*Paris in October*
[From The London Times, Oct. 21, 1914.]
PARIS, Oct. 19.
The more one studies the life of Paris at the present time, and especially its patriotic and benevolent activities, the more is one impressed by the unanimous determination of its inhabitants to face whatever may befall and to make the best of things. It is difficult to realize at first sight how completely, in the hour of trial, the traditional light-heartedness of the Parisian has been translated to a fine simplicity of courage and devotion to the common cause and to a high seriousness of patriotism. There is something splendidly impressive and stimulating in the spectacle of civilization"s most sensitive culture suddenly confronted by the stern realities of a life-and-death struggle, and responding unanimously to the call of duty. Without hesitation or complaint, Paris has put away childish things, her toys, her luxury, and her laughter; today her whole life reflects only fixed purposes of united effort, of courage never, never to submit or yield, and this splendid determination is all the more significant for being undemonstrative and almost silent.
We English people, who, observing chiefly the surface life of the French capital, have generally been disposed to regard the Parisian temperament as mutable and often impatient of adversity, must now make our confession of error and the amende honorable; for nothing could be more admirable than the att.i.tude of all cla.s.ses of the community in their stoic acceptance of the sacrifices and sufferings imposed upon them by this war at their gates. Especially striking is the philosophic acquiescence of the city, accustomed to know and to discuss all things, in the impenetrable [Transcriber: original "impentrable"] veil of secrecy which conceals the movements and the fortunes of the French armies in the field. Go where you will, even among those of the very poor who have lost their breadwinners, and you will hear few criticisms and no complaints. The little midinette thrown out of employment, the shopkeeper faced with ruin, the artist reduced to actual want--they also are in the fighting line, and they are proud of it. The women of the thrifty middle cla.s.s consider it just as much their duty to devote their savings of years to the common cause as their husbands and brothers do to bear arms against the enemy; only in the last extremity of need do they make appeal to the "Secours National" for a.s.sistance. And when they do, they are well content to live on a maintenance allowance of 1s. a day and 5d. for every child.
The other Sunday morning at the hour of ma.s.s, when two German aeroplanes were engaged in their genial occupation of throwing bombs over the residential and business quarters of the city, I a.s.sisted at several sidewalk conversations in the district lying between the Madeleine and the Rue de Rivoli. Nowhere did I find the least sign of excitement.
Indeed, there was curiously little interest shown as to the results of the explosions in that neighborhood; only a grim acceptance of this daily visitation as something to be added to the score in the final day of reckoning and some expression of surprise that the French aeroplanes (supposed to be constantly on the alert for these visitors) should not have found some means of putting an end to the nuisance. At the same time I heard several spectators express their admiration of the German aviators" courage and appreciation of the ease and grace with which they handled their beautiful machines. In the cafes that evening, when the full list of the casualties and damage had been published, one heard a good deal of criticism, seasoned with Attic salt, on the subject of the belated appearance of the French aeroplanes on the scene, and hopes that the boulevards might soon be rewarded by the spectacle of a duel in the air. They seem to think they have earned it.
But in the afternoon all Paris was out--in the Jarden des Tuileries, in the Bois, at Vincennes, basking in the sunshine of a glorious Autumn day, Madame et Bebe bravely making the best of it in the absence of Monsieur. (Not that Monsieur is always absent; the proportion of men in the crowd, and men of serviceable age, was considerably larger than one might have expected.) If the object of the German aviators is to instill terror into the hearts of the Parisians they are wasting their time and their bombs.
Those people in London who complain about not being able to get supper after the theatre, and other minor disturbances of their even tenor of existence, should spend a few days in Paris. They would observe how easily a community may learn to do without many things, and how the lesson itself becomes a moral tonic, unmistakably stimulating in its effects.
Paris is reminded every morning of duty and discipline when it begins by doing without its beloved pet.i.ts pains and croissants for breakfast, the order having gone forth that bakers, being short-handed, are to make only pain de menage. Similarly, because the majority of journalists and popular writers are under arms, Paris does without its accustomed daily refreshment of ephemeral literature, its comic and ill.u.s.trated press, its literary and artistic causeries, its feuilletons, and chroniques. It does without its theatres, its music halls, without politics, art, and social amenities, without barbers, florists, and motor cars, partly because there are not men enough to keep these things going, and partly because, even if there were, la patrie comes first, so that thrifty self-denial has become the duty of every good citizen. If the telephone breaks down, (as it usually does,) there is no one to repair it, so the subscriber goes without; if the trains and trams cease running on regular schedules the Parisian accepts the fact and stays at home.
In normal times life is made up of the sum of little things, but at great moments the little things cease to count. How true this is in Paris today one may judge from the correspondence and records of the "Secours National"; they reveal an intense and widespread impulse of personal pride in self-denial, and prove that the heart of the Parisian bourgeoisie is sound to the core.
To a foreigner, accustomed to the Paris of literary and artistic traditions, perhaps the most remarkable feature in the life of the city today lies in the absence of articulate public opinion, and apparently of public interest, in everything outside the immediate issues of the war. With one or two exceptions, such as the Temps and the Debats, the press of the capital practically confines itself to recording the events and progress of the campaign; nothing else matters. So far as Paris is concerned, all the rest of the world, from China to Peru, might be non-existent. Neither the political nor the economic consequences of the war are seriously examined or discussed; the sole business of the newspapers consists in supplementing, to the best of their abilities, the meagre war news supplied through official channels. Some interest attaches, of course, to the att.i.tude of Italy; but, beyond that, all things sublunary seem to have faded into a remote distance of unreality--sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
The explanation [Transcriber: original "explaantion"] of this att.i.tude of complete detachment lies, no doubt, chiefly in the fact that the men who make and exchange political opinions have gone to Bordeaux, while most of those who create and guide public (as distinct from political) opinion, have exchanged the pen for the sword. Just as Paris, for want of bakers, has only one kind of bread, so, for want of the men who usually inspire public opinion, her press has concentrated upon one absorbing idea, ecraser les allemands. Moreover, for want of printers and of advertisers, most of the daily papers have now dwindled to microscopic proportions. The virile intelligence of Paris journalism and the nimble and adventurous inquisitiveness, which are its normally distinguishing characteristics, have gone, like everything else, to the front. As the editor of the Gil Blas says in a farewell poster to his subscribers: "Youth has only one duty to perform in these days. Our chief and all the staff have joined the colors. Whenever events shall permit, Gil Blas will resume its cheerful way. A bien-tot."
*France and England As Seen in War Time*
*An Interview With F. Hopkinson Smith.*
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY MAGAZINE, Dec. 6, 1914.]
F. Hopkinson Smith was in France when the war broke out, he spent September in London, and is now back in New York. He has brought home many sketches. Not sketches which suggest war in the least, but which were made with the thought of the war lurking in the background.
"Curiously enough," he said, without waiting for any opening question from THE TIMES reporter--Mr. Smith often interviews himself--"curiously enough, I was on my way to Rheims to make a sketch of the Cathedral when the war broke out. I had started out to make a series of sketches of the great European cathedrals. Not etchings, but charcoal sketches.
"Let me say here, too, that cathedrals for the most part ought not to be etched. You lose too many shadows, though you gain in line; but in the etching you have to cross-hatch so heavily with ink that the result is just ink, and not shadow at all. Charcoal gives you depth and transparency. I was eager to do a series of the cathedrals, as I had done a series for the d.i.c.kens and Thackeray books, and had planned to give my, entire Summer to it.
"I had been in London for some time. I had sketched in Westminster, in St. Bartholomew"s. Everything peaceful and quiet. It seems now as if we ought to have felt--all of us, the people on the streets, I, shopkeepers, every one--the approach of this tremendous war. But we didn"t, of course. No one in England had the faintest suspicion that this terrible inhuman thing was going to happen.
"I went on to France. I sketched Notre Dame, over which they exploded sh.e.l.ls a month or so later. I did some work in the beautiful St.
Etienne. I sauntered down into South Normandy and was stopping for a little color work at the Inn of William the Conqueror before going on to Rheims."
These water colors of French farms, French inns, and French gardens are glimpses caught at the very eleventh hour before France put on a totally different aspect.
"The war broke out. There at the quiet little French inn everything suddenly changed color. It was quick, it was quiet. There was a complete change in the snap of a finger. All the chauffeurs and the porters and the waiters--men who had been there for years and with whom we who visit there Summer after Summer have grown familiar--suddenly stopped work, gave up their jobs, were turned into soldiers. One hardly recognized them.
"We were all stunned. I realized that I could not go on to Rheims, that I probably should not get down into Italy. I scarcely realized at first what that meant. I could not conceive, none of us could conceive," Mr.
Smith exploded violently, "that any one, under any necessity whatsoever, should lay hands on the Rheims Cathedral. It"s too monstrous! The world will never forgive it, never!
"The world is divided, I tell you! It is not a Double Alliance and a Triple Entente; it is not a Germany and a Russia and a United States and an Italy and an England. That is not the division of the world just now.
There are two sides, and only two sides. There is barbarism on the one hand, civilization on the other; there is brutality and there is humanity. And humanity is going to win, but the sacrifices are awful--awful!"
"How about the feeling in France, Mr. Smith?"
"I can"t tell you how overwhelmingly pathetic it is--the sight of these brave Frenchmen. Every one has remarked it. Once and for all the tradition that the French are an excitable, emotional people with no grip on their pa.s.sions and no rein on their impulses--that fiction is dead for all time.
"I saw that whole first act of France"s drama. I saw the French people stand still on that first day and take breath. Then I saw France set to work. She was unprepared, but she was ready in spirit. There was no excitement, there were no demonstrations. The men climbed into their trains without any exhibitions of patriotism, without any outbursts.
There were many women crying quietly, with children huddled about their skirts.
"The spirit of England is different, but there is the same lack of excitement. I chartered a motor bus when the war broke out and got to Paris, and then went back to London, where I sketched for a month, saw my friends, and talked war.
"Making sketches in war time is very different, by the way, from making sketches in time of peace. It is a business full of possibilities, when all manner of spy suspicions are afloat. I made up my mind to do a sketch of the Royal Exchange. Not as I should have done it a year before, mind you, nor even three months before, but now, with the thought of bomb-dropping Zeppelins in the back of my mind. It occurred to me when I was hurrying along one rainy evening in a taxi past the Stock Exchange, the Globe Insurance, the Bank of England. Everywhere cabs drawn up along the curbing, cabs slipping past, people, great moving crowds of people with their umbrellas up, moving off down Threadneedle and Victoria.
"A lot of human life and some very beautiful architecture and a good part of the world"s business, all concentrated here. And I thought to myself what might happen should the cultured Germans get as far as London, and should the defenders of the world"s civilization drop a bomb down into the heart of things here. I pictured to myself what havoc could be wrought.
"And I thought, too, of places like Southwark. Ever been in Southwark?
Horrible. A year before, when I was making the sketches for my d.i.c.kens book, I spent a great deal of time in the Southwark section. Now, with the prospect of Zeppelins, I thought again of Southwark. A bomb in a Southwark street! Good Lord, can you imagine the horror of it! There fifty or sixty families are packed into a single tenement, and the houses in their turn are packed one against the next along streets so narrow that the buildings seem to be nodding to each other, touching foreheads almost. Desperately poor people, children swarming every moment of the day and night up and down these dark stairways, up and down these hideously dark streets. Now drop a bomb in the midst of it all. That is what Englishmen are thinking of now.
"I didn"t go over into Southwark; I couldn"t stand it. The next day I went back to the Stock Exchange to make my sketch. I"ve done sketches in London before--every nook and cranny of it--but this time I felt a little nervous when I got there with my umbrella and my little tools.
But I managed it. I said to the bobby, I said--"
And then Mr. Smith, getting up from his chair and relapsing into the frown that always means he is going to tell a story, showed how he managed it. It is impossible to reproduce Mr. Smith"s inimitable manner.
""Are you, now?" said I.
""Well, "ow can I tell?" said he.
""But if you"re the excellent English bobby that I believe you to be,"
said I, "you"ll see at once that I"m an honest American artist just here to do a little sketching."
""I tell you," said he. W"y don"t you just pop hup and see "Is Lordship the Mayor?"
"And so I did pop up and I told the Lord Mayor my troubles, and he waved me a hearty wave of his hand and said he"d do anything to oblige an American, and I came down again, and here was the bobby still very upright but watching my approach from the tail of his eye. And I pretended I had never seen him, but as I went past I slipped him a cigar, and when I pa.s.sed back again he twinkled his eye. Stuck between the b.u.t.tons of his coat, there being no other place, was my fat cigar.
"I made my sketch of the Royal Exchange. I want Americans to see what can happen if His Imperial Lowness over on the Continent sees fit to send his Zeppelins to England. Not being big enough nor strong enough to injure England vitally, he can take this method of injury, he can injure women and children and maim horses, destroy business and works of art and blow up the congested districts.
"We have seen what the Savior of the World"s Culture could do in France and Belgium; it is small wonder that all England has in the back of her head surmises as to what he might accomplish if some of his air craft crossed the Channel. By which I do not mean to say that the English are apprehensive. They are not nervous. I have spent more than a month with them, among my own friends, learning the general temper of the country.
"There are no demonstrations, there is no boasting, no display. London is much the same as it always was. At night London is darkened, in accordance with the order of Oct. 9, but that is about all the difference. It is so dark that you can hardly get up Piccadilly, but London takes her amus.e.m.e.nts about as usual. The theatres are not overcrowded, but neither are they empty. For luncheons and for dinners Prince"s is full, the Carlton is full. The searchlights are playing over the city looking for those Zeppelins. That is a new wrinkle to me; the idea of blinding the men up there at the wheel with a powerful light is a good one.
"These Englishmen have their teeth set. They know perfectly well that they are fighting for their existence. All this talk of the necessity of drumming up patriotism in England is bosh. England has no organized publicity bureau such as Germany, and in contrast she may have seemed quiet to the point of apathy. But don"t fancy that Englishmen are apathetic. They are slow and they are sure. They are just beginning to realize that they have these fellows by the back of the necks. Before I left London I saw every day in the Temple Gardens, down by the Embankment, that steady drill of thousands of young men in straw hats, yellow shoes, and business suits. I felt their spirit.