Mr. Bernard J. Schoninger, chairman of the committee which has recently been formed by the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris with the object of settling difficult questions which may arise in Franco-American commercial relations, states that his committee is collaborating with the ladies' committee founded by the wife of the American Ambassador to assist wounded soldiers. In a few days this committee collected one hundred and seventy-five thousand francs. His own committee has issued an appeal to all Chambers of Commerce in the United States, and he trusts that considerable funds will be forthcoming for the ambulance corps created under the auspices of the American Hospital in Paris. The Minister for War has granted the use of the Lycée Pasteur, where it is hoped to establish an ambulance of two hundred beds, which may later be increased to one thousand.
The committee has also taken up the question of the payment of customs duties on American imports into France, and Mr. Schoninger states that he has met with the greatest kindness and that the French customs authorities have agreed to accept guarantees from various commercial syndicates instead of actual immediate cash payments. This will obviate difficulties occasioned by the refusal of French banking establishments, acting under the terms of the moratorium, in handing over funds which they have on deposit.
Sunday, August 16.
Fifteenth day of mobilization. Gray, cloudy day with occasional showers and westerly wind. Thermometer at five P.M. 17 degrees centigrade.
I drove out in the Bois de Boulogne after lunch with the Duc de Loubat. The Bois was rather deserted; only a few couples were strolling about or seated on benches reading newspapers. Went to the Cercle des Patineurs, where fences were being put up on the lawns to enclose sheep and oxen to provision Paris. In the tennis court we saw about two hundred Kabyles from Algeria, who had been found astray in Paris. They sleep on straw beds in the tennis court and are provided with rations. They are all men, and will be drafted into the Algerian reserves.
Madame Waddington, formerly Miss King of New York, and widow of the late William Henry Waddington, senator, and member of several French Cabinets, and one of the French delegates to the Berlin Conference in 1878, remains in Paris, and is stopping with her sister, Miss King, at her apartment in the Rue de La Tremouille. Madame Waddington was a great friend of the late King Edward VII, who never passed through Paris without calling to see her and lunching with her and her family. Madame Waddington, who is in excellent health and spirits, told me that the feeling was so strong against the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador, Count Szecsen de Temerin, during the last few days of his stay here after hostilities had begun with Germany, that one evening, as he was about to sit down to dinner with his fellow diplomatist, M. Alexandre Lahovary, the Roumanian Minister, at the Cercle de l'Union, which is one of the most select and restricted clubs of Paris, the secretary of the club requested M. Lahovary to announce to the Austrian Ambassador that the committee of the club expressed the wish that he should no longer take his meals at the club nor appear on the premises, because his presence under prevailing political conditions rendered the Austrian Ambassador an "undesirable personage." The Austrian Ambassador, who had just ordered an excellent bottle of Mouton Rothschild claret for his dinner, at once left the club.
[Illustration: French Negro troops from Africa entraining in Paris.
Photo by Paul Thompson.]
Parisians flocked in thousands to-day to the basilica of the Sacre Coeur of Montmartre, where special services were held. This church was planned and built in expiation of the war of 1870. It was finished only a few months ago, and was to have been definitely "inaugurated" next month.
A detachment of about four thousand men of the Naval Reserve, most of whom are Bretons, is encamped to the north of Paris at Le Bourget, and there have been stirring scenes in the little church there. It has been crowded with sailors and soldiers at every service, for Bretons are among the most religious of all peoples of France.
Abbé Marcadé, the curé of Le Bourget, has had magnificent congregations. On the Feast of the Assumption the Abbé decided to hold Mass in the open air. An altar was accordingly set up in a large field beside a haystack. Thirty-five hundred soldiers attended. At the end, the Abbé, standing on a table, preached a sermon in the falling rain.