Part 3 (2/2)

The tenors and baritones and sopranos of the Opera and other theaters are going round singing in the courtyards for the benefit of the Red Cross. The Salon is turned into a military stable. Where the pictures hung, horses are munching their hay. The Comedie Francaise is to become a day nursery for the children of women who, in the absence of their husbands, are obliged to go out to work.

Mr. Herrick told me this afternoon that a few days ago the Telegraph Office refused his cipher cables to Was.h.i.+ngton. The Amba.s.sador at once protested at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the Minister, M. Doumergue, forthwith gave orders authorizing the telegraph office to accept his cipher messages. The Austrian Amba.s.sador, who is still here, is not permitted to communicate by cipher telegrams with his Government. This is quite natural.

Monday, August 10.

Ninth day of mobilization. Hot, sunny weather. Temperature at five P.M. 29 degrees centigrade. Light southerly breeze.

Depicted on all faces this morning is anxious but confident expectation, for the public are conscious that a desperate encounter between two millions of men is impending in Belgium and on the Alsace-Lorraine border from Liege to Colmar.

The French capital is, at the present moment, a city of strange contrasts. Mothers, wives, sisters, and brides were last week red-eyed from the sorrow of parting. Now these same women have decorated their windows with bunting and have no thought other than of working as best they may to help the national cause.

In the streets, the shrill voices of children pipe the latest news from the front; small girls cry grim details of the war.

All prisoners charged with light offenses who are mobilizable have been allowed to go to the front to rehabilitate themselves. The central prison of Fresnes, which ten days ago contained nine hundred criminals, has now only two hundred and fifty left.

And all the time Paris lives an every-day, humdrum life, makes the best of everything, and never complains.

Day by day the aspect of the streets becomes more normal, for the reason that more and more vehicles are freed from military service and can now resume their ordinary duties of transporting the public. Pending the return of the motor-omnibuses, a service of char-a-bancs has been started on the boulevards, which reminds Parisians of the days of the popular ”Madeleine-Bastille” omnibus.

Diplomatic relations between France and Austria-Hungary were broken off to-day. War however has not been declared between France and Austria.

I met to-day M. Hedeman, the correspondent of the Matin, who recently witnessed in Berlin the arrival of Emperor William and the Crown Prince, which he compared to the departure of Napoleon III for Sedan in 1870. We were talking at the Ministry of War, where I also met the Marquis Robert de Flers, the well-known dramatist and editor of the Figaro, and M. Lazare Weiler, deputy. M. Hedeman told me that two days after the declaration of war a skirmish took place near the village of Genaville in the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, between French custom-house officials and a squadron of German cavalry. The commander of the German detachment was shot in the stomach, fell to the ground, and was captured. He was Lieutenant Baron Marshall von Bieberstein, son of the former German Amba.s.sador at Constantinople. A French lieutenant of gendarmes helped the prisoner to his feet. Lieutenant von Bieberstein, who was mortally wounded, said: ”Thank you, gentlemen! I have done my duty in serving my country, just as you are serving your own!” He then died. M. Charles Humbert, senator of the Meuse, gave the helmet and sabre that had been worn by Lieutenant Marshall von Bieberstein to the editor of the Matin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Statue of Strasbourg, after the capture of Altkirch in Alsace by French troops.]

Tuesday, August 11.

Tenth day of mobilization. Warm, sunny weather, with light northerly breezes. Temperature at five P.M. 27 degrees centigrade.

Expectation of the great battle believed to be forthcoming to the north of Liege dominates the situation here.

I breakfasted to-day at the restaurant Paillard with M. Max-Lyon and M. Arthur Meyer, manager of the Gaulois. Mlle. Zinia Brozia, of the Opera Comique, who remains in Paris, was also of our party. All sorts of war rumors were current, but as M. Messimy, the minister of war, has given to M. Arthur Meyer the a.s.surance that while the news given out ”might not be all the news, it would nevertheless be invariably true news,” confidence in the official communications to the press, which are the only authentic source of war news, is unshaken. The French Ministry of War, in its official communique of the military situation, issued at 11.30 this evening, states that the French troops are in contact with the enemy along almost the entire front. The only fighting that has taken place, however, has been engagements between the outposts, in which the French soldiers everywhere showed irresistible courage and ardor.

A Uhlan who was captured near Liege on Sat.u.r.day was found to be the bearer of a map marked with the proposed marches of the German army. According to this map, the Germans were to be in Brussels on August 3 and at Lille on August 5.

Wednesday, August 12.

Eleventh day of mobilization. Hot weather, with light northerly breeze.

Temperature at five P.M. 29 degrees centigrade.

Breakfasted with M. Galtier at the Cercle Artistique et Litteraire, Rue Volney. Several members of the club had just arrived from various watering-places. One of them, who came from Evian-les-Bains, said that he was sixty-two hours en route. The trains stop at every station so that they have uniform speed, thus rendering accidents almost out of the question. Only third-cla.s.s tickets are sold, but these admit to all places.

It seems certain that the first part of the German plan-namely to come with a lightning-like, overwhelming crash through Belgium, via Liege and Namur-has failed. But the battle of millions along the vast front of two hundred and fifty miles between Liege and Verdun has opened, and the opposing armies are in touch with each other. Every one in Paris has confidence in the final result.

There is news of stupendous importance in the official announcement that Germany is employing the bulk of her twenty-six army corps against France and Belgium between Liege and Luxemburg. The disappearance of the German first line troops from the Russian frontier is now explained. By flinging this immense force upon France, Germany gains an advantage of numbers. How will she use it?

Paris seems to have seen very little, after all, of the mobilization. Most people may have seen an odd regiment pa.s.s, or perhaps numbers of horses obviously requisitioned. But they realize none of the feverish bustle of the mobilization centers.

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