When you travel by rail, if you did not know that war was in the country you would never suspect it, unless you wondered why a red-hatted, blue-coated guard, with a rifle carelessly swung over his shoulder, is noticeable now and then by a cross-road or near the buttress of an important railroad bridge. You pass trains of troops, but the uniforms are quiet, the men jovial and unwarlike. The wounded are not conspicuously moved by day.
Although you are not many miles away from the firing line, where an average of more than ten thousand are daily falling, the country is as peaceful and quiet as can be imagined. The big black and white horses are winter ploughing. The red and black cattle and the sheep and hogs are grazing in fields and pastures. The reddening willows speak of an early spring, and the full blue streams tell the brown grasses, and the tall poplars that their colors will soon be gayer.
As the shadows fall, no guard comes as in England to pull your curtain down according to military orders; and, as you approach Paris, you see families dining by uncurtained windows in blazing light. You are astonished after your London experience of semi-darkness to find the boulevards ablaze and no apparent fear of aerial enemies or sky-invasion, although aeroplanes and Zeppelins and bombs may be flying and fighting only eighty miles away. Now and then a searchlight illumines the heavens, but even searchlights are far less conspicuous than in London. In January the lights were ordered to be lowered; but Paris will not stand for long London fog, gloom, or darkness. The French atmosphere and life demand light.
Paris is gradually getting accustomed to the situation. More than 30 first-class hotels are partially opened and advertising. Many of the business streets have a semi-Sunday appearance. Boulevards running from the Place de l'Opéra are well filled with people, and nearly all of the stores are now open. In the first weeks of December you could see the reopening day by day, and when on the 10th the government returned to Paris, the art stores and the jewelry stores joined with the confectioners, trunk dealers, and book-men, and threw open shutters that had been closed four months.
Paris is now normal but not crowded. Theaters are reopening, but the restaurants must be closed at ten P.M. The inhabitants young and old picnic in the Bois de Boulogne and evince most interest in the defences about the Paris gates,—the moats, the new trenches that have been dug, and the tree-trunks that have been thrown down with their branches and tops pointing outward as though to interrupt the progress of an enemy. Buildings have been taken down, and the forts of Paris stand forth as never before; but when you learn how unmanned and how useless they are in modern warfare, you can but smile and join with the people in their curiosity excursions. A single modern shell can put a modern stone-and-steel fort, garrison and guns, entirely out of commission.
A year ago Paris looked dirty and decadent. Her building fronts were grimy, her streets were dirty, and there was a general carelessness where before had been art, precision, and cleanliness. To-day Paris streets are clean. There is even more evidence of rebuilding and of modern conveniences. Motor street-sweepers whirl through the squares, not singly but in pairs and more extended series, and they move with automobile rapidity, quickly cleansing the pavement.
I was reminded thereby of a personal experience at the breaking out of the Spanish-American War. At breakfast on a Sunday morning with one of America's most successful millionaires, I said, "How is it possible that the stock market can be rising as the country is going to war—a war that may cause some of our new warships to turn turtle and may bring bombardment upon our sea-coast cities? Yet before the guns are booming the stock market is booming. Indeed, the stock market began to boom from the time we declared a state of war."
And this successful multi-millionaire replied quietly, "Stocks are going up because I am buying them and every other intelligent capitalist is buying them. Look out of the window there. That sweeper at the crossing has straightened up and is sweeping that crossing better and with more energy because the flags are flying, and the bells are ringing, and the guns will soon be booming. War is the greatest energizer of a people. There is now profit in industry and enterprise, and financial equities have increased value." And for nearly ten years the stock market booms followed in the wake of that war boom, while construction and upbuilding went steadily forward despite agitation and restricting laws.
It would astonish Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan to know how many patriotic Americans are helping France and what they are doing in Red Cross and other work. I was surprised to meet a former member of the New York Stock Exchange in a khaki uniform. I said, "Are you still an American citizen?" He responded promptly, "Certainly I am, but would not the boys on the floor of the Exchange be astonished to see me in this uniform?"
I said, "Were there not men enough here to do this work?"