and able to support their families. The land will be rented to the
réformés, the mutilés and the blind.

Mlle. Thompson and Mrs. Chanler, with the help of a powerful
Committee, are pushing this work forward as rapidly as possible in the
circumstances and no doubt it will be one of the first war meccas of
the American tourists so long separated from their beloved Europe.


VIII


The most insistent memory of my life in Passy at the Hôtel Féminine is
the Battle of the Somme. After it commenced in July I heard the great
guns day and night for a week. That deep, steady, portentous booming
had begun to exert a morbid fascination before the advance carried the
cannon out of my range, and I had an almost irresistible desire to
pack up and follow it. The ancestral response to the old god of war is
more persistent than any of us imagine, I fancy. I was close to the
lines some weeks later, when I went into the Zone des Armées, and it
is quite positive that not only does that dreary and dangerous region
exert a sinister fascination but that it seems to expel fear from
your composition. It is as if for the first time you were in the
normal condition of life, which during the centuries of the ancestors
to whom you owe your brain-cells, was war, not peace.




IX

MADAME WADDINGTON

I


One has learned to associate Madame Waddington so intimately with the
glittering surface life of Europe that although every one knows she
was born in New York of historic parentage, one recalls with something
of a shock now and then that she was not only educated in this country
but did not go to France to live until after the death of her father
in 1871.

This no doubt accounts for the fact that meeting her for the first
time one finds her unmistakably an American woman. Her language may be
French but she has a directness and simplicity that no more identifies
her with a European woman of any class than with the well-known
exigencies of diplomacy. Madame Waddington strikes one as quite
remarkably fearless and downright; she appears to be as outspoken as
she is vivacious; and as her husband had a highly successful career as
a diplomatist, and as his debt to his brilliant wife is freely
conceded, Madame Waddington is certainly a notable instance of the gay
persistence of an intelligent American woman's personality, combined
with the proper proportion of acuteness, quickness, and charm which
force a highly conventionalized and specialized society to take her on
her own terms. The greater number of diplomatic women as well as
ladies-in-waiting that I have run across during my European or
Washington episodes have about as much personality as a door-mat. Many
of our own women have been admirable helpmates to our ambassadors, but
I recall none that has played a great personal rôle in the world. Not
a few have contributed to the gaiety of nations.

Madame Waddington has had four separate careers quite aside from the
always outstanding career of girlhood. Her father was Charles King,
President of Columbia College and son of Rufus King, second United
States Minister to England. When she married M. Waddington, a
Frenchman of English descent, and educated at Rugby and Cambridge, he
was just entering public life. His château was in the Department of
the Aisne and he was sent from there to the National Assembly. Two
years later he was appointed Minister of Public Instruction, and in
January, 1876, he was elected Senator from the Aisne. In December of
the following year he once more entered the Cabinet as Minister of
Public Instruction, later accepting the portfolio for Foreign Affairs.

During this period, of course, Madame Waddington lived the brilliant
social and political life of the capital. M. Waddington began his
diplomatic career in 1878 as the first Plenipotentiary of France to
the Congress of Berlin. In 1883 he was sent as Ambassador
Extraordinary to represent France at the coronation of Alexander III;
and it was then that Madame Waddington began to send history through
the diplomatic pouch, and sow the seeds of that post-career which
comes to so few widows of public men.

Madame Waddington's letters from Russia, and later from England where
her husband was Ambassador from 1883 to 1893 are now so famous, being
probably in every private library of any pretensions, that it would be
a waste of space to give an extended notice of them in a book which
has nothing whatever to do with the achievements of its heroines in
art and letters in that vast almost-forgotten period, Before the War.
Suffice it to say that they are among the most delightful epistolary
contributions to modern literature, the more so perhaps as they were
written without a thought of future publication. But being a born
woman of letters, every line she writes has the elusive qualities of
style and charm; and she has besides the selective gift of putting
down on paper even to her own family only what is worth recording.

When these letters were published in _Scribner's Magazine_ in 1902,
eight years after M. Waddington's death, they gave her an instant
position in the world of letters, which must have consoled her for the
loss of that glittering diplomatic life she had enjoyed for so many
years.

Not that Madame Waddington had ever dropped out of society, except
during the inevitable period of mourning. In Paris up to the outbreak
of the war she was always in demand, particularly in diplomatic
circles, by far the most interesting and kaleidoscopic in the European
capitals. I was told that she never paid a visit to England without
finding an invitation from the King and Queen at her hotel, as well as
a peck of other invitations.

I do not think Madame Waddington has ever been wealthy in our sense of
the word. But, as I said before, her career is a striking example of
that most precious of all gifts, personality. And if she lives until
ninety she will always be in social demand, for she is what is known
as "good company." She listens to you but you would far rather listen
to her. Unlike many women of distinguished pasts she lives in hers
very little. It is difficult to induce the reminiscent mood. She lives
intensely in the present and her mind works insatiably upon everything
in current life that is worth while.

She has no vanity. Unlike many ladies of her age and degree in Paris
she does not wear a red-brown wig, but her own abundant hair, as soft
and white as cotton and not a "gray" hair in it. She is now too much
absorbed in the war to waste time at her dressmakers or even to care
whether her placket-hole is open or not. I doubt if she ever did care
much about dress or "keeping young," for those are instincts that
sleep only in the grave. War or no war they are as much a part of the
daily habit as the morning bath. I saw abundant evidence of this
immortal fact in Paris during the second summer of the war.

Nevertheless, the moment Madame Waddington enters a room she seems to
charge it with electricity. You see no one else and you are impatient
when others insist upon talking. Vitality, an immense intelligence
without arrogance or self-conceit, a courtesy which has no relation to
diplomatic caution, a kindly tact and an unmistakable integrity,
combine to make Madame Waddington one of the most popular women in
Europe.


II


This brings me to Madame Waddington's fourth career. The war which has
lifted so many people out of obscurity, rejuvenated a few dying
talents, and given thousands their first opportunity to be useful,
simply overwhelmed Madame Waddington with hard work and a multitude of
new duties. If she had indulged in dreams of spending the rest of her
days in the peaceful paths of literature when not dining out, they
were rudely dissipated on August 1st, 1914.

Madame Waddington opened the Ouvroir Holophane on the 15th of August,
her first object being to give employment and so countercheck the
double menace of starvation and haunted idleness for at least fifty
poor women: teachers, music-mistresses, seamstresses, lace makers,
women of all ages and conditions abruptly thrown out of work.

Madame Waddington, speaking of them, said: "We had such piteous cases
of perfectly well-dressed, well-educated, gently-bred women that we
hardly dared offer them the one-franc-fifty and 'gouter' (bowl of
café-au-lait with bread and butter), which was all we were able to
give for four hours' work in the afternoon."

However, those poor women were very thankful for the work and sewed
faithfully on sleeping-suits and underclothing for poilus in the
trenches and hospitals. Madame Waddington's friends in America
responded to her call for help and M. Mygatt gave her rooms on the
ground floor of his building in the Boulevard Haussmann.

When the Germans were rushing on Paris and invasion seemed as
inevitable as the horrors that were bound to follow, Mr. Herrick
insisted that Madame Waddington and her sister Miss King, who was
almost helpless from rheumatism, follow the Government to the South.
This Madame Waddington reluctantly did, but returned immediately after
the Battle of the Marne.

It was not long before the Ouvroir Holophane outgrew its original
proportions, and instead of the women coming there daily to sew, they
called only for materials to make up at home. For this ouvroir (if it
has managed to exist in these days of decreasing donations) sends to
the Front garments of all sorts for soldiers ill or well,
pillow-cases, sheets, sleeping-bags, slippers.

Moreover, as soon as the men began to come home on their six days'
leave they found their way to the generous ouvroir on the Boulevard
Haussmann, where Madame Waddington, or her friend Mrs. Greene (also an
American), or Madame Mygatt, always gave the poor men what they needed
to replace their tattered (or missing) undergarments, as well as
coffee and bread and butter.

The most difficult women to employ were those who had been accustomed
to make embroidery and lace, as well as many who had led pampered
lives in a small way and did not know how to sew at all. But
one-franc-fifty stood between them and starvation and they learned.
To-day nearly all of the younger women assisted by those first
ouvroirs are more profitably employed. France has adjusted itself to a
state of war and thousands of women are either in Government service
and munition factories, or in the reopened shops and restaurants.


III


The Waddingtons being the great people of their district were, of
course, looked upon by the peasant farmers and villagers as
aristocrats of illimitable wealth. Therefore when the full force of
the war struck these poor people--they were in the path of the Germans
during the advance on Paris, and ruthlessly treated--they looked to
Madame Waddington and her daughter, Madame Francis Waddington, to put
them on their feet again.

Francis Waddington, to whom the château descended, was in the
trenches, but his mother and wife did all they could, as soon as the
Germans had been driven back, to relieve the necessities of the dazed
and miserable creatures whose farms had been devastated and shops
rifled or razed. Some time, by the way, Madame Waddington may tell the
dramatic story of her daughter-in-law's escape. She was alone in the
château with her two little boys when the Mayor of the nearest village
dashed up with the warning that the Germans were six kilometers away,
and the last train was about to leave.

She had two automobiles, but her chauffeur had been mobilized and
there was no petrol. She was dressed for dinner, but there was no time
to change. She threw on a cloak and thinking of nothing but her
children went off with the Mayor in hot haste to catch the train. From
that moment on for five or six days, during which time she never took
off her high-heeled slippers with their diamond buckles, until she
reached her husband in the North, her experience was one of the side
dramas of the war.

I think it was early in 1915 that Madame Waddington wrote in
_Scribner's Magazine_ a description of her son's château as it was
after the Germans had evacuated it. But the half was not told. It
never can be, in print. Madame Huard, in her book, _My Home on the
Field of Honor_, is franker than most of the current historians have
dared to be, and the conditions which she too found when she returned
after the German retreat may be regarded as the prototype of the
disgraceful and disgusting state in which these lovely country homes
of the French were left; not by lawless German soldiers but by
officers of the first rank. Madame Francis Waddington did not even run
upstairs to snatch her jewel case, and of course she never saw it
again. Her dresses had been taken from the wardrobes and slashed from
top to hem by the swords of these incomprehensible barbarians. The
most valuable books in the library were gutted. But these outrages are
almost too mild to mention.


IV


The next task after the city ouvroir was in running order was to teach
the countrywomen how to sew for the soldiers and pay them for their
work. The region of the Aisne is agricultural where it is not heavily
wooded. Few of the women had any skill with the needle. The two Madame
Waddingtons concluded to show these poor women with their coarse red
hands how to knit until their fingers grew more supple. This they took
to very kindly, knitting jerseys and socks; and since those early days
both the Paris and country ouvroirs had sent (June, 1916) twenty
thousand packages to the soldiers. Each package contained a flannel
shirt, drawers, stomach band, waistcoat or jersey, two pairs of socks,
two handkerchiefs, a towel, a piece of soap. Any donations of tobacco
or rolled cigarettes were also included.

This burden in the country has been augmented heavily by refugees
from the invaded districts. Of course they come no more these days,
but while I was in Paris they were still pouring down, and as the
Waddington estate was often in their line of march they simply camped
in the park and in the garage. Of course they had to be clothed, fed,
and generally assisted.

As Madame Waddington's is not one of the picturesque ouvroirs she has
found it difficult to keep it going, and no doubt contributes all she
can spare of what the war has left of her own income. Moreover, she is
on practically every important war relief committee, sometimes as
honorary president, for her name carries great weight, often as
vice-president or as a member of the "conseil." After her ouvroirs the
most important organization of which she is president is the Comité
International de Pansements Chirurgicaux des Etats Unis--in other
words, surgical dressings--started by Mrs. Willard, and run actively
in Paris by Mrs. Austin, the vice-president. When I visited it they
were serving about seven hundred hospitals, and no doubt by this time
are supplying twice that number. Two floors of a new apartment house
had been put at their disposal near the Bois, and the activity and
shining whiteness were the last word in modern proficiency (I shall
never use that black-sheep among words, _efficiency_, again).

One of Madame Waddington's more personal oeuvres is the amusement she,
in company with her daughter-in-law, provides for the poilus in the
village near her son's estate. Regiments are quartered there, either
to hold themselves in readiness, or to cut down trees for the army.
They wandered about, desolate and bored, until the two Madame
Waddingtons furnished a reading-room, provided with letter paper and
post-cards, books and, I hope, by this time a gramophone. Here they
sit and smoke, read, or get up little plays. As the château is now
occupied by the staff the two patronesses are obliged to go back and
forth from Paris, and this they do once a week at least.


V


Madame Waddington, knowing that I was very anxious to see one of the
cantines at the railway stations about which so much was said, took me
late one afternoon to St. Lazare. Into this great station, as into all
the others, train after train hourly gives up its load of
permissionnaires--men home on their six days' leave--; men for the
éclopé stations; men from shattered regiments, to be held at Le
Bourget until the time comes to be sent to fill other gaps made by the
German guns; men who merely arrive by one train to take another out,
but who must frequently remain for several hours in the dépôt.

I have never entered one of these _gares_ to take a train that I have
not seen hundreds of soldiers entering, leaving, waiting; sometimes
lying asleep on the hard floor, always on the benches. It is for all
who choose to take advantage of them that these cantines are run, and
they are open day and night.

The one in St. Lazare had been organized in February, 1915, by the
Baronne de Berckheim (born Pourtales) and was still run by her in
person when I visited it in June, 1916. During that time she and her
staff had taken care of over two hundred thousand soldiers. From 8 to
11 A.M. café-au-lait, or café noir, or bouillon, paté de foie or
cheese is served. From 11 to 2 and from 6 to 9, bouillon, a plate of
meat and vegetables, salad, cheese, fruits or compote, coffee, a quart
of wine or beer, cigarettes. From 2 to 6 and after 9 P.M., bouillon,
coffee, tea, paté, cheese, milk, lemonade, cocoa.

The rooms in the station are a donation by the officials, of course.
The dining-room of the St. Lazare cantine was fitted up with several
long tables, before which, when we arrived, every square inch of the
benches was occupied by poilus enjoying an excellent meal of which
beef à la mode was the pièce de résistance. The Baroness Berckheim and
the young girls helping her wore the Red Cross uniform, and they
served the needs of the tired and hungry soldiers with a humble
devotion that nothing but war and its awful possibilities can inspire.
It was these nameless men who were saving not only France from the
most brutal enemy of modern times but the honor of thousands of such
beautiful and fastidious young women as these. No wonder they were
willing and grateful to stand until they dropped.

[Illustration: A RAILWAY DEPOT CANTINE]

It was evident, however, that their imagination carried them beyond
man's interiorities. The walls were charmingly decorated not only with
pictures of the heroes of the war but with the colored supplements of
the great weekly magazines which pursue their even and welcome way in
spite of the war. Above there were flags and banners, and the lights
were very bright. Altogether there was no restaurant in Paris more
cheerful--or more exquisitely neat in its kitchen. I went behind and
saw the great roasts in their shining pans, the splendid loaves of
bread, the piles of clean dishes. Not a spot of grease in those
crowded quarters. In a corner the President of the Chamber of Commerce
was cashier for the night.

Adjoining was a rest-room with six or eight beds, and a lavatory large
enough for several men simultaneously to wash off the dust of their
long journey.

These cantines are supported by collections taken up on trains. On any
train between Paris and any point in France outside of the War Zone
girls in the uniform of the Croix Rouge appear at every stop and shake
a box at you. They are wooden boxes, with a little slit at the top. As
I have myself seen people slipping in coppers and, no doubt, receiving
the credit from other passengers of donating francs, I suggested that
these young cadets of the Red Cross would add heavily to their day's
toll if they passed round open plates. Certainly no one would dare
contribute copper under the sharp eyes of his fellows. This, I was
told, was against the law, but that it might be found practicable to
use glass boxes.

In any case the gains are enough to run these cantines. The girls are
almost always good looking and well bred, and they look very serious
in their white uniform with the red cross on the sleeves; and the
psychotherapeutic influence is too strong for any one to resist.

Madame Waddington had brought a large box of chocolates and she passed
a piece over the shoulder of each soldier, who interrupted the more
serious business of the moment to be polite. Other people bring them
flowers, or cigarettes, and certainly there is no one in the world so
satisfactory to put one's self to any effort for as a poilu. On her
manners alone France should win her war.




X

THE COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE[D]

I


Madame la Comtesse d'Haussonville, it is generally conceded, is not
only the greatest lady in France but stands at the very head of all
women working for the public welfare in her country. That is saying a
great deal, particularly at this moment.

  [D] Naturally this should have been the first chapter, both on
      account of the importance of the work and the position of Madame
      d'Haussonville among the women of France, but unfortunately the
      necessary details did not come until the book was almost ready
      for press.

Madame d'Haussonville is President of the first, or noblesse, division
of the Red Cross, which, like the two others, has a title as distinct
as the social status of the ladies who command, with diminishing
degrees of pomp and power.

Société Française de Secours aux Blessés Militaires is the name of the
crack regiment.

The second division, presided over by Madame Carnot, leader of the
grande bourgeoisie, calls itself Association des Dames Françaises, and
embraces all the charitably disposed of that haughty and powerful
body.

The third, operated by Madame Perouse, and composed of able and useful
women whom fate has planted in a somewhat inferior social sphere--in
many social spheres, for that matter--has been named (note the
significance of the differentiating noun) Union des Femmes de France.

Between these three useful and admirable organizations there is no
love lost whatever. That is to say, in reasonably normal conditions.
No doubt in that terrible region just behind the lines they sink all
differences and pull together for the common purpose.

The Red Cross was too old and too taken-for-granted an organization,
and too like our own, for all I knew to the contrary, to tempt me to
give it any of the limited time at my disposal in France; so, as it
happened, of these three distinguished chiefs the only one I met was
Madame d'Haussonville.

She interested me intensely, not only because she stood at the head of
the greatest relief organization in the world, but because she is one
of the very few women, of her age, at least, who not only is a great
lady but looks the rôle.

European women tend to coarseness, not to say commonness, as they
advance in age, no matter what their rank; their cheeks sag and
broaden, and their stomachs contract a fatal and permanent entente
with their busts. Too busy or too indifferent to charge spiteful
nature with the daily counter-attacks of art, they put on a red-brown
wig (generally sideways) and let it go at that. Sometimes they smudge
their eyebrows with a pomade which gives that extinct member the look
of being neither hair, skin, nor art, but they contemptuously reject
rouge or even powder. When they have not altogether discarded the
follies or the ennui of dress, but patronize their modiste
conscientiously, they have that "built up look" peculiar to those
uncompromisingly respectable women of the first society in our own
land, who frown upon the merely smart.

It is only the young women of fashion in France who make up lips,
brows, and cheeks, as well as hair and earlobes, who often look like
young clowns, and whose years give them no excuse for making up beyond
subservience to the mode of the hour.

It is even sadder when they are emulated by ambitious ladies in the
provinces. I went one day to a great concert--given for charity, of
course--in a town not far from Paris. The Mayor presided and his wife
was with him. As I had been taken out from Paris by one of the Patrons
I sat in the box with this very well-dressed and important young
woman, and she fascinated me so that I should have feared to appear
rude if she had not been far too taken up with the titled women from
Paris, whom she was meeting for the first time in her life, to pay any
attention to a mere American.

She may have been twenty-eight, certainly not over thirty, but she had
only one front tooth. It was a very large tooth and it stuck straight
out. Her lips were painted an energetic vermillion. Her mouth too was
large, and it spread across her dead white (and homely) face like a
malignant sore. She smiled constantly--it was her rôle to be gracious
to all these duchesses and ambassadresses--and that solitary tooth
darted forward like a sentinel on a bridge in the War Zone. But I
envied her. She was so happy. So important. I never met anybody who
made me feel so insignificant.


II


Madame d'Haussonville naturally suggests to the chronicler the
sharpest sort of contrasts.

I am told that she devoted herself to the world until the age of
fifty, and she wielded a power and received a measure of adulation
from both sexes that made her the most formidable social power in
France. But the De Broglies are a serious family, as their record in
history proves. Madame d'Haussonville, without renouncing her place in
the world of fashion, devoted herself more and more to good works, her
superior brain and executive abilities forcing her from year to year
into positions of heavier responsibility.

I was told that she was now seventy; but she is a woman whose
personality is so compelling that she rouses none of the usual vulgar
curiosity as to the number of years she may have lingered on this
planet. You see Madame d'Haussonville as she is and take not the
least interest in what she may have been during the years before you
happened to meet her.

Very tall and slender and round and straight, her figure could hardly
have been more perfect at the age of thirty. The poise of her head is
very haughty and the nostril of her fine French nose is arched and
thin. She wears no make-up whatever, and, however plainly she may feel
it her duty to dress in these days, her clothes are cut by a master
and an excessively modern one at that; there is none of the Victorian
built-up effect, to which our own grandes dames cling as to the rock
of ages, about Madame d'Haussonville. Her waist line is in its proper
place--she does not go to the opposite extreme and drag it down to her
knees--and one feels reasonably sure that it will be there at the age
of ninety--presupposing that the unthinkable amount of hard work she
accomplishes daily during this period of her country's crucifixion
shall not have devoured the last of her energies long before she is
able to enter the peaceful haven of old age.

She is in her offices at the Red Cross headquarters in the Rue
François I'er early and late, leaving them only to visit hospitals or
sit on some one of the innumerable committees where her advice is
imperative, during the organizing period at least.

Some time ago I wrote to Madame d'Haussonville, asking her if she
would dictate a few notes about her work in the Red Cross, and as she
wrote a very full letter in reply, I cannot do better than quote it,
particularly as it gives a far more comprehensive idea of her
personality than any words of mine.


"Paris, March 28th, 1917.

"DEAR MRS. ATHERTON:

"I am very much touched by your gracious letter and very happy if I
can serve you.

"Here are some notes about our work, and about what I have seen since
August, 1914. All our thoughts and all our strength are in the great
task, that of all French women, to aid the wounded, the ill, those who
remain invalids, the refugees of the invaded districts, all the
sufferings actually due to these cruel days.

"Some weeks before the war, I was called to the ministry, where they
asked me to have two hundred infirmaries ready for all possible
happenings. We had already established a great number, of which many
had gone to Morocco and into the Colonies. To-day there are fifteen or
sixteen thousand volunteer nurses to whom are added about eleven
thousand auxiliaries used in accessory service (kitchen, bandages,
sterilization, etc.) and also assisting in the wards of the ill and
the wounded.

"To the hospitals there have been added since the month of August,
1914, the infirmaries and station cantines where our soldiers receive
the nourishment and hot drinks which are necessary for their long
journeys.

"At Amiens, for instance, the cantine, an annex of the station
infirmary began with the distribution of slices of bread and drinks
made by our women as the trains arrived. Then a big room used for
baggage was given to us. A dormitory was made of it for tired
soldiers, also a reading-room. At any hour French, English or Belgians
may receive a good meal--soup, one kind of meat and vegetables, coffee
or tea. Civil refugees are received there and constantly aided and
fed.

"Our nurses attend to all wants, and above everything they believe in
putting their hearts into their work administering to those who suffer
with the tenderness of a mother. In the hospital wards nothing touched
me more than to see the thousand little kindnesses which they gave to
the wounded, the distractions which they sought to procure for them
each day.

"In our great work of organization at the Bureau on Rue François I'er,
I have met the most beautiful devotion. Our nurses do not hesitate at
contagion, nor at bombardments, and I know some of your compatriots
(that I can never admire enough), who expose themselves to the same
dangers with hearts full of courage.

"I have visited the hospitals nearest the Front, Dunkerque, so cruelly
shelled. I have been to Alsace, to Lorraine, then to Verdun from where
I brought back the most beautiful impression of calm courage.

"Here are some details which may interest your compatriots:

"June 1916. My first stop was at Châlons, where with Mme.
Terneaux-Compans our devoted senior nurse, I visited the hospital
Corbineau, former quarters for the cavalry, very well reconstructed by
the Service de Santé, for sick soldiers; our nurses are doing service
there; generous gifts have enabled us to procure a small motor which
carries water to the three stories, and we have been able to install
baths for the typhoid patients.

"At the hospital Forgeot (for the officers) I admired the
ingeniousness with which our nurses have arranged for their wounded a
quite charming assembly-room with a piano, some growing plants and
several games.

"I also visited our auxiliary hospital at Sainte-Croix. It would be
impossible to find a more beautiful location, a better organization. I
have not had, to my great regret, the time to visit the other
hospitals, which, however, I already know. That will be, I hope, for
another time.

"The same day I went to Revigny. Oh, never shall I forget the
impressions that I received there. First, the passage through that
poor village in ruins, then the visit to the hospital situated near
the station through which most of the wounded from Verdun pass.

"What was, several months ago, a field at the edge of the road, has
become one big hospital of more than a thousand beds, divided into
baraques. We have twenty-five nurses there. Since the beginning of the
battle they have been subjected to frightful work; every one has to
care for a number of critically wounded--those who have need of
operations and who are not able to travel further. What moved me above
everything was to find our nurses so simple and so modest in their
courage. Not a single complaint about their terrible fatigue--their
one desire is to hold out to the end. When I expressed my admiration,
one of them answered: 'We have only one regret: it is that we have too
much work to give special attention to each of the wounded, and then
above all it is terrible to see so many die.'

"I visited some of the baraques, and I observed that, in spite of the
excessive work, they were not only clean but well cared for, and
flowers everywhere! I also saw a tent where there were about ten
Germans; one of our nurses who spoke their language was in charge;
they seemed to me very well taken care of--'well,' because they were
wounded, not 'too well' because--we cannot forget.

"I tore myself away from Revigny, where I should have liked to remain
longer, and I arrived that night at Jeans d'Heurs, which seemed to me
a small paradise. The wounded were admirably cared for in beautiful
rooms, with windows opening on a ravishing park; the nurses housed
with the greatest care.

"The next day I was at Bar-le-Duc, first at the Central, which is an
immense hospital of three thousand beds. Before the war it was a
caserne (barrack). They reconstructed the buildings and in the courts
they put up sheds; our nurses are at work there--among them the
beloved President of our Association--the Mutual Association of
Nurses. All these buildings seemed to me perfect. I visited specially
the splendidly conducted surgical pavilion and the typhoid pavilion.

"The white-washed walls have been decorated by direction of the nurses
with great friezes of color, producing a charming effect which ought
to please the eyes of our beloved sick.

"I visited also the laboratory where they showed me the chart of the
typhoid patients--the loss so high in 1914--so low in 1915. I noted
down some figures which I give here for those who are interested in
the question of anti-typhoid vaccine: In November 1914, 379 deaths. In
November 1915, 22! What a new and wonderful victory for French
science! I must add that three of our nurses have contracted typhoid
fever; none of them was inoculated; twenty who were inoculated caught
nothing.

"While we were making this visit, we heard the whistle which announced
the arrival of taubes--we wanted very much to remain outside to see,
but we were ordered to go in; I observed that our nurses obeyed the
order because of discipline, not on account of fear. 'We can only die
once!' one of them said to me, shrugging her shoulders. Their chief
concern is for the poor wounded. Many of them now that they are in
bed, powerless to defend themselves, become nervous at the approach of
danger. They have to be reassured. If the shelling becomes too heavy,
they carry them down into the cellars.

"These taubes having gone back this time without causing any damage,
we set off for Savonnières, a field hospital of about three hundred
beds, established in a little park. It is charming in summer, it may
be a little damp in winter, but the nurses do not complain; the nurses
never complain!

"Saturday was the most interesting day of my trip. I saw two field
hospitals between Bar-le-Duc and Verdun. Oh! those who have not been
in the War Zone cannot imagine the impression that I received on the
route which leads 'out there,' toward the place where the greatest,
the most atrocious struggle that has ever been is going on. All those
trucks by hundreds going and coming from Verdun; those poor men
breaking stones, ceaselessly repairing the roads, the aeroplane bases,
the dépôts of munitions, above all the villages filled with troops,
all those dear little soldiers, some of them fresh and clean, going,
the others yellow with mud returning--all this spectacle grips and
thrills you.

"We breakfasted at Chaumont-sur-Aire; I cannot say how happy I was to
share, if only for an hour, the life of our dear nurses! Life here is
hard. They are lodged among the natives more or less well. They live
in a little peasant's room near a stable; they eat the food of the
wounded, not very varied--'boule' every two weeks. How they welcomed
the good fresh bread that I brought!

"Their work is not easy, scattered over a wide field; tents, and barns
here and there, and then they have been deprived of an 'autocher,'
which had to leave for some other destination.

"Many of the wounded from Verdun come there; and what wounded! Never
shall I forget the frightful plight of one unfortunate, upon whom they
were going to operate without much chance of success alas. He had
remained nearly four days without aid, and gangrene had done its work.

"I had tears in my eyes watching the sleep of our heroes who had
arrived that morning overcome and wornout, all covered with dust; I
would have liked to put them in good beds, all white with soft pillows
under their heads. Alas in these hospitals at the front, one cannot
give them the comfort of our hospitals in the rear.

"After having assisted at the great spectacle of a procession of
taubes going toward Bar-le-Duc, I was obliged to leave Chaumont to go
to Vadelaincourt, which is thirteen kilometres from Verdun, the
nearest point of our infirmaries. I was there in March at the
beginning of the battle.

"What wonderful work has been accomplished! It is not for me to judge
the Service de Santé, but I cannot help observing that a hospital like
that of Vadelaincourt does honor to the head doctor who organized it
in full battle in the midst of a thousand difficulties. It is very
simple, very practical, very complete. I found nurses there who for
the most part have not been out of the region of Verdun since the
beginning of the war. Their task is especially hard. How many wounded
have passed through their hands; how have they been able to overcome
all their weariness? It is a pleasure to find them always alert and
watchful; I admired and envied them.

"It was not without regret that I turned my back on this region whose
close proximity to the Front makes one thrill with emotion; I went to
calmer places, I saw less thrilling things, but nevertheless,
interesting: the charming layout at Void, that at Sorcy, in process of
organizing, the grand hospital of Toul which was shelled by taubes. I
was able to see the enormous hole dug by the bomb which fell very near
the building that sheltered our nurses, who had but one idea, to run
to their wounded and reassure them.

"I visited at Nancy a very beautiful hospital, the Malgrange, which is
almost unique; it is the Red Cross which houses the military hospital.
At the instant of bombardment, most of the hospitals were vacated;
ours, situated outside of the city, gathered in the wounded and all
the personnel of the military hospital, and it goes very well.

"I finished my journey with the Vosges, Épinal, Belfort, Gerardmer,
Bussang, Morvillars; all these hospitals which were filled for a long
time with the wounded from the battles of the Vosges (especially our
brave Alpines) are quiet now.

"If I congratulated the nurses of the region of Verdun upon their
endurance, I do not congratulate less those of the Vosges upon their
constancy; Gerardmer has had very full days--days when one could not
take a thought to one's self. There is something painful, in a way, in
seeing great happenings receding from you. We do not hear the cannon
any longer, the wounded arrive more rarely, we have no longer enough
to do, we are easily discouraged, we should like to be elsewhere and
yet one must remain there at his post ready in case of need, which may
come perhaps when it is least expected.

"I shall have many things still to tell you, but I am going to resume
my impressions of this little trip in a few words.

"I have been filled with admiration. The word has, I believe, fallen
many times from my pen, and it will fall again and again. I have
admired our dear wounded, so courageous in their suffering, so
gracious to all those who visit them; I have admired the doctors who
are making and have made every day, such great efforts to organize and
to better conditions; and our nurses I have never ceased to admire.
When I see them I find them just as I hoped, very courageous and also
very simple. They speak very little of themselves, and a great deal of
their wounded; they complain very little of their fatigue, sometimes
of not having enough to do. They always meet cheerfully the material
difficulties of their existence as they do almost always the moral
difficulties which are even more difficult. Self-abnegation, attention
to their duty, seem to them so natural that one scarcely dares to
praise them.

"There is one thing that I must praise them for particularly--that
they always seem to keep the beautiful charming coquetry that belongs
to every woman. I often arrived without warning. I never saw hair
disarranged or dress neglected. This exterior perfection is, I may
say, a distinctive mark of our nurses.

"And then I like the care with which they decorate and beautify their
hospital. Everywhere flowers, pictures, bits of stuff to drape their
rooms. At Revigny in one of the baraques I saw flowers, simple flowers
gathered in the neighboring field, so prettily arranged, portraits of
our generals framed in green. When I complimented a nurse, she
answered: 'Ah, no; it is not well done; but I hadn't the time to do
better.'

"At Vadelaincourt, a little room was set aside for dressings, all done
in white with curtains of white and two little vases of flowers. What
a smiling welcome for the poor wounded who come there! 'The
arrangement of a room has a great deal of influence on the morale of
the wounded,' a doctor said to me. All this delights me!

"I have finished, but I shall think for a long time of this journey
which has left in my memory unforgettable sights and in my heart very
tender impressions.

"In the Somme, also, our nurses have worked with indefatigable ardor,
and they go on without relaxation. The poor refugees, which the
Germans return to us often sick and destitute of everything, are
received and comforted by our women of the Red Cross.

"The three societies of the Red Cross--our Society for the Relief of
the Military Wounded, the Union of the Women of France, and the
Association of the Ladies of France--work side by side under the
direction of the Service de Santé.

"Our Society for the Relief of the Military Wounded has actually about
seven hundred hospitals, which represent sixty thousand beds, where
many nurses are occupied from morning until night, and many of them
serve also at the military hospital at the Front, and in the Orient
(three to four thousand nurses).

"Every day new needs make us create new oeuvres, which we organize
quickly.

"The making of bandages and compresses has always been an important
work with us. Yards of underclothing and linen are continually asked
of us by our nurses for their sick. The workshops which we have opened
since the beginning of the war assist with work a great number of
women who have been left by the mobilization of their men without
resources.

"The clubs for soldiers, in Paris especially, give to the
convalescents and to the men on leave wholesome amusement and
compensate somewhat for their absent families.

"Just now we are trying to establish an anti-tuberculosis organization
to save those of our soldiers who have been infected or are menaced.
Many hospitals are already opened for them. At Mentom, on the
Mediterranean, for the blind tubercular; at Hauteville, in the
Department of the Aisne, for the officers and soldiers; at La
Rochelle, for bone-tuberculosis; but the task is enormous.

"We seek also, and the work is under way, to educate intelligently the
mutilated, so that they may work and have an occupation in the sad
life which remains to them, and I assure you, chère madame, that so
many useful things to be done leave very few leisure hours. If a
little weariness has in spite of everything slipped into our hearts, a
visit to the hospitals, to the ambulances at the Front, the sight of
suffering so bravely, I will even say so cheerfully, supported by our
soldiers, very quickly revives our courage, and brings us back our
strength and enthusiasm...."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Countess de Roussy de Sales (an American brought up in Paris) was
one of the first of the infirmières to be mobilized by Madame
d'Haussonville on the declaration of war. She went to Rheims with the
troops, standing most of the time, but too much enthralled by the
spirit of the men to notice fatigue. She told me that although they
were very sober, even grim, she heard not a word of complaint, but
constantly the ejaculation: "It is for France and our children. What
if we die, so long as our children may live in peace?"

At Rheims, so impossible had it been to make adequate preparations
with the Socialists holding up every projected budget, there were no
installations in the hospitals but beds. The nurses and doctors were
obliged to forage in the town for operating tables and the hundred and
one other furnishings without which no hospital can be conducted. And
they had little time. The wounded came pouring in at once. Madame de
Roussy de Sales said they were so busy it was some time before it
dawned on them, in spite of the guns, that the enemy was approaching.
But when women and children and old people began to hurry through the
streets in a constant procession they knew it was only a matter of
time before they were ordered out. They had no time to think, however;
much less to fear.

Finally the order came to evacuate the hospitals and leave the town,
which at that time was in imminent danger of capture. There was little
notice. The last train leaves at three o'clock. Be there. Madame de
Roussy de Sales and several other nurses begged to go with those of
their wounded impossible to transfer by trains, to the civilian
hospitals and make them comfortable before leaving them in the hands
of the local nurses; and obtained permission. The result was that when
they reached the station they saw the train retreating in the
distance. But they had received orders to report at a hospital in
another town that same afternoon. No vehicles were to be had. There
was nothing to do but walk. They walked. The distance was twenty-three
kilometres. As they had barely sat down since their arrival in Rheims
it may be imagined they would have been glad to rest when they
reached their destination. But this hospital too was crowded with
wounded. They went on duty at once. C'est la guerre! I never heard any
one complain.




XI

THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ


The Marquise d'Andigné, who was Madeline Goddard of Providence, R.I.,
is President of Le Bien-Être du Blessé, an oeuvre formed by Madame
d'Haussonville at the request of the Ministère de la Guerre in May,
1915. She owes this position as president of one of the most important
war relief organizations (perhaps after the Red Cross the most
important) to the energy, conscientiousness, and brilliant executive
abilities she had demonstrated while at the Front in charge of more
than one hospital. She is an infirmiére major and was decorated twice
for cool courage and resource under fire.

The object of Le Bien-Être du Blessé is to provide delicacies for the
dietary kitchens of the hospitals in the War Zone, as many officers
and soldiers had died because unable to eat eggs, or drink milk, the
only two articles furnished by the rigid military system of the most
conservative country in the world. The articles supplied by Le
Bien-Être du Blessé are very simple: condensed milk, sugar, cocoa,
Franco-American soups, chocolate, sweet biscuits, jams, preserves,
prunes, tea. Thousands of lives have been saved by Bien-Être during
the past year; for men who are past caring, or wish only for the
release of death, have been coaxed back to life by a bit of jam on the
tip of a biscuit, or a teaspoonful of chicken soup.

Some day I shall write the full and somewhat complicated history of Le
Bien-Être du Blessé, quoting from many of Madame d'Andigné's
delightful letters. But there is no space here and I will merely
mention that my own part as the American President of Le Bien-Être du
Blessé is to provide the major part of the funds with which it is run,
lest any of my readers should be tempted to help me out.[E] Donations
from ten cents to ten thousand are welcome, and $5 keeps a wounded man
for his entire time in one of those dreary hospitals in that
devastated region known as "Le Zone des Armées," where relatives nor
friends ever come to visit, and there is practically no sound but the
thunder of guns without and groans within. Not that the French do
groan much. I went through many of these hospitals and never heard a
demonstration. But I am told they do sometimes.

  [E] All donations in money are sent to the bankers, Messers John
      Munroe & Co., _Eighth Floor_, 360 Madison Avenue, New York.

To Madame d'Andigné belongs all the credit of building up Le Bien-Être
du Blessé from almost nothing (for we were nearly two years behind the
other great war-relief organizations in starting). Although many give
her temporary assistance no one will take charge of any one department
and she runs every side and phase of the work. Last winter she was
cold, and hungry, and always anxious about her husband, but she was
never absent from the office for a day except when she could not get
coal to warm it; and then she conducted the business of the oeuvre in
her own apartment, where one room was warmed with wood she had sawed
herself.

To-day Le Bien-Être du Blessé is not only one of the most famous of
all the war-relief organizations of the fighting powers but it has
been run with such systematic and increasing success that the War
Office has installed Bien-Être kitchens in the hospitals (before, the
nurses had to cook our donations over their own spirit lamp) and
delegated special cooks to relieve the hard-worked infirmières of a
very considerable tax on their energies. This is a tremendous bit of
radicalism on the part of the Military Department of France, and one
that hardly can be appreciated by citizens of a land always in a state
of flux. There is even talk of making these Bien-Être kitchens a part
of the regular military system after the war is over, and if they do
commit themselves to so revolutionary an act no doubt the name of the
young American Marquise will go down to posterity--as it deserves to
do, in any case.




XII

MADAME CAMILLE LYON


Madame Lyon committed on my behalf what for her was a tremendous
breach of the proprieties: she called upon me without the formality of
a letter of introduction. No American can appreciate what such a
violation of the formalities of all the ages must have meant to a
pillar of the French Bourgeoisie. But she set her teeth and did it.
Her excuse was that she had read all my books, and that she was a
friend of Mlle. Thompson, at whose École Hôtelière I was lodging.

I was so impressed at the unusualness of this proceeding that, being
out when she first called, and unable to receive her explanations, I
was filled with dark suspicion and sought an explanation of Mlle.
Jacquier. Madame Lyon? Was she a newspaper woman? A secret service
agent? Between the police round the corner and Mlle. Jacquier, under
whose eagle eye I conformed to all the laws of France in war time, I
felt in no further need of supervision.

Mlle. Jacquier was very much amused. Madame Lyon was a very important
person. Her husband had been associated with the Government for
fourteen years until he had died, leaving a fortune behind him, a
year before; and Madame Lyon was not only on intimate terms with the
Government but made herself useful in every way possible to them. She
was one of the two ladies asked to cooperate with the Government in
their great enterprise to wage war on tuberculosis--Le Comité Central
d'Assistance aux Militaires Tuberculeux; and was to open ateliers to
teach the men how to learn new trades by which they might sit at home
in comfort and support themselves.

And she had her own ouvroir--"L'Aide Immédiate"--for providing things
for the permissionnaires, who came to the door and asked for them. She
ran, with a committee of other ladies, a café in Paris, where the
permissionnaires or the réformés could go and have their afternoon
coffee and smoke all the cigarettes that their devoted patrons
provided. One hundred poilus came here a day, and her ouvroir had
already assisted eighteen thousand. And----

But by this time I was more interested to meet Madame Lyon than any
one in Paris. As I have said before, a letter or two will open the
doors of the noblesse or the "Intellectuals" to any stranger who knows
how to behave himself and is no bore, but to get a letter to a member
of the bourgeoisie--I hadn't even made the attempt, knowing how futile
it would be. If one of them was doing a great work, like Mlle. Javal,
I could meet her quite easily through some member of her committee;
but when Frenchwomen of this class, which in its almost terrified
exclusiveness reminds me only of our own social groups balancing on
the very tip of the pyramid and clutching one another lest some
intruder topple them off, or cast the faintest shadow on their
hard-won prestige, are working in small groups composed of their own
friends, I could not meet one of them if I pitched my tent under her
windows.

Madame Lyon gave me a naïve explanation of her audacity when we
finally did meet. "I am a Jewess," she said, "and therefore not so
bound down by conventions. You see, we of the Jewish race were
suppressed so long that now we have our freedom reaction makes us
almost adventurous."

Besides hastening to tell me of her race she promptly, as if it were a
matter of honor, informed me that she was sixty years old! She looked
about forty, her complexion was white and smooth, her nose little and
straight, her eyes brilliant. She dressed in the smartest possible
mourning, and with that white ruff across her placid brow--Oh là là!

She has one son, who was wounded so terribly in the first year of the
war, and was so long getting to a hospital where he could receive
proper attention, that he was gangrened. In consequence his recovery
was very slow, and he was not permitted to go again to the trenches,
but was, after his recovery, sent up north to act as interpreter
between the British and French troops. He stood this for a few months,
and Madame Lyon breathed freely, but there came a time when M. Lyon,
although a lawyer in times of peace, could not stand the tame life of
interpreter. He might be still delicate, but, he argued, there were
officers at the front who had only one arm. At the present moment he
is in the stiffest fighting on the Somme.

I saw a great deal of Madame Lyon and enjoyed no one more, she was so
independent, so lively of mind, and so ready for anything. She went
with me on two of my trips in the War Zone, being only too glad of
mental distraction; for like all the mothers of France she dreads the
ring of the door-bell. She told me that several times the ladies who
worked in her ouvroir would come down with beaming faces and read
extracts from letters just received from their sons at the Front, then
go home and find a telegram announcing death or shattered limbs.

Madame Lyon has a hôtel on the Boulevard Berthier and before her
husband's death was famous for her political breakfasts, which were
also graced by men and women distinguishing themselves in the arts.
These breakfasts have not been renewed, but I met at tea there a
number of the political women. One of these was Madame Ribot, wife of
the present Premier. She is a very tall, thin, fashionable looking
woman, and before she had finished the formalities with her hostess
(and these formalities do take so long!) I knew her to be an American.
She spoke French as fluently as Madame Lyon, but the accent, however
faint--or was it a mere intonation,--was unmistakable. She told me
afterward that she had come to France as a child and had not been in
the United States for fifty-two years!

One day Madame Lyon took me to see the ateliers of Madame Viviani--in
other words, the workshops where the convalescents who must become
réformés are learning new trades and industries under the patronage of
the wife of the cabinet minister now best known to us. Madame Viviani
has something like ten or twelve of these ateliers, but after I had
seen one or two of the same sort of anything in Paris, and listened to
long conscientious explanations, and walked miles in those enormous
hospitals (originally, for the most part, Lycées) I felt that
duplication could not enhance my knowledge, and might, indeed, have
the sad effect of blunting it.

Madame Lyon said to me more than once: "Ma chère, you are without
exception, the most impatient woman I have ever seen in my life. You
no sooner enter a place than you want to leave it." She was referring
at the moment to the hospitals in the War Zone, where she would lean
on the foot of every bed and have a long gossip with the delighted
inmate, extract the history of his wound, and relate the tale of
similar wounds, healed by surgery, time and patience--while I, having
made the tour of the cots, either opened and shut the door
significantly, or walked up and down impatiently, occasionally
muttering in her ear.

The truth of the matter was that I had long since cultivated the habit
of registering definite impressions in a flash, and after a tour of
the cots, which took about seven minutes, could have told her the
nature of every wound. Moreover, I knew the men did not want to talk
to me, and I felt impertinent hanging round.

But all this was incomprehensible to a Frenchwoman, to whom time is
nothing, and who knows how the French in any conditions love to talk.

However, to return to Madame Viviani.

After one futile attempt, when I got lost, I met Madame Lyon and her
distinguished but patient friend out in one of the purlieus of Paris
where the Lycée of Arts and Crafts has been turned into a hospital for
convalescents.

Under the direction of a doctor each convalescent was working at what
his affected muscles most needed or could stand. Those that ran
sewing-machines exercised their legs. Those that made toys and cut
wood with the electric machines got a certain amount of arm exercise.
The sewing-machine experts had already made fifty thousand sacks for
sand fortifications and breastworks.

From this enormous Lycée (which cost, I was told, five million francs)
we drove to the Salpêtrière, which in the remote ages before the war,
was an old people's home. Its extent, comprising, as it does, court
after court, gardens, masses of buildings which loom beyond and yet
beyond, not only inspired awed reflections of the number of old that
must need charity in Paris but made one wonder where they were at the
present moment, now that the Salpêtrière had been turned into a
hospital. Perhaps, being very old, they had conveniently died.

Here the men made wooden shoes with leather tops for the trenches,
cigarette packages, ingenious toys--the airships and motor ambulances
were the most striking; baskets, chairs, lace.

The rooms I visited were in charge of an English infirmière and were
fairly well aired. Some of the men would soon be well enough to go
back to the Front and were merely given occupation during their
convalescence. But in the main the object is to prepare the
unfortunates known as réformés for the future.

Since the fighting on the Somme began Madame Lyon has gone several
times a month to the recaptured towns, in charge of train-loads of
installations for the looted homes of the wretched people. In one
entire village the Germans had left just one saucepan. Nothing else
whatever.




XIII

BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK

THE DUCHESSE D'UZÈS


The Duchesse d'Uzès (_jeune_) was not only one of the reigning
beauties of Paris before the war but one of its best-dressed women;
nor had she ever been avoided for too serious tendencies. She went to
work the day war began and she has never ceased to work since. She has
started something like seventeen hospitals both at the French front
and in Saloniki, and her tireless brain has to its credit several
notable inventions for moving field hospitals.

Near Amiens is the most beautiful of the duc's castles, Lucheux, built
in the eleventh century. This she turned into a hospital during the
first battle of the Somme in 1915, and as it could only accommodate a
limited number she had hospital tents erected in the park. Seven
hundred were cared for there. Lucheux is now a hospital for officers.

She herself is an infirmière major and not only goes back and forth
constantly to the hospitals in which she is interested, particularly
Lucheux, but sometimes nurses day and night.

I was very anxious to see Lucheux, as well as Arras, which is not far
from Amiens, and, a vast ruin, is said to be by moonlight the most
beautiful sight on earth. We both besieged the War Office. But in
vain. The great Battle of the Somme had just begun. They are so polite
at the Ministère de la Guerre! If I had only thought of it a month
earlier. Or if I could remain in France a month or two longer? But
hélas! They could not take the responsibility of letting an American
woman go so close to the big guns. And so forth. It was sad enough
that the duchess risked her life, took it in her hand, in fact, every
time she visited the château, but as a Frenchwoman, whose work was of
such value to France, it was their duty to assist her in the
fulfillment of her own duty to her country. Naturally her suggestion
to take me on her passport as an infirmière was received with a smile.
So I must see Arras with a million other tourists after the war.

The duchess prefers for reasons of her own to work, not with the
noblesse division of the Red Cross, but with the Union des Femmes de
France. As she is extremely independent, impatient, and enterprising,
with a haughty disdain of red tape, the reasons for this uncommon
secession may be left to the reader.

And if she is to-day one of the most valued of the Ministère de la
Guerre's coöperators, she has on the other hand reason to be grateful
for the incessant demands upon her mind, for her anxieties have been
great--no doubt are still. Not only is the duc at the front, but one
of two young nephews who lived with her was killed last summer, and
the other, a young aviator, who was just recovering from typhoid when
I was there, was ill-concealing his impatience to return to the Front.
Her son, a boy of seventeen--a volunteer of course--in the sudden and
secret transfers the army authorities are always making, sometimes
could not communicate with her for a fortnight at a time, and
meanwhile she did not know whether he was alive or "missing." Since
then he has suffered one of those cruel misfortunes which, in this
war, seem to be reserved for the young and gallant. She writes of it
in that manner both poignant and matter-of-fact that is so
characteristic of the French mother these days:

"I have just gone through a great deal of anguish on account of my
oldest son, who, as I told you, left the cavalry to enter the
chasseurs à pied at his request.

"The poor boy was fighting in the splendid (illegible) affair, and he
was buried twice, then caught by the stifling gases, his mask having
been torn off. He insisted upon remaining at his post, in spite of the
fact that he was spitting blood. Fortunately a lieutenant passed by
and saw him. He gave orders to have him carried away. As soon as he
reached the ambulance he fainted and could only be brought to himself
with the greatest difficulty. His lungs are better, thank God, but his
heart is very weak, and even his limbs are affected by the poison.
Many weeks will be required to cure him. I don't know yet where he
will be sent to be attended to, but of course I shall accompany
him.... The duc is always in the Somme, where the bombardment is
something dreadful. He sleeps in a hut infested with rats. Really it
is a beautiful thing to see so much courage and patience among men of
all ages in this country."

In the same letter she writes: "I am just about to finish my new Front
hospital according to the desiderata expressed by our President of the
Hygiène Commission. I hope it will be accepted as a type of the
surgical movable ambulances."

Before it was generally known that Roumania was "coming in" she had
doctors and nurses for several months in France in the summer of 1916
studying all the latest devices developed by the French throughout
this most demanding of all wars. The officials sent with them adopted
several of the Duchesse d'Uzès' inventions for the movable field
hospital.

She has never sent me the many specific details of her work that she
promised me, or this article would be longer. But, no wonder! What
time have those women to sit down and write? I often wonder they gave
me as much time as they did when I was on the spot.


THE DUCHESSE DE ROHAN


Before the war society used to dance once a week in the red and gold
salon of the historic "hôtel" of the Rohans' in the Faubourg St.
Germain, just behind the Hôtel des Invalides. Here the duchess
entertained when she took up her residence there as a bride; and, as
her love of "the world" never waned, she danced on with the inevitable
pauses for birth and mourning, until her daughters grew up and brought
to the salon a new generation. But the duchess and her own friends
continued to dance on a night set apart for themselves, and in time
all of her daughters, but one, married and entertained in their own
hôtels. Her son, who, in due course, became the Duc de Rohan, also
married; but mothers are not dispossessed in France, and the duchess
still remained the center of attraction at the Hôtel de Rohan.

Until August second, 1914.

The duchess immediately turned the hôtel into a hospital. When I
arrived last summer it looked as if it had been a hospital for ever.
All the furniture of the first floor had been stored and the immense
dining-room, the red and gold salon, the reception rooms, all the
rooms large and small on this floor, in fact, were lined with cots.
The pictures and tapestries have been covered with white linen, four
bathrooms have been installed, and a large operating and
surgical-dressing room built as an annex. The hall has been turned
into a "bureau," with a row of offices presided over by Maurice
Rostand.

Behind the hôtel is the usual beautiful garden, very large and shaded
with splendid trees. During fine weather there are cots or long chairs
under every tree, out in the sun, on the veranda; and, after the War
Zone, these men seemed to me very fortunate. The duchess takes in any
one sent to her, the Government paying her one-franc-fifty a day for
each. The greater part of her own fortune was invested in Brussels.

She and her daughters and a few of her friends do all of the nursing,
even the most menial. They wait on the table, because it cheers the
poilus--who, by the way, all beg, as soon as they have been there a
few days, to be put in the red and gold salon. It keeps up their
spirits! Her friends and their friends, if they have any in Paris,
call constantly and bring them cigarettes. Fortunately I was given the
hint by the Marquise de Talleyrand, who took me the first time, and
armed myself with one of those long boxes that may be carried most
conveniently under the arm. Otherwise, I should have felt like a
superfluous intruder, standing about those big rooms looking at the
men. In the War Zone where there were often no cigarettes, or anything
else, to be bought, it was different. The men were only too glad to
see a new face.

The duchess trots about indefatigably, assists at every operation,
assumes personal charge of infectious cases, takes temperatures, waits
on the table, and prays all night by the dying. Mr. Van Husen, a young
American who was helping her at that time, told me that if a boy died
in the hospital and was a devout Catholic, and friendless in Paris,
she arranged to have a high mass for his funeral service at a church
in the neighborhood.

The last time I saw her she was feeling very happy because her
youngest son, who had been missing for several weeks, had suddenly
appeared at the hôtel and spent a few days with her. A week later the
Duc de Rohan, one of the most brilliant soldiers in France, was
killed; and since my return I have heard of the death of her youngest.
Such is life for the Mothers of France to-day.


COUNTESS GREFFULHE


The Countess Greffulhe (born Princesse de Chimay and consequently a
Belgian, although no stretch of fancy could picture her as anything
but a Parisian) offered her assistance at once to the Government and
corresponded with hundreds of Mayors in the provinces in order to have
deserted hotels made over into hospitals with as little delay as
possible. She also established a dépôt to which women could come
privately and sell their laces, jewels, bibelots, etc. Her next
enterprise was to form a powerful committee which responsible men and
women of the allied countries could ask to get up benefits when the
need for money was pressing.

Upon one occasion when a British Committee made this appeal she
induced Russia to send a ballet for a single performance; and she also
persuaded the manager of the Opera House to open it for a gala
performance for another organization. There is a romantic flavor about
all the countess's work, and just how practical it was or how long it
was pursued along any given line I was unable to learn.


MADAME PAQUIN


Madame Paquin, better known to Americans, I fancy, than any of the
great dressmakers of Europe, offered her beautiful home in Neuilly to
the Government to be used as a hospital, and it had accommodated up to
the summer of 1916 eight thousand, nine hundred soldiers.

She also kept all her girls at work from the first. As no one ordered
a gown for something like eighteen months they made garments for the
soldiers, or badges for the numerous appeal days--we all decorated
ourselves, within ten minutes after leaving the house, like heroes and
heroines on the field, about three times a week--and upon one occasion
this work involved a three months' correspondence with all the Mayors
of France. It further involved the fastening of ribbons and pins
(furnished by herself) upon fifteen million medallions. Madame Paquin
is also on many important committees, including "L'Orphelinat des
Armées," so well known to us.


MADAME PAUL DUPUY


Madame Dupuy was also an American girl, born in New York and now
married to the owner of Le Petit Parisien and son of one of the
wealthiest men in France. She opened in the first days of the war an
organization which she called "Oeuvre du Soldat Blessé ou Malade," and
from her offices in the Hôtel de Crillon and her baraque out at the
Dépôt des Dons (where we all have warehouses), she supplies surgeons
at the Front with wheeling-chairs, surgical dressings, bed garments,
rubber for operating tables, instruments, slippers, pillows, blankets,
and a hundred and one other things that harassed surgeons at the Front
are always demanding. The oeuvre of the Marquise de Noailles, with
which a daughter of Mrs. Henry Seligmen, Madame Henri van Heukelom, is
closely associated, is run on similar lines.

I have alluded frequently in the course of these reminiscences to
Madame Dupuy, who was of the greatest assistance to me, and more than
kind and willing. I wish I could have returned it by collecting money
for her oeuvre when I returned to New York, but I found that Le
Bien-Être du Blessé was all I could manage. Moreover, it is impossible
to get money these days without a powerful committee behind you. To go
to one wealthy and generous person or another as during the first days
of the war and ask for a donation for the president of an oeuvre
unrepresented in this country is out of the question. It is no longer
done, as the English say.




XIV

ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS


Versailles frames in my memory the most tragic of the war-time
pictures I collected during my visit to France. That romantic and
lovely city which has framed in turn the pomp and glory of France, the
iconic simplicities of Marie Antoinette, the odious passions of a
French mob, screeching for bread and blood, and the creation of a
German Empire, will for long be associated in my mind with a sad and
isolated little picture that will find no niche in history, but, as a
symbol, is as diagnostic as the storming of the palace gates in 1789.

There is a small but powerful oeuvre in Paris, composed with one
exception of Americans devoted to the cause of France. It was founded
by its treasurer, Mr. Frederic Coudert. Mr. August Jaccaci, of New
York, is President; Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Honorary President; Mrs.
Robert Bliss, Vice-President; and the Committee consists of the
Comtesse de Viel Castel, Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, and Mrs. William H.
Hill, of Boston. It is called "The Franco-American Committee for the
Protection of the Children of the Frontier."

This Committee, which in May, 1916, had already rescued twelve hundred
children, was born of one of those imperative needs of the moment
when the French civilians and their American friends, working behind
the lines, responded to the needs of the unfortunate, with no time for
foresight and prospective organization.

In August, 1914, M. Cruppi, a former Minister of State, told Mr.
Coudert that in the neighborhood of Belfort there were about eighty
homeless children, driven before the first great wind of the war, the
battle of Metz; separated from their mothers (their fathers and big
brothers were fighting) they had wandered, with other refugees, down
below the area of battle and were huddled homeless and almost starving
in and near the distracted town of Belfort.

Mr. Coudert immediately asked his friends in Paris to collect funds,
and started with M. Cruppi for Belfort. There they found not eighty
but two hundred and five children, shelterless, hungry, some of them
half imbecile from shock, and all physically disordered.

To leave any of these wretched waifs behind, when Belfort itself might
fall at any moment, was out of the question, and M. Cruppi and Mr.
Coudert crowded them all into the military cars allotted by the
Government and took them to Paris. Some money had been raised. Mr.
Coudert cabled to friends in America, Mrs. Bliss (wife of the First
Secretary of the American Embassy) and Mrs. Cooper Hewett contributed
generously, Valentine Thompson gave her help and advice for a time,
and Madame Pietre, wife of the sous-préfet of Yvetot, installed the
children in an old seminary near her home and gave them her personal
attention. Later, one hundred were returned to their parents and the
rest placed in a beautiful château surrounded by a park.

Every day of those first terrible weeks of the war proved that more
and more children must be cared for by those whom fortune had so far
spared. It was then that Mr. Jaccaci renounced all private work and
interests, and that Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Shaw and the Comtesse de Viel
Castel volunteered. The organization was formed and christened, Mrs.
Bliss provided Relief Dépôts in Paris, and Mr. Coudert returned to New
York for a brief visit in search of funds.

During the bombardment of the Belgian and French towns these children
came into Paris on every train. They were tagged like post-office
packages, and it was as well they were, not only because some were too
little to know or to pronounce their names correctly, but even the
older ones were often too dazed to give a coherent account of
themselves; although the more robust quickly recovered. The first
thing to do with this human flotsam was to wash and disinfect and feed
it, clip its hair to the skull, and then, having burned the rags of
arrival, dress it in clean substantial clothes. While I was in Paris
Mr. Jaccaci and Mrs. Hill were meeting these trains; and, when the
smaller children arrived frightened and tearful they took them in
their arms and consoled them all the way to the Relief Dépôts. The
result was that they needed the same treatment as the children.

It was generally the Curé or the Mayor of the bombarded towns that had
rounded up each little parentless army and headed it toward Paris.
When the larger children were themselves again they all told the same
bitter monotonous stories. Suddenly a rain of shrapnel fell on their
village or town. They fled to the cellars, perhaps to the one Cave
Voûtée (a stone cellar with vaulted roof) and there herded in
indescribable filth, darkness, fear, hunger for weeks and even months
at a time. The shelling of a village soon stopped, but in the larger
towns, strategic points desired of the enemy, the bombarding would be
incessant. Mothers, or older children, would venture out for food,
returning perhaps with enough to keep the pale flame of life alive, as
often as not falling a huddled mass a few feet from the exit of the
cellar. Mothers died of typhoid, pneumonia, in childbirth; others
never had reached the cellar with their own children in the panic; one
way or another these children arrived in Paris in a state of
orphanhood, although later investigations proved them to have been
hiding close to their mother (and sometimes father; for all men are
not physically fit for war) by the width of a street, in a town where
the long roar of guns dulled the senses and the affections, and the
constant hail of shrapnel precluded all search for anything but food.

Moreover, many families had fled from villages lying in the path of
the advancing hordes to the neighboring towns, and there separated,
crowding into the nearest Caves Voûtées. Most of these poor women
carried a baby and were distraught with fear besides; the older
children must cling to the mother's skirts or become lost in the
mêlée.

When one considers that many of these children, in Rheims or Verdun,
for instance, were in cellars not for weeks but for months, without
seeing the light of day, with their hunger never satisfied, with
corpses unburied for days until a momentary lull encouraged the elders
to remove the sand bags at the exit and thrust them out, with their
refuge rocking constantly and their ear-drums splitting with raucous
sounds, where the stenches were enough to poison what red blood they
had left and there were no medicines to care for the afflicted little
bodies, one pities anew those mentally afflicted people who assert at
automatic intervals, "I can't see any difference between the cruelty
of the British blockade and the German submarines." The resistant
powers of the human body, given the bare chance of remaining alive,
are little short of phenomenal. But then, when Nature compounded the
human frame it was to fling it into a newborn world far more difficult
to survive than even the awful conditions of modern warfare.

Some of these children were wounded before they reached the cellars.
In many cases the families remained in their homes until the walls, at
first pierced by the shrapnel, began to tumble about their ears. Then
they would run to the homes of friends on the other side of the town,
staying there until the guns, aided by the air scouts, raked such
houses as had escaped the first assault. Often there were no Caves
Voûtées in the villages. The mothers cowered with their children under
the tottering walls or lay flat on the ground until the German guns
turned elsewhere; then they ran for the nearest town. But during these
distracted transfers many received wounds whose scars they are likely
to carry through life. The most seriously wounded were taken to the
military hospitals, where they either died, or, if merely in need of
bandages, were quickly turned out to make room for some poilu arriving
in the everlasting procession of stretchers.

Sometimes, flat on their stomachs, the more curious and intelligent of
the children watched the shells sailing overhead to drop upon some
beautiful villa or château and transpose it into a heap of stones.
Where there were English or Americans in these bombarded towns, or
where the Curés or the Mayors of those invaded had not been shot or
imprisoned, the children were sent as quickly as possible to Paris,
the mothers, when there were any, only too content to let them go and
to remain behind and take their chances with the shells.

One little Belgian named Bonduelle, who, with two brothers, reached
Paris in safety, is very graphic: "We are three orphans," he replied
in answer to the usual questions. "Our uncle and aunt took the place
of our dear parents, so soon taken from us.... It was towards the
evening of Wednesday, 6th September, 1914, that I was coming back to
my uncle's house from Ypres, when all at once I heard shrieks and
yells in the distance. I stopped, for I was like one stunned. On
hearing behind me, on the highway, German cavalry, I ran into a house
where I spent the night. I could not close my eyes when I thought of
the anxiety of my uncle and aunt and of the fate of my two small
brothers, Michael and Roger. Early the following day I rushed to our
house. Everybody was in the cellar. We shed tears on meeting again. I
found two of my cousins wounded by a shell which had exploded outside
our door. Soon another shell comes and smashes our house. I was
wounded. Dazed with fear, my cousin and myself got out through a
window from the cellar, we ran across fields and meadows to another
uncle, where the rest of the family followed us soon. We remained
there the whole winter, but what a sad winter! We have not taken off
our clothes, for at every moment we feared to have to run away again.

"The big guns rumbled very much and the shells whistled over our
heads. Every one heard: 'So-and-so is killed' or 'wounded, by a
shell.' 'Such-and-such-a-house is ruined by a shell.'

"After having spent more than seven months in incredible fear, my
brothers and myself have left the village, at the order of the
gendarmes, and the English took us to Hazebrouck, from where we went
to Paris."

In some cases the parents, or, as was most generally the case, the
mother, after many terrifying experiences in her village, passed and
repassed by the Germans, having heard of the relief stations in Paris,
sent their children, properly tagged, to be cared for in a place of
comparative safety until the end of the war. Young Bruno Van
Wonterghem told his experience in characteristically simple words:

"Towards the evening of September 6th, 1914, the Germans arrived at
our village with their ammunition. One would have thought the Last
Judgment was about to begin. All the inhabitants were hiding in their
houses. I was hiding in the attic, but, desirous to see a German, I
was looking through a little window in the roof. Nobody in the house
dared to go to bed. It was already very late when we heard knocks at
the door of our shop. It was some Germans who wanted to buy chocolate.
Some paid but the majority did not. They left saying, 'Let us kill the
French.' The following morning they marched away toward France. In the
evening one heard already the big guns in the distance.

"Turned out of France the Germans came to St. Eloi, where they
remained very long. Then they advanced to Ypres. The whole winter I
heard the rumbling of the big guns, and the whistling of the shells. I
learned also every day of the sad deaths of the victims of that awful
war. I was often very frightened and I have been very happy to leave
for France with my companions."

While I was in Paris the refugee children, of course, were from the
invaded districts of France; the Belgian stream had long since ceased.
Already twelve hundred little victims of the first months of the war,
both Belgian and French, either had been returned to their mothers or
relatives by the Franco-American Committee, or placed for the
educational period of their lives in families, convents, or boys'
schools. The more recent were still in the various colonies
established by Mrs. Hill and the other members of the Committee, where
they received instruction until such time as their parents could be
found, or some kind people were willing to adopt them.

It was on my first Sunday in Paris that Mr. Jaccaci and Mrs. Hill
asked me to drive out with them to Versailles and visit a sanitorium
for the children whose primary need was restoration to health. It was
on the estate of Madame Philip Berard, who had contributed the
building, while the entire funds for its upkeep, including a trained
nurse, were provided by Mrs. Bliss.

Versailles was as green and peaceful as if a few miles away the shells
were not ripping up a field a shot. After lunch in the famous hotel
ordinarily one of the gayest in France at that time of the year, we
first visited the rest hospital of Miss Morgan, Miss Marbury and Miss
de Wolfe, and then drove out into the country to Madame Berard's
historical estate. Here, in the courtyard of a good-sized building,
we were greeted by about forty children in pink-and-white gingham
aprons, and heads either shaved or finished off with tightly braided
pigtails. It seemed to me then that they were all smiling, and--for
they had been there some weeks--that most of them looked round and
healthy. But I soon found that some were still too languid to play.
One lying in a long chair on the terrace at the back of the house and
gazing vacantly out at the beautiful woods was tubercular, the victim
of months in a damp cellar. Another, although so excessively cheerful
that I suspect she was not "all there" was also confined to a long
chair, with a hip affection of some sort, but she was much petted, and
surrounded by all the little luxuries that the victims of her smile
had remembered to send her. One beautiful child had the rickets, and
several suffered from intestinal prolapsus and other internal
complaints, but were on the road to recovery.

While their Swedish nurse was putting them through their gymnastic
exercises I studied their faces. At first my impression was one of
prevailing homeliness; scrubbed, flat, peasant faces, for the most
part, without the features or the mental apparatus that provides
expression. But soon I singled out two or three pretty and engaging
children, and rarely one whose face was devoid of character. And they
stood well and went through their exercises with precision and vigor.

It was just before we left that my wandering attention was directed
toward the scene to which I alluded in my first paragraph. The greater
number of the children were shouting at play in a neighboring field.
The preternaturally happy invalid was smiling at the lovely woods
beyond the terrace, woods where little princes had frolicked, and
older princes had wooed and won. Mr. Jaccaci was still petting the
beautiful little boy who looked like the _bambino_ on the celebrated
fresco of Florence; Mrs. Hill was kissing and hugging several little
girls who had clung to her skirts. It was, in spite of its origin, a
happy scene.

I had been waiting by the door for these ceremonies of affection to
finish, when I happened to glance at the far end of the wide stone
terrace. There, by the balustrade, in the shadow of the leafy woods,
stood a girl of perhaps eight or ten. Her arms hung at her sides and
she was staring straight before her while she cried as I never have
seen a child cry; silently, bitterly, with her heavy plain face hardly
twisted in its tragic silent woe.

I called Mrs. Hill's attention to her, for I, a stranger, could not
intrude upon a grief like that, and the idol of all those children
immediately ran over to the desolate figure. She questioned her, she
put her arms about her. She might as well have addressed one of the
broken stone nymphs in the woods. That young mind, startled from the
present, it may be, by witnessing the endearments lavished upon
prettier and smaller children, had traveled far. She was in the past,
a past that anteceded even that past of death and thundering guns and
rocking walls and empty stomachs; a past when the war, of whose like
she had never heard, was still in the sleepless brains of the monster
criminals of history, when she lived in a home in a quiet village with
the fields beyond; where she had a mother, a father, sisters,
brothers; where her tears had been over childish disappointments, and
her mother had dried them. Small and homely and insignificant she
stood there in her tragic detachment the symbol of all the woe of
France, and of the depraved brutality of a handful of ambitious men
who had broken the heart of the world.




XV

THE MARRAINES


It is hardly too much to say that every woman in France, from noblesse
to peasant, has her filleul (godson) in the trenches; in many cases,
when she still has a considerable income in spite of taxes,
moratoriums, and all the rest of it, she is a marraine on the grand
scale and has several hundred. Children have their filleul, correspond
with him, send him little presents several times a month and weep
bitterly when word comes that he is deep in his last trench.

Servants save their wages so that when the filleuls of their
mistresses come home on their six days' leave they at least can
provide the afternoon wine and entertain them royally in the kitchen.
Old maids, still sewing in their attic for a few sous a day, have
found a gleam of brightness for the first time in their somber lives
in the knowledge that they give a mite of comfort or pleasure to some
unknown man, offering his life in the defence of France, and whose
letters, sentimental, effusive, playful, almost resign these poor
stranded women to the crucifixion of their country.

Busy women like Madame d'Andigné sit up until two in the morning
writing to their grateful filleuls. Girls, who once dreamed only of
marrying and living the brilliant life of the _femme du monde_ spend
hours daily not only on cheerful letters, but knitting, sewing,
embroidering, purchasing for humble men who will mean nothing to their
future, beyond the growth of spirit they unconsciously induced. Poor
women far from Paris, where, at least, thousands of these
permissionnaires linger for a few hours on their way home, toil all
night over their letters to men for whom they conceive a profound
sentiment but never can hope to see. Shop girls save their wages and
lady's maids pilfer in a noble cause.

It was Madame Berard (who was a Miss Dana of Boston) who organized
this magnificent spirit into a great oeuvre, so that thousands of men
could be made happy whom no kindly woman so far had been able to
discover.

Madame Berard, who has three sons in the army herself, nursed at the
Front for several months after the war broke out. Even officers told
her that they used to go off by themselves and cry because they never
received a letter, or any sort of reminder that they were anything but
part of a machine defending France. These officers, of course, were
from the invaded district, and in addition to their isolation, were
haunted by fears for their women now in the power of men who were as
cruel as they were sensual and degenerate.

When she returned to her home she immediately entered upon the career
of marraine, corresponding with several hundred of the men she either
had known or whose names were given to her by their commanding
officers. Naturally the work progressed beyond her capacity and she
called upon friends to help her out. Out of this initial and purely
personal devotion grew the great oeuvre, Mon Soldat, which has met
with such a warm response in this country.

Madame Berard's headquarters are in a villa in the Parc Monceau. Here
is conducted all the correspondence with the agents in other cities,
here come thousands of letters and presents by every mail to be
forwarded to the Front, and here come the grateful--and
hopeful--permissionnaires, who never depart without a present and
sometimes leave one, generally an ingenious trinket made in the
trenches.

When I visited the villa last summer the oeuvre had eight thousand
marraines, and no doubt the number has doubled to-day. Fifteen hundred
of these were American, marshalled by Madame Berard's representative
in New York, Mr. R.W. Neeser. Some of these fairy godmothers had ten
filleuls. Packages were dispatched to the Front every week. Women that
could not afford presents wrote regularly. There were at that time
over twenty thousand filleuls.

The letters received from these men of all grades must be a source of
psychologic as well as sympathetic interest to the more intelligent
marraines, for when the men live long enough they reveal much of their
native characteristics between the formalities so dear to the French.
But too many of them write but one letter, and sometimes they do not
finish that.




XVI

PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE

I


What the bereft mothers of France will do after this war is over and
they no longer have the mutilated sons of other mothers to nurse and
serve and work for, is a problem for themselves; but what the younger
women will do is a problem for the men.

Practically every day of the three months I spent in Passy I used one
of the three lines of tramcars that converge at La Muette (it is
almost immoral to take a taxi these days); and I often amused myself
watching the women conductors. They are quick, keen, and competent,
but, whether it was owing to the dingy black uniforms and
distressingly unbecoming Scotch military cap or not, it never did
occur to me that there would be any mad scramble for them when the men
of France once more found the leisure for love and marriage.

Grim as these women looked, however, "on their job," I often noticed
them laughing and joking when, off duty for a few moments, they rested
under the trees at the terminus. No doubt there is in them that
ineradicable love of the home so characteristic of the French race,
and as there is little beauty in their class at the best, they may
appeal more to the taste of men of that class than they did to mine.
And it may be that those who are already provided with husbands will
cheerfully renounce work in their favor and return to the hearthstone.
Perhaps, however, they will not, and wise heads of the sex which has
ruled the world so long are conferring at odd moments upon these and
other females who have taken up so many of the reins laid down by men
and driven the man-made teams with a success that could not be more
complete if they had been bred to it, and with a relish that has
grown, and shows no sign of retroaction.

[Illustration: DELIVERING THE POST]

The French women of the people, however, unlovely to look upon,
toil-worn, absorbed from childhood in petty economics, have little to
tempt men outside of the home in which they reign, so for those that
do return the problem ends. But it is an altogether different matter
with the women of the leisure classes. The industrial women who have
proved so competent in the positions occupied for centuries by men
merely agitate the economic brain of France, but the future of the
women of the upper strata of the bourgeoisie is shaking the very soul
of the social psychologist.


II


At the outbreak of the war hundreds of girls belonging to the best
families volunteered as nurses. Some quickly retired to committee work
in disgust, or because their pampered bodies rebelled under the
strain.

Others have never faltered, doing the most repulsive and arduous work
day by day, close to the thunder of guns, or under the constant menace
of the taube whose favorite quarry is the hospital full of ill and
wounded, and of pretty women whose torn bodies even in imagination
satisfy the perversities of German lust; but if they ever go home to
rest it is under the peremptory orders of their médecin major, who has
no use for shattered nervous systems these days.

While these girls may have lost their illusions a little earlier than
they would in matrimony, the result is not as likely to affect the
practical French mind toward the married state as it might that of the
more romantic and self-deluding American or English woman. There is
little doubt that they will marry if they can, for to marry and marry
early has been for too many centuries a sort of religious duty with
well-born French women to be eradicated by one war; and as they will
meet in hospital wards many officers who might not otherwise cross
their narrow paths, their chances, if the war ends soon enough, will
be reasonably increased.

Moreover, many a man who was a confirmed bachelor will, after the
acute discomfort of years of warfare, look upon the married state as a
greater reward than the medals on his breast; and on the other hand
many girls will be glad to marry men old enough to be a parent of the
young husband they once dreamed of; for hardly since the Thirty
Years' War will men when peace comes be so scarce and women so many.

There has even been talk from time to time of bringing the Koranic law
across the Mediterranean and permitting each able-bodied Frenchman of
any class to have three registered wives besides the one of his
choice, the additional expense and responsibility being borne by the
State.

But of all the countries in Europe polygamy is most unthinkable in
France. The home is as perfected and as sacred an economic institution
as the State. To reign over one of those important units, even if deep
in the shadow of the expansive male, to maintain it on that high level
of excellence which in the aggregate does so much to maintain France
at the very apex of civilization, in spite of another code which
shocks Anglo-Saxon morality--this, combined with the desire to gratify
the profoundest instincts of woman, is the ambition of every
well-conditioned French girl.

She would far rather, did the demand of the State for male children
become imperative, give it one or more outside the law rather than
forfeit her chance to find one day a real husband and to be a
component part of that great national institution, The Family. She
would not feel in the same class for a moment with the women who live
to please men and refrain from justifying themselves by fulfilling at
the same time a duty to their depleted State.


III


The women of the noblesse, like the aristocracies of any country, and
whatever the minor shadings and classifications, are divided into two
classes: the conservative, respectable, home-loving, no matter what
the daily toll to rank; and the devotees of dress, pleasure, sex,
subdivided, orchestrated, and romanticized. As these women move in the
most brilliant society in the world and can command the willing
attendance of men in all circles; as their husbands are so often
foraging far afield; and as temptation is commonly proportionate to
opportunity, little wonder that the Parisian _femme du monde_ is the
most notable disciple of Earth's politer form of hedonism.

This is true to only a limited extent in the upper circles of the
bourgeoisie. Some of the women of the wealthier class dress
magnificently, have their lovers and their scandals (in what class do
they not?), and before the war danced the night away. But the great
majority rarely wandered far from their domestic kingdom, quite
content with an occasional ball, dinner, or play. A daughter's
marriage was the greatest event in their lives, and the endless
preparations throughout the long engagement, a subdued but delicious
period of excitement. Their social circles, whatever their birth, were
extremely restricted, and they were, above all things, the mates of
their husbands.


IV


But the war has changed all that. France has had something like a war
a generation from time immemorial, but in modern times, since woman
has found herself, they have been brief. Feminism, whether approved by
the great mass of Frenchwomen or not, has done its insidious work. And
for many years now there has been the omnipresent American woman with
her careless independence; and, still more recently, the desperate
fight of the English women for liberty.

It was quite natural when this war swept across Europe like a fiery
water-spout, for the French woman of even the bourgeoisie to come
forth from her shell (although at first not to the same degree as the
noblesse) and work with other women for the men at the Front and the
starving at home. Not only did the racing events of those first weeks
compel immediate action, but the new ideas they had imbibed, however
unwillingly, dictated their course as inevitably as that of the more
experienced women across the channel. The result was that these women
for the first time in their narrow intensive lives found themselves
meeting, daily, women with whom they had had the most distant if any
acquaintance; sewing, knitting, talking more and more intimately over
their work, running all sorts of oeuvres, founding homes for refugees,
making up packages for prisoners in Germany (this oeuvre was conceived
and developed into an immense organization by Madame Wallestein),
serving on six or eight committees, becoming more and more
interdependent as they worked for a common and unselfish cause; their
circle of acquaintances and friends as well as their powers of
usefulness, their independent characteristics which go so far toward
the making of personality, rising higher and higher under the impetus
of deprisoned tides until they flowed gently over the dam of the
centuries; the flood, be it noted, taking possession of wide pastures
heretofore sacred to man.

Naturally these women spent very little time at home; although, such
is the incomparable training of those practical methodical minds, even
with a diminished staff of servants the domestic machinery ran as
smoothly as when they devoted to it so many superfluous hours.

And with these new acquaintances, all practically of their own class,
they talked in time not only of the war and their ever augmenting
duties, but, barriers lowered by their active sympathies, found
themselves taking a deep interest in other lives, and in the things
that had interested other women of more intelligence or of more
diversified interests than their own.

Insensibly life changed, quite apart from the rude shocks of war;
lines were confused, old ideals were analyzed in many instances as
hoary conventions, which had decayed inside until a succession of
sharp quick contacts caused the shell to cave in upon emptiness.


V


A year passed. During that time husbands did not return from the front
unless ill or maimed (and thousands of husbands are even to-day quite
intact). Then came Chapter Two of the domestic side of the War, which
should be called "Les Permissionnaires." Officers and soldiers were
allowed a six days' leave of absence from the front at stated
intervals.

The wives were all excitement and hope. They snatched time to
replenish their wardrobes, and once more the thousand corridors of the
Galeries Lafayette swarmed, the dressmakers breathed again. Shop
windows blossomed with all the delicate fripperies with which a
Frenchwoman can make old garments look new. Hotel keepers emerged from
their long night like hibernates that had overslept, and rubbing their
hands. The men were coming back. Paris would live again. And Paris,
the coquette of all the ages, forgot her new rôle of lady of sorrows
and smiled once more.

The equally eager husband (to pass over "les autres") generally
sneaked into his house or apartment by the back stairs and into the
bathtub before he showed himself to his adoring family; but after
those first strenuous hours of scrubbing and disinfecting and shaving,
and getting into a brand new uniform of becoming horizon blue, there
followed hours of rejoicing unparalleled by anything but a victory
over "Les Boches."

For two days husband and wife talked as incessantly as only Gauls can;
but by degrees a puzzled look contracted the officer's brow, gradually
deepening into a frown. His fluent wife, whose animation over trifles
had always been a source of infinite refreshment, was talking of
things which he, after a solid year of monotonous warfare far from
home, knew nothing. He cared to know less. He wanted the old exchange
of personalities, the dear domestic gabble.

The wife meanwhile was heroically endeavoring to throw off a feeling
of intolerable ennui. How was it that never before had she found the
hearthstone dull? The conversation of her life partner (now doubly
honored) induced a shameful longing for the seventh day.

So it was. During that year these two good people had grown apart. The
wife's new friends bored the husband, and the gallant soldier's
stories of life at the Front soon became homogeneous. Whether he will
accept his wife's enlarged circle and new interests after the war is
over is one of the problems, but nothing is less likely than that she
will rebuild the dam, recall the adventurous waters of her
personality, empty her new brain cells, no matter how much she may
continue to love her husband and children.


VI


Nor to give up her new power. In those divisions of the bourgeoisie
where the wife is always the husband's partner, following a custom of
centuries, and who to-day is merely carrying on the business alone,
there will be no surrender of responsibilities grown precious, no
sense of apprehension of loss of personal power. But in those more
leisured circles where, for instance, a woman has been for the first
time complete mistress of all expenditures, domestic or
administrative, and of her childrens' destinies; has learned to think
and act for herself as if she were widowed in fact; and in addition
has cultivated her social sense to an extreme unprecedented in the
entire history of the bourgeoisie, she will never return to the old
status, even though she disdain feminism per se and continue to prefer
her husband to other men--that is to say, to find him more tolerable.

A young woman of this class, who until the war widowed her had been as
happy as she was favored by fortune: wealthy, well-bred, brilliantly
educated, and "elle et lui" with her husband, told me that no American
could understand the peculiarly intensive life led by a French couple
who found happiness in each other and avoided the fast sets. And
whereas what she told me would have seemed natural enough in the life
of a petite bourgeoisie, I must confess I was amazed to have it from
the lips of a clever and beautiful young woman whom life had pampered
until death broke loose in Europe.

The husband, she told me, did the thinking. Before he left home in the
morning he asked his wife what she intended to order for dinner and
altered the menu to his liking; also the list of guests, if it had
been thought well to vary their charming routine with a select
company.

Before his wife bought a new gown she submitted the style and colors
to what seems literally to have been her other half, and he solemnly
pondered over both before pronouncing his august and final opinion.

If they had children, the interest was naturally extended. His concern
in health and in illness, in play and in study, was nothing short of
meticulous. I asked my informant if Frenchwomen would ever again
submit to a man's making such an infernal nuisance of himself, and,
sad as she still was at her own great loss, she replied positively
that they would not. They had tasted independence and liked it too
well ever to drop back into insignificance.

"Nor," she added, "will we be content with merely social and domestic
life in the future. We will love our home life none the less, but we
must always work at something now; only those who have lost their
health, or are natural parasites will ever again be content to live
without some vital personal interest outside the family."

Words of tremendous import to France, those.


VII


I caught a glimpse more than once of the complete submergence of
certain Frenchwomen by husbands too old for war, but important in
matters of State. They bored me so that I only escaped betraying acute
misery by summoning all my powers of resistance and talking against
time until I could make a graceful exit. They were, these women (who
looked quite happy), mere echoes of the men to whom their eyes
wandered in admiration and awe. The last thing I had imagined,
however, was that the men would concern themselves about details that,
in Anglo-Saxon countries at least, have for centuries been firmly
relegated to the partner of the second part. How many American women
drive their husbands to the club by their incessant drone about the
iniquities of servants and the idiosyncrasies of offspring?

And much as the women of our race may resent that their rôle in
matrimony is the one of petty detail while the man enjoys the "broader
interests," I think few of us would exchange our lot for one of
constant niggling interference. It induces a certain pleasure to
reflect that so many Frenchwomen have reformed. Frenchmen, with all
their conservatism, are the quickest of wit, the most supple of
intellect in the world. No doubt after a few birth-pains they will
conform, and enjoy life more than ever. Perhaps, also, they will cease
to prowl abroad for secret entertainment.


VIII


Nothing, it is safe to say, since the war broke out, has so astonished
Frenchwomen--those that loved their husbands and those that loved
their lovers--as the discovery that they find life quite full and
interesting without men. At the beginning all their faculties were put
to so severe a strain that they had no time to miss them; as France
settled down to a state of war, and life was in a sense normal again,
it was only at first they missed the men--quite aside from their
natural anxieties. But as time went on and there was no man always
coming in, husband or lover, no man to dress for, scheme for, exercise
their imaginations to please, weep for when he failed to come, or
lapsed from fever heat to that temperature which suggests exotic
fevers, they missed him less and less.

Unexpected resources were developed. Their work, their many works,
grew more and more absorbing. Gradually they realized that they were
looking at life from an entirely different point of view.

Voilà!

Is the reign of the male in the old countries of Europe nearing its
end, even as Kings and Kaisers are reluctantly approaching the vaults
of history? An American woman married to a Frenchman said to me one
day:

"Intelligent Frenchwomen complain to me that they never win anything
on their merits. They must exert finesse, seduction, charm, magnetism.
For this reason they are always in a state of apprehension that some
other woman equally feminine, but more astute and captivating, will
win their man away. The result is the intense and unremitting
jealousies in French society. They see in this war their opportunity
to show men not only their powers of individual usefulness, often
equal if not superior to that of their husband or lover, but their
absolute indispensability. They are determined to win respect as
individuals, rise above the rank of mere females."


IX


Moreover, this war is bringing a liberty to the French girl which must
sometimes give her the impression that she is living in a fantastic
dream. Young people already had begun to rebel at the old order of
matrimonial disposition by parental authority, but it is doubtful if
they will ever condescend to argument again, or even to the old formal
restrictions during the period of the long engagement. Not only will
husbands be too scarce to dicker about, but these girls, too, are
living their own lives, going to and coming from hospital work daily
(unless at the Front), spending long hours by convalescent cots,
corresponding with filleuls, attending half a dozen clubs for work;
above all, entertaining their brothers' friend during those oases
known as _permission_, or six days' leave. And very often the friends
of their brothers are young men of a lower rank in life, whose valor
or talents in the field have given them a quick promotion.

The French army is the one perfect democracy in the world. Its men,
from duke to peasant-farmer, have a contemptuous impatience for social
pretense when about the business of war, and recognition is swift and
practical. As the young men of the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie
have lost more and more of their old friends they have replaced them
with men they like for good masculine reasons alone, and these they
have taken to bringing home, when permissionnaires at the same time.
Nothing can be more certain than that girls, once haughty and
exacting, will marry these young men and be glad to get them.

A student of his race said to me one day: "France is the most
conservative country in Europe. She goes on doing the same thing
generation after generation paying no attention to rebellious mutters,
hardly hearing them in fact. She believes herself to have been moulded
and solidified long since. Then, presto! Something sudden and violent
happens. Old ideas are uprooted. New ones planted. Is there a
struggle? Not for a moment. They turn an intellectual somersault and
are immediately as completely at home with the new as the old."

During the second year of the war a feminist was actually invited to
address the graduation class of a fashionable girls' school. She told
them that the time had come when girls of all classes should be
trained to earn their living. This war had demonstrated the
uncertainty of human affairs. Not a family in France, not even the
_haute finance_, but would have a curtailed income for years to come,
and many girls of good family could no longer count on a dot if the
war lasted much longer. Then there was the decrease in men. Better go
out into the world and make any sort of respectable career than be an
old maid at home. She gave them much practical advice, told them that
one of the most lucrative employments was retouching photographs, and
implored them to cultivate any talent they might have and market it as
soon as possible.

The girls sat throughout this discourse as stunned as if a bomb had
dropped on the roof. They were still discussing it when I left Paris.
No doubt it is already beginning to bear fruit. Few of them but have
that most dismal of all fireside ornaments, a half-effaced old-maid
sister, one of the most tragic and pitiable objects in France. The
noble attributes which her drab and eventless life sometimes leave
un-withered were superbly demonstrated to the American audience some
years ago by Nance O'Neil in "The Lily."


X


One of the new officers I happened to hear of was a farmer who not
only won the _Croix de Guerre_ and the _Croix de la Legion d'Honneur_
very early in the war but rose in rank until, when I heard the story,
he was a major. One day a brother officer asked him if he should
remain in the army after peace was declared.

"No," he replied, and it was evident that he had thought the matter
over. "My wife is not a lady. She is wholly unfitted to take her place
in the officers' class. There is no democracy among women. Better for
us both that I return whence I came."

This is a fair sample of the average Frenchman's ironic astuteness,
that clear practical vision that sees life without illusions. But if
the war should drag on for years the question is, would he be willing
to surrender the position of authority to which he had grown
accustomed, and which satisfies the deepest instincts of a man's
nature after youth has passed? After all there may be a new "officers'
class."

I heard another story, told me by a family doctor, equally
interesting. The son of a wealthy and aristocratic house and his valet
were mobilized at the same time. The young patrician was a good and a
gallant soldier but nothing more. The valet discovered extraordinary
capacities. Not only did he win the coveted medals in the course of
the first few months, but when his shattered regiment under fire in
the open was deprived of its officers he took command and led the
remnant to victory. A few more similar performances proving that his
usefulness was by no means the result of the moment's exaltation but
of real however unsuspected gifts, he was rapidly promoted until he
was captain of his former employer's company. There appears to have
been no mean envy in the nature of the less fortunate aristocrat.
Several times they have received their _permission_ together and he
has taken his old servant home with him and given him the seat of
honor at his own table. His mother and sisters have made no demur
whatever, but are proud that their ménage should have given a fine
soldier to France. Perhaps only the noblesse who are unalterably sure
of themselves would have been capable of rising above the age-old
prejudices of caste, war or no war.


XI


French women rarely emigrate. Never, if they can help it. Our servant
question may be solved after the war by the manless women of other
races, but the Frenchwoman will stay in her country, if possible in
her home. All girls, the major part of the young widows (who have
created a panic among the little spinsters) will marry if they can,
not only because marriage is still the normal career of woman but
because of their sense of duty to the State. But that social France
after the war will bear more than a family resemblance to the France
that reached the greatest climax in her history on August second,
nineteen-fourteen, has ceased to be a matter of speculation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Although I went to France to examine the work of the Frenchwomen only,
it would be ungracious, as well as a disappointment to many readers,
not to give the names at least of some of the many American women who
live in France or who spend a part of the year there and are working
as hard as if this great afflicted country were their own. Some day
their names will be given to the world in a full roll of honor. I do
not feel sure that I know of half of them, but I have written down all
I can recall. The list, of course, does not include the names of
Americans married to Frenchmen:

Mrs. Sharp, Miss Anne Morgan, Mrs. Tuck, Mrs. Bliss, Miss Elisabeth
Marbury, Miss Elsie de Wolfe, Mrs. Robert Bacon, Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt,
Mrs. Whitney Warren, Mrs. Wharton, Mrs. Canfield Fisher, Miss Grace
Ellery Channing, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Carroll of Carrollton, Mrs. Sherman,
Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Miss Holt, Mrs. William H. Hill, Mrs. Shaw, Mrs.
Frederick H. Allen, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, Miss Fairchild, Mrs.
Younger, Mrs. Morton Mitchell, Mrs. Fleury, Mrs. Sales, Mrs. Hyde,
Mrs. William Astor Chanler, Mrs. Ridgeley Carter, Miss Ethel Crocker,
Miss Daisy Polk, Miss Janet Scudder, Mrs. Lathrop, Miss Vail, Mrs.
Samuel Watson, Mrs. Armstrong Whitney, Mrs. Lawrence Slade, Miss
Yandell, Mrs. Greene, Mrs. Duryea, Mrs. Depew, Mrs. Marion Crocker,
Miss Mary Eyre, Mrs. Gros, Mrs. Van Heukelom, Mrs. Tarn McGrew, Mrs.
Schoninger, Miss Grace Lounsbery, Mrs. Lawrence, the Princess
Poniatowska, and Isadora Duncan.




BOOK II

FEMINISM IN PEACE AND WAR




I

THE THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE

I


It is possible that if the European War had been averted the history
of Feminism would have made far different reading--say fifty years
hence. The militant suffragettes of England had degenerated from
something like real politicians into mere neurasthenics and not only
had lost what little chance they seemed for a time to have of being
taken seriously by the British Government, but had very nearly
alienated the many thousands of women without the ranks that were
wavering in the balance. This was their most serious mistake, for the
chief handicap of the militants had been that too few women were
disposed toward suffrage, or even interested. The history of the world
shows that when any large body of people in a community want anything
long enough and hard enough, and go after it with practical methods,
they obtain it in one form or another. But the women of Britain as
well as the awakening women of other nations east and west of the
Atlantic, were so disgusted and alarmed by this persisting lack of
self-control in embryonic politicians of their sex that they voted
silently to preserve their sanity under the existing régime. It has
formed one of the secret sources of the strength of the antis, that
fear of the complete demoralization of their sex if freed from the
immemorial restraints imposed by man.

This attitude of mind does not argue a very distinguished order of
reasoning powers or of clear thinking; but then not too many men, in
spite of their centuries of uninterrupted opportunity, face
innovations or radical reforms with unerring foresight. There is a
strong conservative instinct in the average man or woman, born of the
hereditary fear of life, that prompts them to cling to old standards,
or, if too intelligent to look inhospitably upon progress, to move
very slowly. Both types are the brakes and wheel-horses necessary to a
stable civilization, but history, even current history in the
newspapers, would be dull reading if there were no adventurous spirits
willing to do battle for new ideas. The militant women of England
would have accomplished wonders if their nervous systems had not
broken down under the prolonged strain.

It is probable that after this war is over the women of the
belligerent nations will be given the franchise by the weary men that
are left, if they choose to insist upon it. They have shown the same
bravery, endurance, self-sacrifice, resource, and grim determination
as the men. In every war, it may be argued, women have displayed the
same spirit and the same qualities, proving that they needed but the
touchstone of opportunity to reveal the splendor of their endowment,
but treated by man, as soon as peace was restored, as the same old
inferior annex.

This is true enough, but the point of difference is that never, prior
to the Great War, was such an enormous body of women awake after the
lethargic submission of centuries, and clamoring for their rights.
Never before have millions of women been supporting themselves; never
before had they even contemplated organization and the direct
political attack. Of course the women of Europe, exalted and worked
half to death, have, with the exception of a few irrepressibles, put
all idea of self-aggrandizement aside for the moment; but this idea
had grown too big and too dominant to be dismissed for good and all,
with last year's fashions and the memory of delicate _plats_ prepared
by chefs now serving valiantly within the lines. The big idea, the
master desire, the obsession, if you like, is merely taking an
enforced rest, and there is persistent speculation as to what the
thinking and the energetic women of Europe will do when this war is
over, and how far men will help or hinder them.

I have written upon this question in its bearings upon the women of
France more fully in another chapter; but it may be stated here that
such important feminists as Madame Vérone, the eminent avocat, and
Mlle. Valentine Thompson, the youngest but one of the ablest of the
leaders, while doing everything to help and nothing to embarrass their
Government, never permit the question to recede wholly to the
background. Mlle. Thompson argues that the men in authority should not
be permitted for a moment to forget, not the services of women in this
terrible chapter of France's destiny, for that is a matter of course,
as ever, but the marked capabilities women have shown when suddenly
thrust into positions of authority. In certain invaded towns the wives
of imprisoned or executed Mayors have taken their place almost
automatically and served with a capacity unrelated to sex. In some of
these towns women have managed the destinies of the people since the
first month of the war, understanding them as no man has ever done,
and working harder than most men are ever willing to work. Thousands
have, under the spur, developed unsuspected capacities, energies,
endurance, above all genuine executive abilities. That these women
should be swept back into private life by the selfishness of men when
the killing business is over, is, to Mlle. Thompson's mind,
unthinkable. In her newspaper, _La Vie Feminine_, she gives weekly
instances of the resourcefulness and devotion of French womanhood, and
although the women of her country have never taken as kindly to the
idea of demanding the franchise as those of certain other nations,
still it is more than possible that she will make many converts before
the war is over.

These are not to be "suffrage" chapters. There is no doubt in my mind
that the women of all nations will have the franchise eventually, if
only because it is ridiculous that they should be permitted to work
like men (often supporting husbands, fathers, brothers) and not be
permitted all the privileges of men. Man, who grows more enlightened
every year--often sorely against his will--must appreciate this
anomaly in due course, and by degrees will surrender the franchise as
freely to women as he has to negroes and imbeciles. When women have
received the vote for which they have fought and bled, they will use
it with just about the same proportion of conscientiousness and
enthusiasm as busy men do. One line in the credo might have been
written of human nature A.D. 1914-1917: "As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be."

But while suffrage and feminism are related, they are far from
identical. Suffrage is but a milestone in feminism, which may be
described as the more or less concerted sweep of women from the
backwaters into the broad central stream of life. Having for untold
centuries given men to the world they now want the world from men.
There is no question in the progressive minds of both sexes that,
outside of the ever-recurrent war zones, they should hereafter divide
the great privileges of life and civilization in equal shares with
men.

Several times before in the history of the world comparatively large
numbers of women have made themselves felt, claiming certain equal
rights with the governing sex. But their ambitions were generally
confined to founding religious orders, obtaining admission to the
universities, or to playing the intellectual game in the social
preserves. In the wonderful thirteenth century women rivaled men in
learning and accomplishments, in vigor of mind and decision of
character. But this is the first time that millions of them have been
out in the world "on their own," invading almost every field of work,
for centuries sacrosanct to man. There is even a boiler-maker in the
United States who worked her way up in poor-boy fashion and now
attends conventions of boiler-makers on equal terms. In tens of
thousands of cases women have made good, in the arts, professions,
trades, businesses, clerical positions, and even in agriculture and
cattle raising. They are brilliant aviators, yachtsmen, automobile
drivers, showing failure of nerve more rarely than men, although, as
they are not engaged in these pursuits in equal numbers perhaps that
is not a fair statement. Suffice it to say that as far as they have
gone they have asked for no quarter. It is quite true that in certain
of the arts, notably music, they have never equaled men, and it has
been held against them that all the great chefs are men. Here it is
quite justifiable to take refuge in the venerable axiom, "Rome was not
made in a day." It is not what they have failed to accomplish with
their grinding disabilities but the amazing number of things in which
they have shown themselves the equal if not the superior of men.
Whether their success is to be permanent, or whether they have done
wisely in invading man's domain so generally, are questions to be
attacked later when considering the biological differences between men
and women. The most interesting problem relating to women that
confronts us at present is the effect of the European War on the whole
status of woman.

If the war ends before this nation is engulfed we shall at least keep
our men, and the males of this country are so far in excess of the
females that it is odd so many American women should be driven to
self-support. In Great Britain the women have long outnumbered the
men; it was estimated before the war that there were some three
hundred thousand spinsters for whom no husbands were available. After
the war there will be at best something like a proportion of one whole
man to three women (confining these unwelcome prophecies to people of
marriageable age); and the other afflicted countries, with the
possible exception of Russia, will show a similar dislocation of the
normal balance. The acute question will be repopulation--with a view
to another trial of military supremacy a generation hence!--and all
sorts of expedients are being suggested, from polygamy to artificial
fertilization. It may be that the whole future of woman as well as of
civilization after this war is over depends upon whether she concludes
to serve the State or herself.

While in France in the summer of 1916, I heard childless women say:
"Would that I had six sons to give to France!" I heard unmarried
women say: "Thank heaven I never married!" I heard bitterness
expressed by bereft mothers, terror and despair by others when the
curtain had rung down and they could relax the proud and smiling front
they presented to the world. Not one would have had her son shirk his
duty, nor asked for compromise with the enemy, but all prayed for the
war to end. It is true that these men at the front are heroes in the
eyes of their women, worshiped by the majority when they come home
briefly as permissionnaires, and it is also true that France is an old
military nation and that the brain-cells of its women are full of
ancestral memories of war. But never before have women done as much
thinking for themselves as they are doing to-day, as they had done for
some fifteen or twenty years before the war. That war has now lasted
almost three years. During this long and terrible period there has
been scarcely a woman in France, as in Britain, Russia, Italy,
Germany, who has not done her share behind the lines, working, at her
self-appointed tasks or at those imposed by the Government, for months
on end without a day of rest. They have had contacts that never would
have approached them otherwise, they have been obliged to think for
themselves, for thousands of helpless poor, for the men at the Front.
The Frenchwomen particularly have forced men to deal with them as
human beings and respect them as such, dissipating in some measure
those mists of sex through which the Frenchman loves to stalk in
search of the elusive and highly-sophisticated quarry. As long as a
woman was sexually attractive she could never hope to meet man on an
equal footing, no matter how entrancing he might find her mental
qualities. She must play hide-and-seek, exercise finesse, seduction,
keep the flag of sex flying ever on the ramparts. It is doubtful if
Frenchmen will change in this respect, but it is more than doubtful if
women do not.

There is hardly any doubt that if this war lasts long enough women for
the first time in the history of civilization will have it in their
power to seize one at least of the world's reins. But will they do
it--I am now speaking of women in mass, not of the advanced thinkers,
or of women of the world who have so recently ascertained that there
is a special joy in being free of the tyranny of sex, a tyranny that
emanated no less from within than without.

It is to be imagined that all the men who are fighting in this most
trying of all wars are heroes in the eyes of European women--as well
they may be--and that those who survive are likely to be regarded with
a passionate admiration not unmixed with awe. The traditional weakness
of women where men are concerned (which after all is but a cunning
device of Nature) may swamp their great opportunity. They may fight
over the surviving males like dogs over a bone, marry with sensations
of profound gratitude (or patriotic fervor) the armless, the legless,
the blind, the terrible face mutilés, and drop forever out of the
ranks of Woman as differentiated from the ranks of mere women. What
has hampered the cause of Woman in Great Britain and Europe so far is
the quite remarkable valuation put upon the male by the female. This
is partly temperamental, partly female preponderance, but it is even
more deeply rooted in those vanished centuries during which man
proclaimed and maintained his superiority. Circumstances helped him
for thousands of years, and he has been taken by the physically weaker
and child-bearing sex at his own estimate. It is difficult for
American women to appreciate this almost servile attitude of even
British women to mere man. One of the finest things about the militant
woman, one by which she scored most heavily, was her flinging off of
this tradition and displaying a shining armor of indifference toward
man as man. This startled the men almost as much as the window
smashing, and made other women, living out their little lives under
the frowns and smiles of the dominant male, think and ponder, wonder
if their small rewards amounted to half as much as the untasted
pleasures of power and independence.

It is always a sign of weakness to give one side of a picture and
blithely ignore the other. Therefore, let me hasten to add that it is
a well-known fact that Mrs. Pankhurst had borne and reared six
children before she took up the moribund cause of suffrage; and that
after a season's careful investigation in London at the height of the
militant movement I concluded that never in the world had so many
unattractive females been banded together in any one cause. Even the
young girls I heard speaking on street corners, mounted on boxes,
looked gray, dingy, sexless. Of course there were many handsome, even
lovely, women,--like Mrs. Cavendish-Bentinck and Lady Hall, for
instance--interested in "the movement," contributing funds, and giving
it a certain moral support; but when it came to the window smashers,
the jail seekers, the hunger-strikers, the real martyrs of that
extraordinary minor chapter of England's history, there was only one
good-looking woman in the entire army--Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence--and
militant extravagances soon became too much for her. There were
intelligent women galore, women of the aristocracy born with a certain
style, and showing their breeding even on the soap-box, but sexually
attractive women never, and even the youngest seemed to have been born
without the bloom of youth. The significance of this, however, works
both ways. If men did not want them, at least there was something both
noble and pitiful in their willingness to sacrifice those dreams and
hopes which are the common heritage of the lovely and the plain, the
old and the young, the Circe and the Amazon, to the ultimate freedom
of those millions of their sisters lulled or helpless in the enchanted
net of sex.

It is doubtful if even the militants can revert to their former
singleness of purpose; after many months, possibly years, of devotion
to duty, serving State and man, the effacement of self, appreciation
of the naked fact that the integrity of their country matters more
than anything else on earth, they may be quite unable to rebound to
their old fanatical attitude toward suffrage as the one important
issue of the Twentieth Century. Even the very considerable number of
those women that have reached an appearance which would eliminate them
from the contest over such men as are left may be so chastened by the
hideous sufferings they have witnessed or heard of daily, so moved by
the astounding endurance and grim valor of man (who nearest approaches
to godhood in time of war) that they will have lost the disposition to
tear from him the few compensations the new era of peace can offer. If
that is the case, if women at the end of the war are soft, completely
rehabilitated in that femininity, or femaleness, which was their
original endowment from Nature, the whole great movement will subside,
and the work must begin over again by unborn women and their
accumulated grievances some fifty years hence.

Nothing is more sure than that Nature will take advantage of the lull
to make a desperate attempt to recover her lost ground. Progressive
women, and before the war their ranks were recruited daily, were one
of the most momentous results of the forces of the higher
civilization, an evolution that in Nature's eye represented a
lamentable divergence from type. Here is woman, with all her physical
disabilities, become man's rival in all of the arts, save music, and
in nearly all of the productive walks of life, as well as in a large
percentage of the professional and executive; intellectually the
equal if not the superior of the average man--who in these days, poor
devil, is born a specialist--and making a bold bid for political
equality.

It has been a magnificent accomplishment, and it has marked one of the
most brilliant and picturesque milestones in human progress. It seems
incredible that woman, in spite of the tremendous pressure that Nature
will put upon her, may revert weakly to type. The most powerful of all
the forces working for Nature and against feminism will be the quite
brutal and obscene naturalness of war, and the gross familiarity of
civilization with it for so long a period. There is reversion to type
with a vengeance! The ablest of the male inheritors of the accumulated
wisdom and experiences and civilizing influences of the ages were in
power prior to August 1914, and not one of them nor all combined had
the foresight to circumvent, or the diplomatic ingenuity to keep in
leash the panting Hun. They are settling their scores, A.D. 1914-1917,
by brute fighting. There has been some brain work during this war so
far, but a long sight more brute work. As it was in the beginning,
etc.

And the women, giving every waking hour to ameliorating the lot of the
defenders of their hearth and their honor, or nursing the wounded in
hospital, have been stark up against the physical side: whether making
bombs in factories, bandages or uniforms, washing gaping wounds,
preparing shattered bodies for burial, or listening to the horrid
tales of men and women home on leave.


II


The European woman, in spite of her exalted pitch, is living a more or
less mechanical life at present. Even where she has revealed
unsuspected creative ability, as soon as her particular task is mapped
she subsides into routine. As a rule she is quite automatically and
naturally performing those services and duties for which Nature so
elaborately equipped her, ministering to man almost exclusively, even
when temporarily filling his place in the factory and the tram-car.
_Dienen! Dienen!_ is the motto of one and all of these Kundrys,
whether they realize it or not, and it is on the cards that they may
never again wish to somersault back to that mental attitude where they
would dominate not serve.

On the other hand civilization may for once prove stronger than
Nature. Thinking women--and there are a few hundred thousands of
them--may emerge from this hideous reversion of Europe to barbarism
with an utter contempt for man. They may despise the men of affairs
for muddling Europe into the most terrible war in history, in the very
midst of the greatest civilization of which there is any record. They
may experience a secret but profound revulsion from the men wallowing
in blood and filth for months on end, living only to kill. The fact
that the poor men can't help it does not alter the case. The women
can't help it either. Women have grown very fastidious. The sensual
women and the quite unimaginative women will not be affected, but how
about the others? And only men of the finest grain survive a long
period of war with the artificial habits of civilization strong upon
them.

The end of this war may mark a conclusive revulsion of the present
generation of European women from men that may last until they have
passed the productive age. Instead of softening, disintegrating back
to type, they may be insensibly hardening inside a mould that will
eventually cast them forth a more definite third sex than any that
threatened before the war. Woman, blind victim of the race as she has
been for centuries, seldom in these days loves without an illusion of
the senses or of the imagination. She has ceased, in the wider avenues
of life, lined as they are with the opulent wares of twentieth century
civilization, to be merely the burden-bearing and reproductive sex.
Life has taught her the inestimable value of illusions, and the more
practical she becomes, the more she cherishes this divine gift. It is
possible that man has forfeited his power to cast a glamour over all
but the meanest types of women. If that should be the case women will
ask: Why settle down and keep house for the tiresome creatures, study
their whims, and meekly subside into the second place, or be eternally
on the alert for equal rights? As for children? Let the state suffer
for its mistakes. Why bring more children into the world to be blown
to pieces on the field of battle, or a burden to their women
throughout interminable years? No! For a generation at least the
world shall be ours, and then it may limp along with a depleted
population or go to the dogs.

Few, no doubt, will reason it out as elaborately as this or be so
consciously ruthless, but a large enough number are likely enough to
bring the light of their logic to bear upon the opportunity, and a
still larger number to feel an obscure sense of revolt against man for
his failure to uphold civilization against the Prussian anachronism,
combined with a more definite desire for personal liberty. And both of
these divisions of their sex are likely to alter the course of
history--far more radically than has ever happened before at the close
of any fighting period. Even the much depended upon maternal instinct
may subside, partly under the horrors of field hospitals where so many
mother's sons are ghastly wrecks, partly under a heavy landslide of
disgust that the sex that has ruled the world should apparently be so
helpless against so obscene a fate.

They will reflect that if women are weak (comparatively) physically,
there is all the more hope they may develop into giants mentally; one
of man's handicaps being that his more highly vitalized body with its
coercive demands, is ever waging war with a consistent and complete
development of the mind. And in these days, when the science of the
body is so thoroughly understood, any woman, unless afflicted with an
organic disease, is able to keep her brain constantly supplied with
red unpoisoned blood, and may wax in mental powers (there being no
natural physical deteriorations in the brain as in the body) so long
as life lasts.

Certainly these women will say: We could have done no worse than these
chess players of Europe and we might have done better. Assuredly if we
grasp and hold the reins of the world there will never be another war.
We are not, in the first place, as greedy as men; we will divide the
world up in strict accordance with race, and let every nation have its
own place in the sun. Commercial greed has no place in our make-up,
and with the hideous examples of history it will never obtain
entrance.

How often has it been the cynical pleasure of mere ministers of state
to use kings as pawns? Well, we despise the game. Also, we shall have
no kings, and republics are loth to make war. Our instincts are
humanitarian. We should like to see all the world as happy as that
lovely countryside of Northeastern France before August 1914. We at
least recognize that the human mind is as yet imperfectly developed;
and if, instead of setting the world back periodically, and drenching
mankind in misery, we would have all men and women as happy as human
nature will permit, we should devote our abilities, uninterrupted by
war, to solving the problem of poverty (the acutest evidence of man's
failure), and to fostering the talents of millions of men and women
that to-day constitute a part of the wastage of Earth. Of course,
being mortal, we shall make mistakes, give way, no doubt, to racial
jealousies, and personal ambitions; but our eyes have been opened wide
by this war and it is impossible that we should make the terrible
mistakes we inevitably would have made had we obtained power before we
had seen and read its hideous revelations--day after day, month after
month, year after year! It is true that men have made these
resolutions many times, but men have too much of the sort of blood
that goes to the head, and their lust for money is even greater than
their lust for power.

Now, this may sound fantastic but it is indisputably probable. Much
has been said of the patriotic exaltation of young women during war
and just after its close, which leads them to marry almost any one in
order to give a son to the state, or even to dispense with the legal
formality. But although I heard a great deal of that sort of talk
during the first months of the war I don't hear so much of it now. Nor
did I hear anything like as much of it in France as I expected. To
quote one woman of great intelligence with whom I talked many times,
and who is one of the Government's chosen aids; she said one day, "It
was a terrible distress to me that I had only one child, and I
consulted every specialist in France. Now I am thankful that I did
have but one son to come home to me with a gangrene wound, and then,
after months of battling for his life, to insist upon going back to
the Front and exposing it every day. I used to feel sad, too, that
Valentine Thompson" (who is not only beautiful but an Amazon in
physique) "did not marry and be happy like other girls, instead of
becoming a public character and working at first one scheme or another
for the amelioration of the lot of woman. Now, I am thankful that she
never married. Her father is too old to go to war and she has neither
husband nor son to agonize over. Far better she live the life of
usefulness she does than deliberately take upon herself the common
burdens of women." No Frenchwoman could be more patriotic than the one
who made this speech to me, and if she had had many sons she would
have girded them all for war, but she had suffered too much herself
and she saw too much suffering among her friends daily, not to hate
the accursed institution of war, and wish that as many women could be
spared its brutal impositions as possible.

Nobody has ever accused me of being a Pacifist. Personally, I think
that every self-respecting nation on the globe should have risen in
1914 and assisted the Allies to blast Prussia off the face of the
Earth, but after this war is over if the best brains in these nations
do not at once get to work and police the world against future wars,
it will be a matter for regret that they were not all on the German
ship when she foundered.


III


It is to be remembered that woman has, in her subconscious
brain-cells, ancestral memories of the Matriarchate. It is interesting
to quote in this connection what Patrick Geddes and G. Arthur
Thompson have to say on the mooted question of the Mother-Age:

"Prehistoric history is hazardous, but there is a good case to be made
out for a Mother-Age. This has been reconstructed from fossils in the
folk lore of agriculture and housewifery, in old customs, ceremonies,
festivals, games; in myths and fairy tales and age-worn words.

"Professor Karl Pierson finds in the study of witchcraft some of the
fossils that point back to the Matriarchate. In the older traditions
'the witch resumes her old position as the wise-woman, the medicine
woman, the leader of the people, the priestess.' 'We have accordingly
to look upon the witch as essentially the degraded form of the old
priestess, cunning in the knowledge of herbs and medicine, jealous of
the rights and of the goddess she serves, and preserving in spells and
incantations such wisdom as early civilization possessed.'

"The witch's weather wisdom is congruent with the fact that women were
the earliest agriculturists; her knowledge of herbs with that of the
ancient medicine women; her diablerie with that of the ancient group
relations of the sexes so different from what we call marriage to-day;
her nocturnal dances with the ancient choruses of marriage-ripe
maidens. The authority and magic circle kept by the broom are those of
the hearth and floor in her primeval roundhut; and her distaff and
pitchfork, her caldron, her cat and dog, are all in keeping with the
rôle of woman in the Mother-Age.

"But there is another way, and that certainly not less reliable, by
which we can arrive at some understanding of the Mother-Age, and how
it naturally came about, namely, by a study of our 'contemporary
ancestors,' of people who linger on the matriarchal level. Such
people, as well as others on the still lower nomad stage of
civilization, are to be found at this day in Australia.

"While the purely nomad stage lasted, little progress could be made,
because the possessions of a group were limited by the carrying powers
of its members. But in a favorite forest spot a long halt was
possible, the mothers were able to drop their babies and give a larger
part of their attention to food-getting. As before, the forest
products--roots and fruits--were gathered in, but more time and
ingenuity were expended in making them palatable and in storing them
for future use. The plants in the neighborhood, which were useful for
food or for their healing properties, were tended and kept free of
weeds, and by and by seeds of them were sown in cleared ground within
easy reach of the camp. Animals gathered about the rich food area, and
were at first tolerated--certain negro tribes to-day keep hens about
their huts, though they eat neither them nor their eggs--and later
encouraged as a stable source of food-supply. The group was anchored
to one spot by its increasing possessions; and thus home-making,
gardening, medicine, the domestication of animals and even
agriculture, were fairly begun. Not only were all these activities in
the hands of women, but to them, too, were necessarily left the care
and training of the young.

"The men meanwhile went away on warlike expeditions against other
groups, and on long hunting and fishing excursions, from which they
returned with their spoils from time to time, to be welcomed by the
women with dancing and feasting. Hunting and war were their only
occupations, and the time between expeditions was spent in resting and
in interminable palavers and dances, which we may perhaps look upon as
the beginnings of parliaments and music halls.

"Whether this picture be accurate in detail or not there is at any
rate a considerable body of evidence pointing to the 'Matriarchate' as
a period during which women began medicine, the domestication of the
smaller animals, the cultivation of vegetables, flax and corn, the use
of the distaff, the spindle, the broom, the fire-rake and the
pitchfork.

"In the Mother-Age the inheritance of property passed through the
mother; the woman gave the children her own name; husband and father
were in the background--often far from individualized; the brother and
uncle were much more important; the woman was the depository of
custom, lore, and religious tradition; she was, at least, the nominal
head of the family, and she had a large influence in tribal affairs."

For some years past certain progressive women have shown signs of a
reversion to the matriarchal state--or shall we say a disposition to
revive it? In spite of human progress we travel more or less in
circles, a truth of which the present war and its reversions is the
most uncompromising example.

In the married state, for instance, these women have retained their
own name, not even being addressed as Mrs., that after all is a polite
variation of the Spanish "de," which does not by any means indicate
noble birth alone, women after marriage proudly announcing themselves
as legally possessed. For instance a girl whose name has been Elena
Lopez writes herself after marriage Elena Lopez de Morena, the "de" in
this case standing for "property of." It will be some time before the
women of Spain travel far on the Northern road toward pride in sex
deliverance, but with us, and in Britain, the custom is growing
prevalent.

Then there is the hyphen marriage, more common still, in which the
woman retains her own name, but condescends to annex the man's. Once
in a way a man will prefix his wife's name to his own, and there is
one on record who prefixed his own to his wife's. But any woman may
have her opinion of him.

So far as I have been able to ascertain these marriages are quite as
successful as the average; and if the woman has a career on hand--and
she generally has--she pursues it unhampered. The grandmother or aunt
takes charge of the children, if there are any, while she is at her
duties without the home, and so far, the husband has been permitted
the compensation of endowing the children with his name.

The reversion to the prehistoric matriarchate can hardly be complete
in these days, but there are many significant straws that indicate the
rising of a new wind blown by ancient instincts. To look upon them as
shockingly advanced or abnormal is an evidence of conservatism that
does not reach quite far enough into the past.

A still more significant sign of the times (in the sense of linking
past with present) is the ever-increasing number of women doctors and
their success. Men for the most part have ceased to sneer or even to
be more than humanly jealous, often speaking in terms of the warmest
admiration not only of their skill but of their conscientiousness and
power of endurance. When I went to live in Munich (1903) a woman
surgeon was just beginning to practice. This, to Germany, was an
innovation with a vengeance, and the German male is the least tolerant
of female encroachment within his historic preserves. The men
practitioners threw every possible obstacle in her way, and with no
particular finesse. But nothing could daunt her, and two or three
years later she was riding round in her car--a striking red one--while
the major number of her rivals were still dependent upon the ambling
cab-horse, directed off and on by a fat driver who was normally
asleep. Jealousy, however, for the most part had merged into
admiration; for your average male, of whatever race, is not only
philosophical but bows to success; she was both recognized and called
in for consultation. Hang on! Hang on! should be the motto of all
women determined to make their mark in what is still a man's world.
Life never has denied her prizes to courage and persistence backed by
ability.

A curious instance of man's inevitable recognition of the places of
responsibility women more and more are taking is in the new reading of
the Income Tax papers for 1917. Heretofore only married men were
exempted taxation on the first $4000 but from now on, apparently,
women who are also "heads of families" are likewise favored. As
thousands of women are supporting their aged parents, their brothers
while studying, their children and even their husbands, who for one
reason or other are unequal to the family strain, this exemption
should have been made coincidentally with the imposing of the tax. But
men are slow to see and slower still to act where women are concerned.

As we all know, women have invaded practically every art, trade, and
industry, but--aside from the arts, for occasionally Nature is so
impartial in her bestowal of genius that art is accepted as
sexless--in no walk of life has woman been so uniformly successful as
in medicine. This is highly significant in view of the fact that they
invented and practiced it in the dawn of history, while man was too
rudimentary to do anything but fight and fill the larder. It would
seem that the biological differences between the male and the female
which are so often the cause of woman's failure in many spheres
preëmpted throughout long centuries by man, is in her case
counteracted not only by her ancestral inheritance, but by the high
moral element without which no doctor or surgeon can long stand the
exactions and strain of his terrible profession. No woman goes
blithely into surgery or medicine merely to have a career or to make a
living, although ten thousand girls to her one will essay to write, or
paint, or clerk, or cultivate her bit of voice, with barely a thought
expended upon her fitness or the obligations involved.

But the woman who deliberately enters the profession of healing has,
almost invariably, a certain nobility of mind, a lack of personal
selfishness, and a power of devotion to the race quite unknown to the
average woman, even the woman of genius when seeking a career.

During the Great War there have been few women doctors at the Front,
but hundreds of women nurses, and they have been as intrepid and
useful as their rivals in sex. They alone, by their previous
experience of human suffering, bad enough at best, were in a measure
prepared for the horrors of war and the impotence of men laid low. But
that will not restore any lost illusions, for they took masculine
courage for granted with their mothers' milk, and they cannot fail to
be imbued to the marrow with a bitter sense of waste and futility, of
the monstrous sacrifice of the best blood of their generation.




II

THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE

I


Certain doctors of England have gone on record as predicting a
lamentable physical future for the army of women who are at present
doing the heavy work of men, particularly in the munition factories.
They say that the day-long tasks which involve incessant bending and
standing and lifting of heavy weights will breed a terrible reaction
when the war ends and these women are abruptly flung back into
domestic life. There is almost no man's place in the industrial world
that English women are not satisfactorily filling, with either muscle
or brains, and the doctors apprehend a new problem in many thousand
neurotics or otherwise broken-down women at the close of the war.
Although this painful result of women's heroism would leave just that
many women less to compete for the remaining men sound of wind and
limb, still, if true, it raises the acute question: Are women the
equal of men in all things? Their deliverance from the old marital
fetish, and successful invasion of so many walks of life, have made
such a noise in the world since woman took the bit between her teeth,
more or less en masse, that the feministic pæan of triumph has almost
smothered an occasional protest from those concerned with biology; but
as a matter-of-fact statistics regarding the staying power of women in
what for all the historic centuries have been regarded as avocations
heaven-designed and with strict reference to the mental and physical
equipment of man, are too contradictory to be of any value.

Therefore, the result of this prolonged strain on a healthy woman of a
Northern race evidently predestined to be as public as their present
accomplishment, will be awaited with the keenest interest, and no
doubt will have an immense effect upon the future status of woman. She
has her supreme opportunity, and if her nerves are equal to her nerve,
her body to her spirit, if the same women are working at the severe
tasks at the end of the war as during the first months of their
exaltation, and instead of being wrecks are as hardened as the
miserable city boys that have become wiry in the trenches--then,
beyond all question woman will have come to her own and it will be for
her, not for man, to say whether or not she shall subside and attend
to the needs of the next generation.

Before I went to France in May 1916 I was inclined to believe that
only a small percentage of women would stand the test; but since then
I have seen hundreds of women at work in the munition factories of
France. As I have told in another chapter, they had then been at work
for some sixteen months, and, of poor physique in the beginning, were
now strong healthy animals with no sign of breakdown. They were more
satisfactory in every way than men, for they went home and slept all
night, drank only the light wines of their country, smoked less, if at
all, and had a more natural disposition toward cleanliness. Their bare
muscular arms looked quite capable of laying a man prostrate if he
came home and ordered them about, and their character and pride had
developed in proportion.[F]

  [F] Dr. Rosalie Morton, the leading woman doctor and surgeon of New
      York, who also studied this subject at first hand, agrees with
      me that the war tasks have improved the health of the European
      women.

It is not to be imagined, however, that the younger, at least, of
these women will cling to those greasy jobs when the world is normal
again and its tempered prodigals are spending money on the elegancies
of life once more. And if they slump back into the sedentary life when
men are ready to take up their old burdens, making artificial flowers,
standing all day in the fetid atmosphere of crowded and noisy shops,
stitching everlastingly at lingerie, there, it seems to me, lies the
danger of breakdown. The life they lead now, arduous as it is, not
only has developed their muscles, their lungs, the power to digest
their food, but they are useful members of society on the grand scale,
and to fall from any height is not conducive to the well-being of body
or spirit. No doubt, when the sudden release comes, they will return
to the lighter tasks with a sense of immense relief; but will it last?
Will it be more than a momentary reaction to the habit of their own
years and of the centuries behind, or will they gradually become aware
(after they have rested and romped and enjoyed the old life in the
old fashion when off duty) that with the inferior task they have
become the inferior sex again. The wife, to be sure, will feel
something more than her husband's equal, and the Frenchwoman never has
felt herself the inferior in the matrimonial partnership. But how
about the wage earners? Those that made ten to fifteen francs a day in
the _Usines de Guerre_, and will now be making four or five? How about
the girls who cannot marry because their families are no longer in a
position to pay the dot, without which no French girl dreams of
marrying? These girls not only have been extraordinarily (for
Frenchwomen of their class) affluent during the long period of the
war, but they order men about, and they are further upheld with the
thought that they are helping their beloved France to conquer the
enemy. They live on another plane, and life is apt to seem very mean
and commonplace under the old conditions.

That these women are not masculinized is proved by the fact that many
have borne children during the second year of the war, their tasks
being made lighter until they are restored to full strength again.
They invariably return as soon as possible, however. It may be, of
course, that the young men and women of the lower bourgeoisie will
forswear the dot, for it would be but one more old custom giving way
to necessity. In that case the sincere, hardworking and not very
humorous women of this class no doubt would find full compensation in
the home, and promptly do her duty by the State. But I doubt if any
other alternative will console any but the poorest intelligence or the
naturally indolent--and perhaps Frenchwomen, unless good old-fashioned
butterflies, have less laziness in their make-up than any other women
under the sun.

The natural volatility of the race must also be taken into
consideration. Stoical in their substratum, bubbling on the surface,
it may be that these women who took up the burdens of men so bravely
will shrug their shoulders and revert to pure femininity. Those past
the age of allurement may fight like termagants for their lucrative
jobs, their utter independence; but coquetry and the joy in life, or,
to put it more plainly, the powerful passions of the French race, may
do more to effect an automatic and permanent return to the old status
than any authoritative act on the part of man.


II


The women of England are (or were) far more neurotic than the women of
France, as they have fewer natural outlets. And the struggle for legal
enfranchisement, involving, as it did, a sensationalism that affected
even the non-combatants, did much to enhance this tendency, and it is
interesting to speculate whether this war will make or finish them.
Once more, personally, I believe it will make them, but as I was not
able to go to London after my investigations in France were concluded
and observe for myself I refuse to indulge in speculations. Time will
show, and before very long.

No doubt, however, when the greater question of winning the war is
settled, the question of sex equality will rage with a new violence,
perhaps in some new form, among such bodies of women as are not so
subject to the thrall of sex as to desert their new colors. It would
seem that the lot of woman is ever to be on the defensive. Nature
handicapped her at the start, giving man a tremendous advantage in his
minimum relationship to reproduction, and circumstances (mainly
perpetual warfare) postponed the development of her mental powers for
centuries. Certainly nothing in the whole history of mankind is so
startling as the abrupt awakening of woman and her demand for a
position in the world equal to that of the dominant male.

I use the word abrupt, because in spite of the scattered instances of
female prosiliency throughout history, and the long struggle beginning
in the last century for the vote, or the individual determination to
strive for some more distinguished fashion of coping with poverty than
school-teaching or boarding-house keeping, the concerted awakening of
the sex was almost as abrupt as the European War. Like many fires it
smouldered long, and then burst into a menacing conflagration. But I
do not for a moment apprehend that the conflagration will extinguish
the complete glory of the male any more than it will cause a revulsion
of nature in the born mother.

But may there not be a shuffling of the cards? Take the question of
servant-girls for instance. Where there are two or more servants in a
family their lot is far better than that of the factory girl. But it
is quite a different matter with the maid-of-all-work, the household
drudge, who is increasingly hard to find, partly because she, quite
naturally, prefers the department store, or the factory, with its
definite hours and better social status, partly because there is
nothing in the "home" to offset her terrible loneliness but
interminable hours of work. In England, where many people live in
lodgings, fashionable and otherwise, and have all meals served in
their rooms, it is a painful sight to see a slavey toiling up two or
three flights of stairs--and four times a day. In the United States,
the girls who come over from Scandinavia or Germany with roseate hopes
soon lose their fresh color and look heavy and sullen if they find
their level in the household where economy reigns.

Now, why has no one ever thought of men as "maids" of all work? On
ocean liners it is the stewards that take care of the state-rooms, and
they keep them like wax, and make the best bed known to civilization.
The stewardesses in heavy weather attend to the prostrate of their
sex, but otherwise do nothing but bring the morning tea, hook up, and
receive tips. Men wait in the diningroom (as they do in all
first-class hotels), and look out for the passengers on deck. Not the
most militant suffragette but would be intensely annoyed to have
stewardesses scurrying about on a heaving deck with the morning broth
and rugs, or dancing attendance in a nauseous sea.

The truth of the matter is that there is a vast number of men of all
races who are fit to be nothing but servants, and are so misplaced in
other positions where habit or vanity has put them, that they fail far
more constantly than women. All "men" are not real men by any means.
They are not fitted to play a man's part in life, and many of the
things they attempt are far better done by strong determined women,
who have had the necessary advantages, and the character to ignore the
handicap of sex.

I can conceive of a household where a well-trained man cooks, does the
"wash," waits on the table, sweeps, and if the mistress has a young
child, or is indolent and given to the rocking-chair and a
novel-a-day, makes the beds without a wrinkle. He may lack ambition
and initiative, the necessary amount of brains to carry him to success
in any of the old masculine jobs, but he inherits the thoroughness of
the ages that have trained him, and, if sober, rides the heavy waves
of his job like a cork. I will venture to say that a man thus employed
would finish his work before eight P.M. and spend an hour or two
before bed-time with his girl or at his club.

Many a Jap in California does the amount of work I have described, and
absorbs knowledge in and out of books during his hours of leisure.
Sometimes they do more than I have indicated as possible for the white
man. Energetic boys, who want to return to Japan as soon as possible,
or, mayhap, buy a farm, make a hundred dollars a month by getting up
at five in the morning to wash a certain number of stoops and sweep
sidewalks, cook a breakfast and wash up the dinner dishes in one
servantless household, the lunch dishes in another, clean up generally
in another, cook the dinner, wait on the table, clean up in still
another. As white men are stronger they could do even more, and
support a wife in an intensive little flat where her work would be
both light and spiritually remunerative. Domestic service would solve
the terrible problem of life for thousands of men, and it would
coincidentally release thousands of girls from the factory, the
counter, and the exhausting misery of a "home" that never can be their
own. At night he could feel like a householder and that he lived to
some purpose. If he is inclined to complain that such a life is not
"manly," let him reflect that as he is not first-rate anyhow, and
never can compete with the fully equipped, he had best be
philosophical and get what comfort out of life he can. Certainly the
increased economic value of thousands of men, at present slaving as
underpaid clerks and living in hall bedrooms, would thin the ranks of
the most ancient of all industries, if, according to our ardent
reformers, they are recruited from the ranks of the lonely
servant-girl, the tired shop-girl, and the despairing factory hand.


III


For it is largely a question of muscle and biology.

I have stated elsewhere that I believe in equal suffrage, if only
because women are the mothers of men and therefore their equals. But I
think there are several times more reasons why American women at least
should not overwork their bodies and brains and wear themselves out
trying to be men, than why it is quite right and fitting they should
walk up to the polls and cast a vote for men who more or less control
their destinies.

To digress a moment: When it comes to the arts, that is quite another
matter. If a woman finds herself with a talent (I refrain from such a
big word as genius, as only posterity should presume to apply that
term to any one's differentiation from his fellows), by all means let
her work like a man, take a man's chances, make every necessary
sacrifice to develop this blessed gift; not only because it is a duty
but because the rewards are adequate. The artistic career, where the
impulse is genuine, furnishes both in its rewards and in the exercise
of the gift itself far more happiness, or even satisfaction, than
husband, children, or home. The chief reason is that it is the supreme
form of self-expression, the ego's apotheosis, the power to indulge in
the highest order of spiritual pride, differentiation from the mass.
These are brutal truths, and another truth is that happiness is the
universal goal, whatever form it may take, and whatever form human
hypocrisy may compel it to take, or even to deny. Scientific
education has taught us not to sacrifice others too much in its
pursuit. That branch of ancestral memory known as conscience has
morbid reactions.

To create, to feel something spinning out of your brain, which you
hardly realize is there until formulated on paper, for instance; the
adventurous life involved in the exercise of any art, with its
uncertainties, its varieties, its disappointments, its mistakes; the
fight, the exaltations, the supreme satisfactions--all this is the
very best life has to offer. And as art is as impartial as a microbic
disease, women do achieve, individually, as much as men; sometimes
more. If their bulk has not in the past been as great, the original
handicaps, which women in general, aided by science and a more
enlightened public, are fast shedding, alone were to blame. Certainly
as many women as men in the United States are engaged in artistic
careers; more, if one judged by the proportion in the magazines.

Although I always feel that a man, owing to the greater freedom of his
life and mental inheritances, has more to tell me than most women
have, and I therefore prefer men as writers, still I see very little
difference in the quality of their work. Often, indeed, the magazine
fiction (in America) of the women shows greater care in phrase and
workmanship than that of the men (who are hurried and harried by
expensive families), and often quite as much virility.

No one ever has found life a lake. Life is a stormy ocean at best, and
if any woman with a real gift prefers to sink rather than struggle,
or to float back to shore on a raft, she deserves neither sympathy nor
respect. Women born with that little tract in their brain sown by
Nature with bulbs of one of the arts, may conquer the world as proudly
as men, although not as quickly, for they rouse in disappointed or
apprehensive men the meanest form of sex jealousy; but if they have as
much courage as talent, if they are willing to dedicate their lives,
not their off hours, to the tending of their rich oasis in the general
desert of mind, success is theirs. Biological differences between the
sexes evaporate before these impersonal sexless gifts (or whims or
inadvertencies) of conservative Nature.

Of course women have worked themselves to death in their passionate
devotion to art. So have men. Women have starved to death in garrets,
their fine efforts rejected by those that buy, and sell again to an
uncertain public. So have men. The dreariest anecdotes of England and
France, so rich in letters, are of great men-geniuses who died young
for want of proper nourishment or recognition, or who struggled on to
middle-age in a bitterness of spirit that corroded their high
endowment. I do not recall that any first-rate women writers have died
for want of recognition, possibly because until now they have been few
and far between. The Brontës died young, but mainly because they lived
in the midst of a damp old churchyard and inherited tubercular
tendencies. The graves and old box tombs crowd the very walls of the
parsonage, and are so thick you hardly can walk between them. I spent
a month in the village of Haworth, but only one night in the village
inn at the extreme end of the churchyard; I could read the
inscriptions on the tombs from my windows.

Charlotte had immediate recognition even from such men as Thackeray,
and if the greater Emily had to wait for Swinburne and posterity it
was inherited consumption that carried her off in her youth. Although
much has been made of their poverty I don't think they were so badly
off for their times. The parsonage is a well-built stone house, their
father had his salary, and the villagers told me that the three girls
looked after the poor in hard winters, often supplying whole families
with coal. Of course they led lives of a maddening monotony, but they
were neither hungry nor bitter, and at least two of them developed a
higher order of genius than was possible to the gifted Jane Austin in
her smug life of middle-class plenty, and, to my mind, far more
hampering restrictions.

Even if the Brontës had been sufficiently in advance of their times to
"light out" and seek adventure and development in the great world,
their low state of health would have kept them at home. So impressed
was I with the (to a Californian) terrible pictures of poverty in
which the Brontes were posed by their biographers that I grew up with
the idea that one never could develop a gift or succeed in the higher
manner unless one lived in a garret and half starved. I never had the
courage to try the regimen, but so deep was the impression that I
never have been able to work except in austere surroundings, and I
have worked in most abominably uncomfortable quarters with an
equanimity that was merely the result of the deathless insistence of
an old impression sunk deep into a mind then plastic.

Let me hasten to add that many successful authors work in the most
luxurious quarters imaginable. It is all a matter of temperament, or,
it may be, of accident. Moreover this outer evidence of prosperity
makes a subtle appeal to the snobbery of the world and to a certain
order of critic, by no means to be despised. Socially and in the arts
we Americans are the least democratic of people, partly because we are
so damnably unsure of ourselves; and if I were beginning my career
to-day I doubt if I should be so unbusiness-like as to take the lowly
Brontes as a model.

If I have digressed for a moment from the main theme of this book it
has been not only to show what the influence of such brave women as
the Brontes has been on later generations of writers, but that biology
must doff its hat at the tomb in Haworth Church. Their mental virility
and fecundity equalled that of any man that has attained an equal
eminence in letters, and they would have died young and suffered much
if they never had written a line. They had not a constitution between
the four of them and they spent their short lives surrounded by the
dust and the corruption of death.


IV


But when it comes to working like men for the sake of independence, of
avoiding marriage, of "doing something," that is another matter. To my
mind it is abominable that society is so constituted that women are
forced to work (in times of peace) for their bread at tasks that are
far too hard for them, that extract the sweetness from youth, and
unfit them physically for what the vast majority of women want more
than anything else in life--children. If they deliberately prefer
independence to marriage, well and good, but surely we are growing
civilized enough (and this war, in itself a plunge into the dark ages,
has in quite unintentional ways advanced civilization, for never in
the history of the world have so many brains been thinking) so to
arrange the social machinery that if girls and young women are forced
to work for their daily bread, and often the bread of others, at least
it shall be under conditions, including double shifts, that will
enable them, if the opportunity comes, as completely to enjoy all that
home means as falls to the lot of their more fortunate sisters. Even
those who launch out in life with no heavier need than their driving
independence of spirit should be protected, for often they too, when
worn in body and mind, realize that the independent life per se is a
delusion, and that their completion as well as their ultimate
happiness and economic security lies in a brood and a husband to
support it.

There used to be volumes of indignation expended upon the American
mother toiling in the home, at the wash-tub for hire, or trudging
daily to some remunerative task, while her daughters, after a fair
education, idly flirted, and danced, and read, and finally married.
Now, although that modus operandi sounds vulgar and ungrateful it is,
biologically speaking, quite as it should be. Girls of that age should
be tended as carefully as young plants; and, for that matter, it would
be well if women until they have passed the high-water mark of
reproductivity should be protected as much as possible from severe
physical and mental strain. If women ever are to compete with men on
anything like an equal basis, it is when they are in their middle
years, when Nature's handicaps are fairly outgrown, child-bearing and
its intervening years of lassitude are over, as well as the recurrent
carboniferous wastes and relaxations.

Why do farmers' wives look so much older than city women of the same
age in comfortable circumstances? Not, we may be sure, because of
exposure to the elements, or even the tragic loneliness that was
theirs before the pervasion of the automobile. Women in city flats are
lonely enough, but although those that have no children or "light
housekeeping" lead such useless lives one wonders why they were born,
they outlast the women of the small towns by many years because of the
minimum strain on their bodies.[G]

  [G] The French are far too clever to let the women in the munition
      factories injure themselves. They have double, treble, and even
      quadruple shifts.

As a matter of fact in the large cities where the struggle of life is
superlative they outlast the men. About the time the children are
grown, the husband, owing to the prolonged and terrific strain in
competing with thousands of men as competent as himself, to keep his
family in comfort, educate his children, pay the interest on his life
insurance policy, often finds that some one of his organs is breaking
down and preparing him for the only rest he will ever find time to
take. Meanwhile his prospective widow (there is, by the way, no nation
in the world so prolific of widows and barren of widowers as the
United States) is preparing to embark on her new career as a club
woman, or, if she foresees the collapse of the family income, of
self-support.

And in nine cases out of ten, if she has the intelligence to make use
of what a combination of average abilities and experience has
developed in her, she succeeds, and permanently; for women do not go
to pieces between forty and fifty as they did in the past. They have
learned too much. Work and multifarious interests distract their mind,
which formerly dwelt upon their failing youth, and when they sadly
composed themselves in the belief that they had given the last of
their vitality to the last of their children; to-day, instead of
sitting down by the fireside and waiting to die, they enter resolutely
upon their second youth, which is, all told, a good deal more
satisfactory than the first.

Every healthy and courageous woman's second vitality is stronger and
more enduring than her first. Not only has her body, assisted by
modern science, settled down into an ordered routine that is
impregnable to anything but accident, but her mind is delivered from
the hopes and fears of the early sex impulses which so often sicken
the cleverest of the younger women both in body and mind, filling the
body with lassitude and the mind either with restless impatience or a
complete indifference to anything but the tarrying prince. To blame
them for this would be much like cursing Gibraltar for not getting out
of the way in a storm. They are the tools of the race, the chosen
mediums of Nature for the perpetuation of her beloved species. But the
fact remains--that is to say, in the vast majority of girls. There is,
as we all know, the hard-shell division of their sex who, even without
a gift, infinitely prefer the single and independent life in their
early youth, and only begin to show thin spots in their armor as they
approach thirty, sometimes not until it is far too late. But if you
will spend a few days walking through the department stores, for
instance, of a large city and observing each of the young faces in
turn behind the counters, it will be rarely that you will not feel
reasonably certain that the secret thoughts of all that vast army
circle persistently about some man, impinging or potential. And
wherever you make your studies, from excursion boats to the hour of
release at the gates of a factory, you must draw the same conclusion
that sex reigns, that it is the most powerful factor in life and will
be so long as Earth at least continues to spin. For that reason, no
matter how persistently girls may work because they must or starve,
it is the competent older women, long since outgrown the divine
nonsense of youth, who are the more satisfactory workers. Girls,
unless indifferently sexed, do not take naturally to work in their
youth. Whether they have the intelligence to reason or not, they know
that they were made for a different fate and they resent standing
behind a counter all day long or speeding up machinery for a few
dollars a week. Even the highly intelligent girls who find work on
newspapers often look as if they were at the end of their endurance.
It is doubtful if the world ever can run along without the work of
women but the time will surely come when society will be so
constituted that no woman in the first flush of her youth will be
forced to squander it on the meager temporary reward, and forfeit her
birthright. If she wants to, well and good. No one need be deeply
concerned for those that launch out into life because they like it.
Women in civilized countries are at liberty to make their own lives;
that is the supreme privilege of democracy. But the victims of the
propelling power of the world are greatly to be pitied and Society
should come to their rescue. I know that the obvious answer to this is
"Socialism." But before the rest of us can swallow Socialism it must
spew out its present Socialists and get new ones. Socialists never
open their mouths that they do not do their cause harm; and whatever
virtues their doctrine may contain we are blinded to it at present.
This war may solve the problem. If Socialism should be the inevitable
outcome it would at least come from the top and so be sufferable.


V


It is all very well to do your duty by your sex and keep up the
birth-rate, and there are compensations, no doubt of that, when the
husband is amiable, the income adequate, and the children are dears
and turn out well; but the second life is one's very own, the duty is
to one's self, and, such is the ineradicable selfishness of human
nature after long years of self-denial and devotion to others, there
is a distinct, if reprehensible, satisfaction in being quite natural
and self-centered. If, on the other hand, circumstances are such that
the capable middle-aged woman, instead of living entirely for herself,
in her clubs, in her increasing interest in public affairs, and her
chosen work, finds herself with certain members of her family
dependent upon her, she also derives from this fact an enormous
satisfaction, for it enables her to prove that she can fill a man's
place in the world, be quite as equal to her job.

Instead of breaking down, this woman, who has outlived the severest
handicap of sex without parting with any of its lore, grows stronger
and more poised every year, retaining (or regaining) her looks if she
has the wisdom to keep her vanity alive; while the girl forced to
spend her days on her feet behind a counter (we hear of seats for
these girls but we never see them occupied), or slave in a factory
(where there is no change of shift as in the munition factories of
the European countries in war time), or work from morning until night
as a general servant--"one in help"--wilts and withers, grows pasée,
fanée, is liable to ultimate breakdown unless rescued by some man.

The expenditure of energy in these girls is enormous, especially if
they combine with this devitalizing work an indulgence in their
natural desire to play. Rapid child-bearing would not deplete them
more; and it is an intensely ignorant or an intensely stupid or, in
the United States, an exceptionally sensual woman who has a larger
family than the husband can keep in comfort. Moreover, unless in the
depths of poverty, each child means a period of rest, which is more
than the girl behind the counter gets in her entire working period.

These women, forced by a faulty social structure to support themselves
and carry heavy burdens, lack the intense metabolism of the male, his
power to husband his stores of carbon (an organic exception which
renders him indifferent to standing), and the superior quality of his
muscle. Biologically men and women are different from crown to sole.
It might be said that Nature fashioned man's body for warfare, and
that if he grows soft during intervals of peace it is his own fault.
Even so, unless in some way he has impaired his health, he has
heretofore demonstrated that he can do far more work than women, and
stand several times the strain, although his pluck may be no finer.

If one rejects this statement let him look about among his
acquaintance at the men who have toiled hard to achieve an
independence, and whose wives have toiled with them, either because
they lived in communities where it was impossible to keep servants, or
out of a mistaken sense of economy. The man looks fresh and his wife
elderly and wrinkled and shapeless, even if she has reasonable health.
It is quite different in real cities where life on a decent income (or
salary) can be made very easy for the woman, as I have just pointed
out; but I have noticed that in small towns or on the farm, even now,
when these scattered families are no longer isolated as in the days
when farmers' wives committed suicide or intoxicated themselves on tea
leaves, the woman always looks far older than the man if "she has done
her own work" during all the years of her youth and maturity. If she
renounces housekeeping in disgust occasionally and moves to an hotel,
she soon amazes her friends by looking ten years younger; and if her
husband makes enough money to move to a city large enough to minimize
the burdens of housekeeping and offer a reasonable amount of
distraction, she recovers a certain measure of her youth, although
still far from being at forty or fifty what she would have been if her
earlier years had been relieved of all but the strains which Nature
imposes upon every woman from princess to peasant.

It remains to be seen whether the extraordinary amount of work the
European women are doing in the service of their country, and the
marked improvement in their health and physique, marks a stride
forward in the physical development of the sex, being the result of
latent possibilities never drawn upon before, or is merely the result
of will power and exaltation, and bound to exhibit its definite limit
as soon as the necessity is withdrawn. The fact, of course, remains
that the women of the farms and lower classes generally in France are
almost painfully plain, and look hard and weather-beaten long before
they are thirty, while the higher you mount the social scale in your
researches the more the women of France, possessing little orthodox
beauty, manage, with a combination of style, charm, sophistication,
and grooming, to produce the effect not only of beauty but of a unique
standard that makes the beauties of other nations commonplace by
comparison.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that these girls and young women
working in the _Usines de Guerre_, are better looking than they were
before and shine with health. The whole point, I fancy, lies in the
fact that they work under merciful masters and conditions. If they
were used beyond their capacity they would look like their sisters on
the farms, upon whom fathers and husbands have little mercy.

When girls in good circumstances become infected with the microbe of
violent exercise and insist upon walking many miles a day, besides
indulging for hours in games which permit no rest, they look like
hags. Temporarily, of course. When they recover their common sense
they recover their looks, for it is in their power to relax and
recuperate. Men will walk twenty miles, take a cold shower, a good
meal, a night's rest, and look as well as ever the next day--or at the
end of the walk, for that matter. They can afford the waste. Women
cannot. If women succeed in achieving hard unyielding muscles in the
wrong place they suffer atrociously in childbirth; for Nature, who is
as old-fashioned and inhospitable to modern ideas as a Tory statesman,
takes a vicious pleasure in punishing one sex every time it succeeds
in approaching the peculiar level of the other, or which diverges from
the normal in any way. Note how many artists, who are nine-tenths
temperament and one-tenth male, suffer; not only because they are
beset with every sort of weakness that affects their social status,
but because the struggle with life is too much for them unless they
have real men behind them until their output is accepted by the
public, and themselves with it.

Some day Society will be civilized enough to recognize the limitations
and the helplessness of those who are artists first and men
afterwards. But meanwhile we can only rely upon the sympathy and the
understanding of the individual.

Far be it from me to advise that girls refrain from doing their part
in the general work of the home, if servants are out of the question;
that won't hurt them; but if some one must go out and support the
family it would better be the mother or the maiden aunt.

Better still, a husband, if marriage is their goal and children the
secret desire of their hearts.

If girls are so constituted mentally that they long for the
independent life, self-support, self-expression, they will have it and
without any advice from the worldly-wise; it is as driving an impulse
as the reproductive instinct in those who are more liberally sexed.
And these last are still in the majority, no doubt of that. Therefore,
far better they marry and have children in their youth. They, above
all, are the women whose support and protection is the natural duty of
man, and while it is one of life's misfortunes for a girl to marry
simply to escape life's burdens, without love and without the desire
for children, it is by far the lesser evil to have the consolation of
home and children in the general barrenness of life than to slave all
day at an uncongenial task and go "home" to a hall bedroom.

These views were so much misunderstood when they appeared in magazine
form that I have felt obliged to emphasize the differences between the
still primitive woman and the woman who is the product of the higher
civilization. One young socialist, who looked quite strong enough to
support a family, asked me if I did not think it better for a girl to
support herself than to be the slave of a man's lust and bear
innumerable children, whether she wished for them or not, children to
whose support society contributed nothing. But why be a man's slave,
and why have more children than you can support? We live in the
enlightened twentieth century, when there is precious little about
anything that women do not know, and if they do not they are such
hopeless fools that they should be in the State Institutions. The time
has passed for women to talk of being men's slaves in any sense,
except in the economic. There are still sweatshops and there is still
speeding up in factories, because society is still far from perfect,
but if a woman privately is a man's slave to-day it is because she is
the slave of herself as well.


VI


Personally, although nothing has ever tempted me to marry a second
time, I am very glad I married in my early youth, not only because
matrimony enables a potential writer to see life from many more
viewpoints than if she remains blissfully single, but because I was
sheltered from all harsh contacts with the world. No one was ever less
equipped by nature for domesticity and all the responsibilities of
everyday life, and if circumstances had so ordered that I had not
blundered into matrimony before twenty-four-or-five, no doubt I never
should have married at all.

But at that time--I was home on a vacation from boarding-school, and
had had none of that illuminating experience known as being "out," I
did no reasoning whatever. On the other hand I was far too mentally
undeveloped and arrogant to be capable at that tender age of falling
deeply in love. My future husband proposed six times (we were in a
country house). I was flattered, divided between the ambition to
graduate brilliantly and to be an author with no further loss of time,
and wear becoming caps and trains to my frocks. On the other hand I
wanted neither a husband particularly nor to go back to school, for I
felt that as my grandfather had one of the best libraries in
California nothing could be more pleasant or profitable than to finish
my education in it undisturbed. Nevertheless, quite abruptly I made up
my mind and married; and, if the truth were known, my reasons and
impulses were probably as intelligent as those of the average young
girl who knows the world only through books and thinks it has little
more to teach her. My life had been objective and sheltered. If forced
to earn my living at sixteen no doubt the contacts impossible to
escape would soon have given me a real maturity of judgment and I
should have grown to love, jealously, my freedom.

That is to say, if I had been a strong girl. As a matter-of-fact I was
extremely delicate, with a weak back, a threat of tuberculosis, and
very bad eyes. Most of this was the result of over-study, for I had
been a healthy child, but I loved books and was indifferent to
exercise and nourishment. No doubt if I had been turned out into the
world to fare for myself I should have gone into a decline. Therefore,
it was sheer luck that betrayed me into matrimony, for although my
mental energies were torpid for several years my first child seemed to
dissipate the shadows that lay in my blood, and at twenty-five I was
a normally strong woman. We lived in the country. My husband looked
after the servants, and if we were without a cook for several days he
filled her place (he had learned to cook "camping out" and liked
nothing better) until my mother-in-law sent a woman from San
Francisco. I read, strolled about the woods, storing up vitality but
often depressed with the unutterable ennui of youth, and haunted with
the fear that my story-telling faculty, which had been very
pronounced, had deserted me.

When my husband died I had but one child. I left her with her two
adoring grandmothers and fled to New York. I was still as callow as a
boarding-school girl, but my saving grace was that I knew I did not
know anything, that I never would know enough to write about life
until I had seen more of it than was on exhibition in California.

But by that time my health was established. I felt quite equal to
writing six books a year if any one would publish them, besides
studying life at first hand as persistently and deeply as the present
state of society will permit in the case of a mere woman. For that
reason I shall always be sorry I did not go on a newspaper for a year
as a reporter, as there is no other way for a woman to see life in all
its phases. I had a letter to Charles Dana, owner of the New York
_Sun_, and no doubt he would have put me to work, but I was still too
pampered, or too snobbish, and, lacking the spur of necessity, missed
one of the best of educations. Now, no matter who asks my advice in
regard to the literary career, whether she is the ambitious daughter
of a millionaire or a girl whose talent is for the story and whose
future depends upon herself, I invariably give her one piece of
advice: "Go on a newspaper. Be a reporter. Refuse no assignment. Be
thankful for a merciless City Editor and his blue pencil. But, if you
feel that you have the genuine story-telling gift, save your money and
leave at the end of a year, or two years at most."

As for myself, I absorbed life as best I could, met people in as many
walks of life as possible. As I would not marry again, and, in
consequence, had no more children, nor suffered from the wearing
monotonies of domestic life, I have always kept my health and been
equal to an immense amount of work.

But the point is that I had been sheltered and protected during my
delicate years. No doubt it was a part of my destiny to hand on the
intensely American qualities of body and mind I had inherited from my
Dutch and English forefathers, as well as to do my share in carrying
on the race. But I got rid of all that as quickly as possible, and
struck out for that plane of modern civilization planted and furrowed
and replenished by daughters of men.




III

THE REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY"

I


There is nothing paradoxical in affirming that while no woman before
she has reached the age of thirty-five or forty should, if she can
avoid it, compete with men in work which the exigencies of
civilization (man-made civilization) have adapted to him alone, still,
every girl of every class, from the industrial straight up to the
plutocratic, should be trained in some congenial vocation during her
plastic years. Civilization in certain respects is as inadequate as it
was a thousand years ago. Socialism might solve the problem if it were
not for the Socialists. Certainly no man or body of men has yet arisen
with the proper amount of imagination, selflessness, brains and
constructive genius, necessary to plan a social order in which all men
shall work without overworking and support all women during the best
years of the child-bearing and child-rearing span. If men had been
clever enough to make even an imperfect attempt to protect women
without independent means from the terrors of life, say by taxing
themselves, they would not be pestered to-day with the demand for
equal rights, see themselves menaced in nearly all of the
remunerative industries and professions, above all by the return of
the Matriarchate.

It is Life that has developed the fighting instinct in woman, bred the
mental antagonism of sex. Nature did not implant either. Nor has she
ever wavered a jot from the original mix compounded in her immemorial
laboratory. Man is man and woman is woman to-day, even to the superior
length of limb in the male (relative to the trunk) and the greater
thickness of hairs in the woman's eyelashes. In England women of the
leisure class showed during the years of the sports craze a tendency
to an unfeminine length of limb, often attaining or surpassing the
male average. But Nature avenged herself by narrowing the pelvis and
weakening the reproductive organs. Free trade drove the old sturdy
yeoman into the towns and diminished the stature and muscular power of
their descendants, but ten months of trench life and Nature laughed at
the weak spot in civilization. The moment false conditions are removed
she claims her own.

Women to-day may prove themselves quite capable of doing, and
permanently, the work of men in ammunition and munition factories, but
it is patent that when human bipeds first groped their way about the
terrifying Earth, she was not equal to the task of leveling forests,
killing the beasts that roamed them, hurling spears in savage warfare,
and bearing many children for many years. She played her part in the
scheme of things precisely as Nature had meant she should play it:
she cooked, she soothed the warrior upon his return from killing of
man or beast, and she brought up her boys to be warriors and her girls
to serve them. There you have Nature and her original plan, a bald and
uninteresting plan, but eminently practical for the mere purpose
(which is all that concerns her) of keeping the world going. And so it
would be to-day, even in the civilized core, if man had been clever
enough to take the cue Nature flung in his face and kept woman where
to-day he so ingenuously desires to see her, and before whose
deliverance he is as helpless as old Nature herself.

Man obeyed the herding instinct whose ultimate expression was the
growth of great cities, invented the telegraph, the cable, the school,
the newspaper, the glittering shops, the public-lecture system; and,
voluntarily or carelessly, threw open to women the gates of all the
arts, to say nothing of the crafts. And all the while he not only
continued to antagonize woman, proud and eager in her awakened
faculties, with stupid interferences, embargoes and underhand
thwartings, but he permitted her to struggle and die in the hideous
contacts with life from which a small self-imposed tax would have
saved her. Some of the most brilliant men the world will ever know
have lived, and administered, and passed into history, and the misery
of helpless women has increased from generation to generation, while
coincidentally her intelligence has waxed from resignation or
perplexity through indignation to a grim determination. Man missed
his chance and must take the consequences.

Certainly, young women fulfill their primary duty to the race and,
incidentally, do all that should be expected of them, in the bringing
forth and rearing of children, making the home, and seeing to the
coherence of the social groups they have organized for recreation or
purely in the interest of the next generation.

Perhaps the women will solve the problem. I can conceive the time when
there will have developed an enormous composite woman's brain which,
combining superior powers of intuition and sympathy with that high
intellectual development the modern conditions so generously permit,
added to their increasing knowledge of and interest in the social,
economic, and political problems, will make them a factor in the
future development of the race, gradually bring about a state of real
civilization which twenty generations of men have failed to
accomplish.

But that is not yet, and we may all be dead before its heyday. The
questions of the moment absorb us. We must take them as they arise and
do the best we can with existing conditions. The world is terribly
conservative. Look at the European War.


II


Nowhere are fortunes so insecure as in the United States. The phrase,
"Three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves," was not
coined in Europe. But neither does it embrace a great American truth
Many a fortune rises and falls within the span of one generation. Many
a girl reared in luxury, or what passes in her class for luxury, is
suddenly forced out into the economic world with no preparation
whatever. It would be interesting to gather the statistics of men who,
with a large salary, or a fair practice, and indulged family, and a
certain social position to keep up, either vaguely intend to save and
invest one of these days--perhaps when the children are educated--or
carry a large life insurance which they would find too heavy a tax at
the moment.

Often, indeed, a man does insure his life, and then in some year of
panic or depression is forced to sell the policy or go under. Or he
insures in firms that fail. My father insured in three companies and
all failed before he died. In San Francisco the "earthquake clause"
prevented many men from recovering a penny on their merchandise or
investments swept away by the fire. Even a large number of the rich
were embarrassed by that fire, for, having invested millions in Class
A buildings, which were fire-proof, they saw no necessity for
expending huge sums annually in premiums. They never thought of a
general conflagration whose momentum would carry the flames across the
street and into their buildings through the windows, eating up the
interiors and leaving the fire-proof shell. One family lost six
million dollars in a few hours, and emigrated to one of the Swiss
lakes in order to be able to educate their children while their
fortunes slowly recovered with the aid of borrowed capital.

A large number of girls, who, without being rich, had led the
sheltered life before the fire, were obliged to go to work at once.
Some were clever enough to know what they could do and did it without
loss of time, some were assisted, others blundered along and nearly
starved.

Often men who have done well and even brilliantly up to middle life,
are not equal to the tremendous demand upon the vital energies of
beginning life over again after some disastrous visitation of Nature,
or a panic, or an ill-advised personal venture has wrecked their own
business or that of the concern in which they were a highly paid cog.
In the mining States men are dependent upon the world's demand for
their principal product. Farmers and stock-raisers are often cruelly
visited, strikes or hard times paralyze mills and factories; and in
times of panic and dry-rot the dealers in luxuries, including
booksellers--to say nothing of the writers of books as well as the
devotees of all the arts--are the first to suffer. And it is their
women that suffer acutely, because although many of these men may hang
on and recover, many more do not. They have used up their vital
forces. It is not so much a matter of will as of physics. A woman in
the same conditions who had been obliged to tax her vital organs for
an equal number of years would no doubt have lasted as long.

Unless defective, there is not a girl alive, certainly not an
American girl, who is wholly lacking in some sort of ability. The
parasite type (who is growing rare in these days, by the way, for it
is now the fashion to "do things") either fastens herself upon
complacent relatives or friends when deserted by fortune, or drifts
naturally into the half-world, always abundantly recruited from such
as she.

Many girls have a certain facility in the arts and crafts, which, with
severe training, might fit them for a second place in the class which
owes its origin to Heaven-born gifts. If their facility manifests
itself in writing they could be trained at college, or even on the
small local newspaper to write a good mechanical story, constructed
out of popular elements and eminently suited to the popular magazine.
Or they may fit themselves for dramatic or musical criticism, or
advertisement writing, which pays enormously but is not as easy as it
sounds. Or if every school (I am saying nothing about girls' colleges)
would train their promising "composition" writers in reporting, their
graduates would plant their weary feet far more readily than they do
now when they come to a great city and beseech a busy editor to give
them a chance.

Almost anything can be done with the plastic mind. But not always. It
is the better part of wisdom for proud parents to discover just what
their offspring's facility amounts to before spending money on an art
or a musical education, for instance. I had a painful experience, and
no doubt it has been duplicated a thousand times, for Europe before
the war was full of girls (many living on next to nothing) who were
studying "art" or "voice culture," with neither the order of endowment
nor the propelling brain-power to justify the sacrifice of their
parents or the waste of their own time.

Some years ago, finding that a young relative, who was just finishing
her school course, drew and painted in water colors with quite a
notable facility, and the family for generations having manifested
talents in one way or another, I decided to take her abroad and train
her faculty that she might be spared the humiliation of dependence,
nor feel a natural historic inclination to marry the first man who
offered her an alternative dependence; and at the same time be enabled
to support herself in a wholly congenial way. I did not delude myself
with the notion that she was a genius, but I thought it likely she
would become apt in illustrating, and I knew that I could throw any
amount of work in her way, or secure her a position in the art
department of some magazine.

I took her to the European city where I was then living and put her in
the best of its art schools. To make a long story short, after I had
expended some five thousand dollars on her, including traveling
expenses and other incidentals, the net result was an elongated thumb.
I was forced to the conclusion that she had not an atom of real
talent, merely the treacherous American facility. Moreover, she lost
all her interest in "art" when it meant hard work and persistent
application. I was wondering what on earth I was to do with her when
she solved the problem herself. She announced with unusual decision
that she wanted to be a nurse, had always wanted to be a nurse (she
had never mentioned the aspiration to me) and that nothing else
interested her. Her mother had been an invalid; one way or another she
had seen a good deal of illness.

Accordingly I sent her back to this country and entered her, through
the influence of friends, at a hospital. She graduated at the head of
her class, and although that was three or four years ago she has never
been idle since. She elected to take infectious cases, as the
remuneration is higher, and although she is very small, with such tiny
hands and feet that while abroad her gloves and boots had to be made
to order, no doubt she has so trained her body that the strains in
nursing fall upon no particular member.

In that case I paid for my own mistake, and she found her level in
ample time, which is as it should be. Of what use is experience if you
are to be misled by family vanity? As she is pretty and quite mad
about children, no doubt she will marry; but the point is that she can
wait; or, later, if the man should prove inadequate, she can once more
support herself, and with enthusiasm, for she loves the work.

To be a nurse is no bed of roses; but neither is anything else. To be
dependent in the present stage of civilization is worse, and nothing
real is accomplished in life without work and its accompaniment of
hard knocks. Nursing is not only a natural vocation for a woman, but
an occupation which increases her matrimonial chances about eighty per
cent. Nor is it as arduous after the first year's training is over as
certain other methods of wresting a livelihood from an unwilling
world--reporting, for instance. It is true that only the fit survive
the first year's ordeal, but on the other hand few girls are so
foolish as to choose the nursing career who do not feel within
themselves a certain stolid vitality. After graduation from the
hospital course their future depends upon themselves. Doctors soon
discover the most desirable among the new recruits, others find
permanent places in hospitals; and, it may be added, the success of
these young women depends upon a quality quite apart from mere
skill--personality. In the spring of 1915 I was in a hospital and
there was one nurse I would not have in the room. I was told that she
was one of the most valuable nurses on the staff, but that was nothing
to me.

I could not see that any of the nurses in this large hospital was
overworked. All looked healthy and contented. My own "night special,"
save when I had a temperature and demanded ice, slept from the time
she prepared me for the night until she rose to prepare me for the
day, with the exception of the eleven o'clock supper which she shared
with the hospital staff. Being very pretty and quite charming she will
marry, no doubt, although she refuses to nurse men. But there are
always the visiting doctors, the internes, and the unattached men in
households, where in the most seductive of all garbs, she remains for
weeks at a time.

In fact nearly all nurses are pretty. I wonder why?

The hospital nurses during the day arrived at intervals to take my
temperature, give me detestable nourishment, or bring me flowers or a
telephone message. It certainly never occurred to me to pity any of
them, and when they lingered to talk they entertained me with pleasant
pictures of their days off. They struck me as being able to enjoy life
very keenly, possibly because of being in a position to appreciate its
contrasts.

I know the daughter of a wealthy and historic family, whose head--he
is precisely the type of the elderly, cold-blooded, self-righteous,
self-conscious New York aristocrat of the stage--will not permit her
to gratify her desire to write for publication, "for," saith he, "I do
not wish to see my honored name on the back of works of fiction."

I do not think, myself, that he has deprived the world of one more
author, for if she had fiction in her brain-cells no parental dictum
could keep it confined within the walls of her skull; but the point is
that being a young woman of considerable energy and mental activity,
she found mere society unendurable and finally persuaded her father to
make her one of his secretaries. She learned not only stenography and
typewriting but telegraphy. There is a private apparatus in their
Newport home for her father's confidential work, and this she
manipulates with the skill of a professional. If the fortunes of her
family should go to pieces, she could find a position and support
herself without the dismal and health-racking transition which is the
fate of so many unfortunate girls suddenly bereft and wholly
unprepared.


III


The snobbishness of this old gentleman is by no means a prerogative of
New York's "old families." One finds it in every class of American men
above the industrial. In Honoré Willsie's novel, _Lydia of the Pines,_
an American novel of positive value, the father was a day laborer, as
a matter of a fact (although of good old New England farming stock),
earning a dollar and a half a day, and constantly bemoaning the fact;
yet when "young Lydia," who was obliged to dress like a scarecrow,
wished to earn her own pin-money by making fudge he objected
violently. The itching pride of the American male deprives him of many
comforts and sometimes of honor and freedom, because he will not let
his wife use her abilities and her spare time. He will steal or
embezzle rather than have the world look on while "his" wife ekes out
the family income. The determined Frenchwomen have had their men in
training for generations, and the wife is the business partner
straight up to the haute bourgeoisie; but the American woman, for all
her boasted tyranny over the busy male of her land, is either an
expensive toy or a mere household drudge, until years and experience
give her freedom of spirit. This war will do more to liberate her than
that mild social earthquake called the suffrage movement. The rich
women are working so hard that not only do they dress and entertain
far less than formerly but their husbands are growing quite accustomed
to their separate prominence and publicly admitted usefulness. The
same may be said of groups of women in less conspicuous classes, and
when the war is over it is safe to say these women will continue to do
as they please. There is something insidiously fascinating in work to
women that never have worked, not so much in the publicity it may give
but in the sense of mental expansion; and, in the instance of war, the
passion of usefulness, the sense of dedication to a high cause, the
necessary frequent suppression of self, stamp the soul with an impress
that never can be obliterated. That these women engaged in good works
often quarrel like angry cats, or fight for their relief organization
as a lioness would fight for her hungry cub, is beside the point. That
is merely another way of admitting they are human beings; not
necessarily women, but just human beings. As it was in the beginning,
is now, etc. Far better let loose their angry passions in behalf of
the men who are fighting to save the world from a reversion to
barbarism, than rowing their dressmakers, glaring across the bridge
table, and having their blood poisoned by eternal jealousy over some
man.

And if it will hasten the emancipation of the American man from the
thralldom of snobbery still another barrier will go down in the path
of the average woman. Just consider for a moment how many men are
failures. They struggle along until forty or forty-five "on their
own," although fitted by nature to be clerks and no more, striving
desperately to keep up appearances--for the sake of their own pride,
for the sake of their families, even for the sake of being "looked up
to" by their wife and observant offspring. But without real hope,
because without real ability (they soon, unless fools, outlive the
illusions of youth when the conquest of fortune was a matter of
course) always in debt, and doomed to defeat.

How many women have said to me--women in their thirties or early
forties, and with two or three children of increasing demands: "Oh, if
I could help! How unjust of parents not to train girls to do something
they can fall back on. I want to go to work myself and insure my
children a good education and a start in the world, but what can I do?
If I had been specialized in any one thing I'd use it now whether my
husband liked it or not. But although I have plenty of energy and
courage and feel that I could succeed in almost anything I haven't the
least idea how to go about it."

If a woman's husband collapses into death or desuetude while her
children are young, it certainly is the bounden duty of some member of
her family to support her until her children are old enough to go to
school, for no one can take her place in the home before that period.
Moreover, her mind should be as free of anxiety as her body of strain.
But what a ghastly reflection upon civilization it is when she is
obliged to stand on her feet all day in a shop or factory, or make
tempting edibles for some Woman's Exchange, because she cannot afford
to spend time upon a belated training that might admit her lucratively
to one of the professions or business industries.

The childless woman solves the problem with comparative ease. She
invariably shows more energy and decision, provided, of course, these
qualities have been latent within her.

Nevertheless, it is often extraordinary just what she does do. For
instance I knew a family of girls upon whose college education an
immense sum had been expended, and whose intellectual arrogance I
never have seen equalled. When their father failed and died, leaving
not so much as a small life insurance, what did they do? Teach? Write?
Edit? Become some rich and ignorant man's secretary? Not a bit of it.
They cooked. Always noted in their palmy days for their "table," and
addicted to relieving the travail of intellect with the sedative of
the homeliest of the minor arts, they began on preserves for the
Woman's Exchange; and half the rich women in town were up at their
house day after day stirring molten masses in a huge pot on a red-hot
range.

It was sometime before they were taken seriously, and, particularly
after the enthusiasm of their friends waned, there was a time of hard
anxious struggle. But they were robust and determined, and in time
they launched out as caterers and worked up a first-class business.
They took their confections to the rear entrances of their friends'
houses on festive occasions and accepted both pay and tips with lively
gratitude. They educated their younger brothers and lost their
arrogance. They never lost their friends.

Owing to dishonest fiction the impression prevails throughout the
world that "Society" is heartless and that the rich and well-to-do
drop their friends the moment financial reverses force them either to
reduce their scale of living far below the standard, or go to work.
When that happens it is the fault of the reversed, not of the
entrenched. False pride, constant whining, or insupportable
irritabilities gradually force them into a dreary class apart. If
anything, people of wealth and secure position take a pride in
standing by their old friends (their "own sort"), in showing
themselves above all the means sins of which fiction and the stage
have accused them, and in lending what assistance they can. Even when
the head of the family has disgraced himself and either blown out his
brains or gone to prison, it depends entirely upon the personalities
of his women whether or not they retain their friends. In fact any
observant student of life is reminded daily that one's real position
in the world depends upon personality, more particularly if backed by
character. Certainly it is nine-tenths of the battle for struggling
women.

Another woman whom I always had looked upon as a charming butterfly,
but who, no doubt, had long shown her native shrewdness and
determination in the home, stepped into her husband's shoes when he
collapsed from strain, abetted by drink, and now competes in the
insurance business with the best of the men. But she had borne the
last of her children and she has perfect health.

Galsworthy's play, _The Fugitive_, may not have been good drama but it
had the virtue of provoking thought after one had left the theater.
More than ever it convinced me, at least, that the women of means and
leisure with sociological leanings should let the working girl take
care of herself for a time and devote their attention to the far more
hopeless problem of the lady suddenly thrown upon her own resources.

No doubt this problem will have ceased to exist twenty years hence.
Every girl, rich or poor, and all grades between, will have
specialized during her plastic years on something to be used as a
resource; but at present there are thousands of young women who find
the man they married in ignorance an impossible person to live with
and yet linger on in wretched bondage because what little they know of
social conditions terrifies them. If they are pretty they fear other
men as much as they fear their own husbands, and for all the "jobs"
open to unspecialized women, they seem to be preeminently unfitted. If
the rich women of every large city would build a great college in
which every sort of trade and profession could be taught, from nursing
to stenography, from retouching photographs to the study of law,
while the applicant, after her sincerity had been established, was
kept in comfort and ease of mind, with the understanding that she
should repay her indebtedness in weekly installments after the college
had launched her into the world, we should have no more such ghastly
plays as _The Fugitive_ or hideous sociological tracts as _A Bed of
Roses_.




IV

ONE SOLUTION OF A GREAT PROBLEM

I


The world is willing and eager to buy what it wants. If you have goods
to sell you soon find your place at the counter, unless owing to some
fault of character your fellow barterers and their patrons will have
none of you. Of course there is always the meanest of all passions,
jealousy, waiting to thwart you at every turn, but no woman with a
modicum of any one of those wares the world wants and must have need
fear any enemy but her own loss of courage.

The pity is that so many women with no particular gift and only minor
energies are thrust into the economic world without either natural or
deliberate equipment. All that saves them in nine cases out of ten is
conserved energies, and if they are thrust out too young they are
doubly at a disadvantage.

A good deal has been written about the fresh enthusiasm of the young
worker, as contrasted with the slackened energies and disillusioned
viewpoint of middle life. But I think most honest employers will
testify that a young girl worker's enthusiasm is for closing time, and
her dreams are not so much of the higher skilfulness as of the
inevitable man. Nature is inexorable. She means that the young things
shall reproduce. If they will not or cannot that is not her fault; she
is always there with the urge. Even when girls think they sell
themselves for the adornments so dear to youth they are merely the
victims of the race, driven toward the goal by devious ways. Nature,
of course, when she fashioned the world reckoned without science. I
sometimes suspect her of being of German origin, for so methodical and
mechanical is her kultur that she will go on repeating "two and two
make four" until the final cataclysm.

I think that American women are beginning to realize that American men
are played out at forty-five; or fifty, at the most. There are
exceptions, of course, but with the vast majority the strain is too
great and the rewards are too small. They cannot retire in time. I
have a friend who, after a brilliant and active career, has withdrawn
to the communion of nature and become a philosopher. He insists that
all men should be retired by law at forty-five and condemned to spend
the rest of their days tilling the soil gratis for women and the
rising generation. The outdoor life would restore a measure of their
dissipated vitality and prolong their lives.

This may come to pass in time: stranger things have happened. But, as
I remarked before, it is the present we have to consider. It seems to
me it would be a good idea if every woman who is both protected and
untrained but whose husband is approaching forty should, if not
financially independent, begin seriously to think of fitting herself
for self-support. The time to prepare for possible disaster is not
after the torpedo has struck the ship.

A thousand avenues are open to women, and fresh ones open yearly. She
can prepare secretly, or try her hand at first one and then another
(if she begins by being indeterminate) of such congenial occupations
as are open to women of her class, beyond cooking, teaching, clerking.
Those engaged in reforms, economic improvements, church work, and
above all, to-day, war relief work, should not be long discovering
their natural bent as well as its marketable value, and the particular
rung of the ladder upon which to start.

Many women whose energies have long been absorbed by the home are
capable of flying leaps. These women still in their thirties, far from
neglecting their children when looking beyond the home, are merely
ensuring their proper nourishment and education.

Why do not some of the public spirited women, whose own fortunes are
secure, form bureaus where all sorts of women, apprehensive of the
future, may be examined, advised, steered on their way? In this they
would merely be taking a leaf from the present volume of French
history its women are writing. It is the women of independent means
over there who have devised so many methods by which widows and girls
and older spinsters tossed about in the breakers of war may support
themselves and those dependent upon them. There is Mlle. Thompson's
École Feminine, for instance, and Madame Goujon's hundred and one
practical schemes which I will not reiterate here.

Women of the industrial class in the United States need new laws, but
little advice how to support themselves. They fall into their natural
place almost automatically, for they are the creatures of
circumstances, which are set in motion early enough to determine their
fate. If they do hesitate their minds are quickly made up for them by
either their parents or their social unit. The great problem to-day is
for the women of education, fastidiousness, a certain degree of ease,
threatened with a loss of that male support upon which ancient custom
bred them to rely. Their children will be specialized; they will see
to that. But their own problem is acute and it behooves trained and
successful women to take it up, unless the war lasts so long that
every woman will find her place as inevitably as the working girl.


II


For a long time to come women will be forced to leave the
administering of the nation as well as of states and cities to men,
for men are still too strong for them. The only sort of women that men
will spontaneously boost into public life are pretty, bright, womanly,
spineless creatures who may be trusted to set the cause of woman back
a few years at least, and gratify their own sense of humorous
superiority.

Women would save themselves much waste of energy and many humiliations
if they would devote themselves exclusively to helping and training
their own sex. Thousands are at work on the problems of higher wage
and shorter hours for women of the industrial class, but this problem
of the carefully nurtured, wholly untrained, and insecurely protected
woman they have so far ignored. To my mind this demands the first
consideration and the application of composite woman's highest
intelligence. The industrial woman has been trained to work, she
learns as she grows to maturity to protect herself and fight her own
battles, and in nine cases out of ten she resents the interference of
the leisure class in her affairs as much as she would charity. The
leaders of every class should be its own strong spirits. And the term
"class consciousness" was not invented by fashionable society.

There is another problem that women, forced imminently or
prospectively to support themselves, must face before long, and that
is the heavy immigration from Europe. Of course some of those
competent women over there will keep the men's jobs they hold now, and
among the widows and the fatherless there will be a large number of
clerks and agriculturists. But many réformés will be able to fill
those positions satisfactorily, and, when sentiment has subsided,
young women at least (who are also excellent workers) will begin to
think of husbands; and, unless the war goes on for many years and
reduces our always available crop, American girls of the working class
will have to look to their laurels both ways.


III


Here is the reverse of the picture, which possibly may save the too
prosperous and tempting United States from what in the end could not
fail to be a further demoralization of her ancient ideals and
depletion of the old American stock:

No matter how many men are killed in a war there are more males when
peace is declared than the dead and blasted, unless starvation
literally has sent the young folks back to the earth. During any war
children grow up, and even in a war of three years' duration it is
estimated that as against four million males killed there will be six
million young males to carry on the race as well as its commerce and
industries. For the business of the nation and high finance there are
the men whose age saved them from the dangers of the battlefield.

There will therefore be many million marriageable men in Europe if the
war ends in 1917. But they will, for the most part, be of a very
tender age indeed, and normal young women between twenty and thirty do
not like spring chickens. They are beloved only by idealess girls of
their own age, by a certain type of young women who are alluded to
slightingly as "crazy about boys," possibly either because men of
mature years find them uninteresting or because of a certain vampire
quality in their natures, and by blasée elderly women who generally
foot the bills.

Dr. Talcott Williams pointed out to me not long since that after all
great wars, and notably after our own Civil War, there has been a
notable increase in the number of marriages in which the preponderance
of years was on the wrong side. Also that it was not until after our
own war that the heroine of fiction began to reverse the immemorial
procedure and marry a man her inferior in years. In other words,
anything she could get. This would almost argue that fiction is not
only the historian of life but its apologist.

It is quite true that young men coming to maturity during majestic
periods of the world's history are not likely to have the callow
brains and petty ideals which distinguished the average youth of
peace. Even boys of fourteen these days talk intelligently of the war
and the future. They read the newspapers, even subscribing for one if
at a boarding-school. In the best of the American universities the men
have been alive to the war from the first, and a large proportion of
the young Americans who have done gallant service with the American
Ambulance Corps had recently graduated when the war broke out. Others
are serving during vacations, and are difficult to lure back to their
studies.

Some of the young Europeans of eighteen or twenty will come home from
the trenches when peace is declared, and beyond a doubt will compel
the love if not the respect of damsels of twenty-five and upward. But
will they care whether they fascinate spinsters of twenty-five and
upward, or not? The fact is not to be overlooked that there will be as
many young girls as youths, and as these girls also have matured
during their long apprenticeship to sorrow and duty, it is not to be
imagined they will fail to interest young warriors of their own
age--nor fail to battle for their rights with every device known to
the sex.

Temperament must be taken into consideration, of course, and a certain
percentage of men and women of unbalanced ages will be drawn together.
That happens in times of peace. Moreover it is likely that a large
number of young Germans in this country either will conceive it their
duty to return to Germany and marry there or import the forlorn in
large numbers. If they have already taken to themselves American wives
it is on the cards that they will renounce them also. There is nothing
a German cannot be made to believe is his duty to the Fatherland, and
he was brought up not to think. But if monarchy falls in Germany, and
a republic, socialistic or merely democratic, rises on the ruins, then
it is more than likely that the superfluous women will be encouraged
to transfer themselves and their maidenly dreams to the great
dumping-ground of the world.

Unless we legislate meanwhile.




V

FOUR OF THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED


There are four other ways in which women (exclusive of the artist
class) are enjoying remunerative careers: as social secretaries, play
brokers, librarians, and editors; and it seems to me that I cannot do
better than to drop generalities in this final chapter and give four
of the most notable instances in which women have "made good" in these
highly distinctive professions. I have selected four whom I happen to
know well enough to portray at length: Maria de Barril, Alice Kauser,
Belle da Costa Greene, and Honoré Willsie. It is true that Mrs.
Willsie, being a novelist, belongs to the artist class, but she is
also an editor, which to my mind makes her success in both spheres the
more remarkable. To edit means hours daily of routine, details,
contacts; mechanical work, business, that would drive most writers of
fiction quite mad. But Mrs. Willsie is exceptionally well balanced.


I

MARIA DE BARRIL


A limited number of young women thrown abruptly upon their own
resources become social secretaries if their own social positions
have insensibly prepared them for the position, and if they live in a
city large enough to warrant this fancy but by no means inactive post.
In Washington they are much in demand by Senators' and Congressmen's
wives suddenly translated from a small town where the banker's lady
hobnobbed with the prosperous undertaker's family, to a city where the
laws of social precedence are as rigid as at the court of the
Hapsburgs and a good deal more complicated. But these young women must
themselves have lived in Washington for many years, or they will be
forced to divide their salary with a native assistant.

The most famous social secretary in the United States, if not in the
world, is Maria de Barril, and she is secretary not to one rich woman
but to New York society itself. Her position, entirely self-made, is
unique and secure, and well worth telling.

Pampered for the first twenty years of her life like a princess and
with all her blood derived from one of the oldest and most relaxed
nations in Europe, she was suddenly forced to choose between sinking
out of sight, the mere breath kept in her body, perhaps, on a pittance
from distant relatives, or going to work.

She did not hesitate an instant. Being of society she knew its needs,
and although she was too young to look far ahead and foresee the
structure which was to rise upon these tentative foundations, she
shrewdly began by offering her services to certain friends often
hopelessly bewildered with the mass of work they were obliged to
leave to incompetent secretaries and housekeepers. One thing led to
another, as it always does with brave spirits, and to-day Miss de
Barril has a position in life which, with its independence and
freedom, she would not exchange for that of any of her patrons. She
conducted her economic venture with consummate tact from the first.
Owing to a promise made her mother, the haughtiest of old Spanish
dames as I remember her, she never has entered on business the houses
of the society that employs her, and has retained her original social
position apparently without effort.

She has offices, which she calls her embassy, and there, with a staff
of secretaries, she advises, dictates, revises lists, issues thousands
of invitations a week during the season, plans entertainments for
practically all of New York society that makes a business of pleasure.

Some years ago a scion of one of those New York families so much
written about that they have become almost historical, married after
the death of his mother, and wished to introduce his bride at a
dinner-dance in the large and ugly mansion whose portals in his
mother's day opened only to the indisputably elect.

The bridegroom found his mother's list, but, never having exercised
his masculine faculties in this fashion before, and hazy as to whether
all on that list were still alive or within the pale, he wrote to the
social ambassadress asking her to come to his house on a certain
morning and advise him. Miss de Barril replied that not even for a
member of his family, devoted as she was to it, would she break her
promise to her mother, and he trotted down to her without further
parley. Moreover, she was one of the guests at the dinner.

Of course it goes without saying that Miss de Barril has not only
brains and energy, but character, a quite remarkably fascinating
personality, and a thorough knowledge of the world. Many would have
failed where she succeeded. She must have had many diplomatists among
her ancestors, for her tact is incredible, although in her case Latin
subtlety never has degenerated into hypocrisy. No woman has more
devoted friends. Personally I know that I should have thrown them all
out of the window the first month and then retired to a cave on a
mountain. She must have the social sense in the highest degree,
combined with a real love of "the world."

Her personal appearance may have something to do with her success.
Descended on one side from the Incas of Peru, she looks like a Spanish
grandee, and is known variously to her friends as "Inca," "Queen," and
"Doña Maria"--my own name for her. When I knew her first she found it
far too much of an effort to pull on her stockings and was as haughty
and arrogant a young girl as was to be found in the then cold and
stately city of New York. She looks as haughty as ever because it is
difficult for a Spaniard of her blood to look otherwise; but her
manners are now as charming as her manner is imposing; and if the
bottom suddenly fell out of Society her developed force of character
would steer her straight into another lucrative position with no
disastrous loss of time.

It remains to be pointed out that she would have failed in this
particular sphere if New York Society had been as callous and devoid
of loyalty even in those days, as the novel of fashion has won its
little success by depicting it. The most socially eminent of her
friends were those that helped her from the first, and with them she
is as intimate as ever to-day.


II

ALICE BERTA JOSEPHINE KAUSER


Credit must be given to Elisabeth Marbury for inventing the now
flourishing and even over-crowded business of play broker; but as she
was of a strongly masculine character and as surrounded by friends as
Miss de Barril, her success is neither as remarkable nor as
interesting as that of Alice Kauser, who has won the top place in this
business in a great city to which she came poor and a stranger.

Not that she had; grown up in the idea that she must make her own way
in the world. Far from it. It is for that reason I have selected her
as another example of what a girl may accomplish if she have character
and grit backed up with a thorough intellectual training. For, it must
never be forgotten, unless one is a genius it is impossible to enter
the first ranks of the world's workers without a good education and
some experience of the world. Parents that realize this find no
sacrifice too great to give their children the most essential of all
starts in life. But the extraordinary thing in the United States of
America is how comparatively few parents do realize it. Moreover, how
many are weak enough, even when with a reasonable amount of
self-sacrifice they could send their children through college, to
yield to the natural desire of youth to "get out and hustle."

Miss Kauser was born in Buda Pest, in the United States Consular
Agency, for her father, although a Hungarian, was Consular Agent. It
was an intellectual family and on her mother's side musically gifted.
Miss Kauser's aunt, Etelka Gerster, when she came to this country as a
prima donna had a brief but brilliant career, and the music-loving
public prostrated itself. But her wonderful voice was a fragile
coloratura, and her first baby demolished it. Berta Gerster, Miss
Kauser's mother, was almost equally renowned for a while in Europe.

Mr. Kauser himself was a pupil of Abel Blouet at the Beaux Arts, but
he fought in the Revolution of 1848 in Hungary, and later with
Garibaldi in the Hungarian Legion in Italy.

Miss Kauser, who must have been born well after these stirring events,
was educated by French governesses and Polish tutors. Her friends tell
the story of her that she grew up with the determination to be the
most beautiful woman in the world, and when she realized that,
although handsome and imposing, she was not a great beauty according
to accepted standards, she philosophically buried this callow ambition
and announced, "Very well; I shall be the most intellectual woman in
the world."

There are no scales by which to make tests of these delicate degrees
of the human mind, even in the case of authors who put forth four
books a year, but there is no question that Miss Kauser is a highly
accomplished woman, with a deep knowledge of the literature of many
lands, a passionate feeling for style, and a fine judgment that is the
result of years of hard intellectual work and an equally profound
study of the world. And who shall say that the wild ambitions of her
extreme youth did not play their part in making her what she is
to-day? I have heard "ambition" sneered at all my life, but never by
any one who possessed the attribute itself, or the imaginative power
to appreciate what ambition has meant in the progress of the world.

Miss Kauser studied for two years at the École Monceau in Paris,
although she had been her father's housekeeper and a mother to the
younger children since the age of twelve. Both in Paris and Buda Pest
she was in constant association with friends of her father, who
developed her intellectual breadth.

Financial reverses brought the family to America and they settled in
Pensacola, Florida. Here Miss Kauser thought it was high time to put
her accomplishments to some use and help out the family exchequer.
She began almost at once to teach French and music. When her brothers
were older she made up her mind to seek her fortune in New York and
arrived with, a letter or two. For several months she taught music and
literature in private families. Then Mary Bisland introduced her to
Miss Marbury, where she attended to the French correspondence of the
office for a year.

But these means of livelihood were mere makeshifts. Ambitious,
imperious, and able, it was not in her to work for others for any
great length of time. As soon as she felt that she "knew the ropes" in
New York she told certain friends she had made that she wished to go
into the play brokerage business for herself. As she inspires
confidence--this is one of her assets--her friends staked her, and she
opened her office with the intention of promoting American plays only.
Her trained mind rapidly adapted itself to business and in the course
of a few years she was handling the plays of many of the leading
dramatists for a proportionate number of leading producers. When the
war broke out, so successful was she that she had a house of her own
in the East Thirties, furnished with the beautiful things she had
collected during her yearly visits to Europe--for long since she had
opened offices in Paris and London, her business outgrowing its first
local standard.

The war hit her very hard. She had but recently left the hospital
after a severe operation, which had followed several years of
precarious health. She was quite a year reestablishing her former
strength and full capacity for work. One of the most exuberantly
vital persons I had ever met, she looked as frail as a reed during
that first terrible year of the war, but now seems to have recovered
her former energies.

There was more than the common results of an operation to exasperate
her nerves and keep her vitality at a low ebb. Some thirty of her male
relatives were at the Front, and the whole world of the theater was
smitten with a series of disastrous blows. Sixteen plays on the road
failed in one day, expensive plays ran a week in New York. Managers
went into bankruptcy. It was a time of strain and uncertainty and
depression, and nobody suffered more than the play brokers. Miss
Kauser as soon as the war broke out rented her house and went into
rooms that she might send to Hungary all the money she could make over
expenses, and for a year this money was increasingly difficult to
collect, or even to make. But if she despaired no one heard of it. She
hung on. By and by the financial tide turned for the country at large
and she was one of the first to ride on the crest. Her business is now
greater than ever, and her interest in life as keen.


III

BELLE DA COSTA GREENE


This "live wire," one of the outstanding personalities in New York,
despite her youth, is the antithesis of the two previous examples of
successful women in business, inasmuch as no judge on the bench nor
surgeon at the Front ever had a severer training for his profession
than she. People who meet for the first time the young tutelar genius
of Mr. Morgan's Library, take for granted that any girl so fond of
society, so fashionable in dress and appointments, and with such a
comet's tail of admirers, must owe her position with its large salary
to "pull," and that it is probably a sinecure anyway.

Little they know.

Belle Greene, who arrests even the casual if astute observer with her
overflowing _joie de vivre_ and impresses him as having the best of
times in this best of all possible worlds, is perhaps the "keenest on
her job" of any girl in the city of New York. Let any of these
superficial admirers attempt to obtain entrance, if he can, to the
Library, during the long hours of work, and with the natural masculine
intention of clinching the favorable impression he made on the young
lady the evening before, and he will depart in haste, moved to a
higher admiration or cursing the well-known caprice of woman,
according to his own equipment.

For Miss Greene's determination to be one of the great librarians of
the world took form within her precocious brain at the age of thirteen
and it has never fluctuated since. Special studies during both school
and recreation hours were pursued to the end in view: Latin, Greek,
French, German, history--the rise and spread of civilization in
particular, and as demonstrated by the Arts, Sciences, and Literature
of the world. When she had absorbed all the schools could give her,
she took an apprenticeship in the Public Library system in order
thoroughly to ground herself in the clerical and routine phases of the
work.

She took a special course in bibliography at the Amherst Summer
Library School, and then entered the Princeton University Library on
nominal pay at the foot of the ladder, and worked up through every
department in order to perfect herself for the position of University
Librarian.

While at Princeton she decided to specialize in early printing, rare
books, and historical and illuminated manuscripts. She studied the
history of printing from its inception in 1445 to the present day. It
was after she had taken up the study of manuscripts from the
standpoint of their contents that she found that it was next to
impossible to progress further along that line in this country, as at
that time we had neither the material nor the scholars. She has often
expressed the wish that there had been in her day a Morgan Library for
consultation.

When she had finished the course at Princeton she went abroad and
studied with the recognized authorities in England and Italy. Ten
years, in fact, were spent in unceasing application, what the college
boy calls "grind," without which Miss Greene is convinced it is
impossible for any one to succeed in any vocation or attain a
distinguished position. To all demands for advice her answer is,
"Work, work, and more work."

She took hold of the Morgan Library in its raw state, when the
valuable books and MSS. Mr. Morgan had bought at sales in Europe were
still packed in cases; and out of that initial disorder Belle Greene,
almost unaided, has built up one of the greatest libraries in the
world. Soon after her installation she began a systematic course in
Art research. She visited the various museums and private collections
of this country, and got in touch with the heads of the different
departments and their curators. She followed their methods until it
was borne in upon her that most of them were antiquated and befogging,
whereupon she began another course in Europe during the summer months
in order to study under the experts in the various fields of art;
comparing the works of artists and artisans of successive periods,
applying herself to the actual technique of painting in its many
phases, studying the influence of the various masters upon their
contemporaries and future disciples.

By attending auction sales, visiting dealers constantly and all
exhibitions, reading all art periodicals, she soon learned the
commercial value of art objects.

Thus in time she was able and with authority to assist Mr. Morgan in
the purchase of his vast collections which embraced art in all its
forms. With the exception of that foundation of the library which
caused Mr. Morgan to engage her services, she has purchased nearly
every book and manuscript it contains.

Another branch of the collectors' art that engaged Miss Greene's
attention was the clever forgery, a business in itself. She even went
so far as to buy more than one specimen, thus learning by actual
handling and examination to distinguish the spurious from the real.
Now she knows the difference at a glance. She maintains there is even
a difference in the smell Mr. Morgan bought nothing himself without
consulting her; if they were on opposite sides of the world he used
the cable.

Naturally Miss Greene to-day enjoys the entrée to that select and
jealously guarded inner circle of authorities, who despise the
amateur, but who recognize this American girl, who has worked as hard
as a day laborer, as "one of them." But she maintains that if she had
not thoroughly equipped herself in the first place not even the great
advantages she enjoyed as Mr. Morgan's librarian could have given her
the peculiar position she now enjoys, a position that is known to few
of the people she plays about with in her leisure hours.

She has adopted the mottoes of the two contemporaries she has most
admired: Mr. Morgan's "Onward and Upward" and Sarah Bernhardt's "Quand
Même."


IV

HONORÉ WILLSIE


Honoré Willsie, who comes of fine old New England stock, although she
looks like a Burne-Jones and would have made a furore in London in the
Eighties, was brought up in the idea that an American woman should
fit herself for self-support no matter what her birth and conditions.
Her mother, although the daughter of a rich man, was brought up on the
same principles, and taught school until she married. All her friends,
no matter how well-off, made themselves useful and earned money.

Therefore, Mrs. Willsie was thoroughly imbued while a very young girl
with the economic ideal, although her mother had planted with equal
thoroughness the principle that it was every woman's primary duty to
marry and have a family.

Mrs. Willsie was educated at Madison, Wisconsin, beginning with the
public schools and graduating from the University. She married
immediately after leaving college, and, encouraged by her husband, a
scientist, and as hard a student as herself, she began to write. Her
first story followed the usual course; it was refused by every
magazine to which she sent it; but, undiscouraged, she rewrote it for
a syndicate. For a year after this she used the newspapers as a sort
of apprenticeship to literature and wrote story after story until she
had learned the craft of "plotting." When she felt free in her new
medium she began writing for the better magazines; and, compared with
most authors, she has had little hard climbing in her upward course.
Naturally, there were obstacles and setbacks, but she is not of the
stuff that ten times the number could discourage.

Then came the third stage. She wrote a novel. It was refused by many
publishers in New York, but finally accepted as a serial in the first
magazine that had rejected it.

This was _The Heart of the Desert_. After that followed _Still Jim_
which established her and paved the way for an immediate reception for
that other fine novel of American ideals, _Lydia of the Pines_.

It was about two years ago that she was asked to undertake the
editorship of the _Delineator_, and at first she hesitated, although
the "job" appealed to her; she had no reason to believe that she
possessed executive ability. The owner, who had "sized her up,"
thought differently, and the event has justified him. She ranks to-day
as one of the most successful, courageous, and resourceful editors of
woman's magazines in the country. The time must come, of course, when
she no longer will be willing to give up her time to editorial work,
now that there is a constant demand for the work she loves best; but
the experience with its contacts and its mental training must always
have its value. The remarkable part of it was that she could fill such
a position without having served some sort of an apprenticeship first.
Nothing but the sound mental training she had received at home and at
college, added to her own determined will, could have saved her from
failure in spite of her mental gifts.

Mrs. Willsie, like all women worth their salt, says that she never has
felt there was the slightest discrimination made against her work by
publishers or editors because she was a woman.


THE END




ADDENDUM


NOTE.--_Six months ago I wrote asking Madame d'Andigné to send me
notes of her work before becoming the President of Le Bien--Être du
Blessé. She promised, but no woman in France is busier. The following
arrived after the book was in press, so I can only give it
verbatim.--G.A._


At the time this gigantic struggle broke out I was in America. My
first thought was to get to France as soon as possible. I sailed on
August 2nd for Cherbourg but as we were pursued by two German ships
our course was changed and I landed in England. After many trials and
tribulations I reached Paris. The next day I went to the headquarters
of the French Red Cross and offered my services. I showed the American
Red Cross certificate which had been given to me at the end of my
services at Camp Meade during the Spanish-American War. As I had had
practically little surgical experience since the course I took at the
Rhode Island Hospital before the Spanish-American War I asked to take
a course in modern surgery. I was told that my experience during that
war and my Red Cross certificate was more than sufficient. After
serious reflection I decided that I could render more service to
France by getting in the immense crops that were standing in our
property in the south of France than by nursing the wounded soldiers.
Far less glorious but of vital importance! So off I went to the south
of France. By the middle of October thousands of kilos of cereals and
hay and over 20,000 hectoliters of wine were ready to supply the army
at the front. I then spent my time in various hospitals studying the
up-to-date system of hospital war relief work. It was not difficult
to see the deficiencies--the means of rapidly transporting the wounded
from the "postes de secours" to an operating table out of the range of
cannons--in other words auto-ambulances--impossible to find in France
at that time. So I cabled to America. The first was offered by my
father. It was not until January that this splendid spacious
motor-ambulance arrived and was offered immediately to the French Red
Cross. Presently others arrived and were offered to the Service de
Santé. These cars have never ceased to transport the wounded from the
Front lines to hospitals in the War Zone. I heard of one in the north
and another in the Somme. This work finished, I took up duty as
assistant in an operating room in Paris to get my hand in. I next went
to a military hospital at Amiens. This hospital was partly closed soon
afterward, and, anxious to have a great deal of work, I went to the
military hospital at Versailles.

The work in the operating room was very absorbing, as it was there
that that wonderful apparatus for locating a bullet by mathematical
calculation was invented and first used. There, between those four
white walls I have seen bullets extracted from the brain, the lungs,
the liver, the "vesicule biliaire," etc., etc.

From there I was called to a large military hospital at the time of
the attack in Champagne in September, 1915. Soon I was asked to
organize and superintend the Service of the Mussulman troops. At first
it was hard and unsatisfactory. I spoke only a few words of Arabic and
they spoke but little French. I had difficulty in overcoming the
contempt that the Mussulmans have for women. They were all severely
wounded and horribly mutilated, but the moral work was more tiring
than the physical.

However, little by little they got used to me and I to them. We became
the best of friends and I never experienced more simple childlike
gratitude than with these "Sidis." I remember one incident worth
quoting. I was suffering from a severe grippy cold--they saw that I
was tired and felt miserable. I left the ward for a few moments. On
returning I found that they had pushed a bed a little to one side in a
corner and had turned down the bed-clothes and placed a hot-water jug
in it (without hot water). The occupant was a Moroccan as black as the
ace of spades; he was trepanned but was allowed up a certain number of
hours a day. "Maman,"--they all called me Maman--"toi blessée, toi
ergut (lie down) nous tubibe (doctor) nous firmli (nurse)." And this
black, so-called savage, Moroccan took up his post beside the bed as I
had often done for him. I explained as best as I could that I would
have to have a permission signed by the Medecin-Chef, otherwise I
would be punished; and the Medecin-Chef had left the hospital for the
night. He shook his wise black head, "Maman blessée, Maman blessée!"

One called me one day and asked me what my Allah was like. I told him
I thought he was probably very much like his. Well! if my Allah was
not good to me, theirs would take care of me, they would see to that.

In May, 1916, I was asked to organize a war relief work[H] at the
request of the Service de Santé. This work was to provide the "grands
blessés et malades" with light nourishing food, in other words,
invalid food. The rules and regulations of the French military
hospitals are not sufficiently elastic to allow the administering of
such food. In time of war it would be easier almost to remove Mt.
Blanc than to change these rules and regulations. There was just one
solution--private war relief work.

  [H] Le Bien--Être du Blessé.

So, with great regret, I bade good-bye to these children I never would
have consented to have left had it not been for the fact that I knew
from experience how necessary was the war relief work which was forced
upon me, as I had seen many men die from want of light nourishing
food.








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