The French find a superstitious encouragement in an acrostic which some ingenious journalist has constructed out of the names of the Commanders-in-Chief of the French and British armies. Here it is:
| JOF | | | FRE |
| ——— | ——— | |
| FRE | | | NCH |
With Paris unlighted at night, it is an uncanny experience to walk through a great city which is absolutely dark. The Champs-Elysées is probably at present the darkest avenue on earth. All those monumental lamp-posts which used to stand like beacons in the midst of the stream of traffic now shine no more. The sun seldom rises without revealing the ruins of one of these lamps and of an automobile, the two having mutually destroyed each other in the darkness. We do not know why the city is left in gloom. The common interpretation is a necessity to save gas and coal.
I do such a variety of things each day! This morning I managed to get away from the Embassy for an hour in one of the several automobiles which have been loaned to Attachés and which are driven by their American owners. During that time I arranged for the delivery of twenty thousand francs in small change which I shall take with me on my trip to the detention camps, ordered a lot of printing, and obtained fifteen hundred francs in change for tomorrow’s crowd of German and Austrian indigents. I visited the editor of a newspaper and arranged for the correction of an article giving some misinformation about Embassy affairs, and then ended up by making a verbal report of the morning’s work to Mr. Frazier.
Tuesday, August 25th. The Military Governor of Paris is now invested with absolute and autocratic powers. He makes what regulations he chooses and is authorized to punish any infraction of his rule with the death penalty. He has taken advantage of his position to institute various reforms which have for years been much needed but which have hitherto been persistently blocked by “politics.” He is no longer required to argue with bureaucracies or to convince legislatures. He acts without hindrance. He has thus, out of hand, settled some of the great problems with which Paris has been struggling for years. With a stroke of the pen, for instance, he has made it illegal to buy, sell, or possess absinthe. He is said to have destroyed the long menace of the Apache gangs by summarily shooting down all that could be found in Paris. He has by drastic measures suppressed gambling, and has even done away with the slot machines of chance which have so long stood in all the cafés to catch the hard-earned sous of the workmen. It is probable that these reforms will be permanent and will stand even when martial law in Paris is abolished. It is always difficult to accomplish a great reform, but it is often impossible to undo it once it is an accepted fact. If we had real prohibition in America and Woman Suffrage, I hardly think that we should vote to have “whiskey” brought back or ever disfranchise our women.
Friday, August 28th. Public vehicles are now almost unobtainable. Taxicabs are to be secured only after much delay and at exorbitant prices. It has become more and more a waste of time for me to cross Paris on foot each morning and evening and to do much of my Embassy work at the same disadvantage. I have attempted to solve the difficulty by engaging by the week one of those archaic old horse chaises called fiacres. London has placed a hansom in the British Museum with the other obsolete and historic styles of equipages, but frugal Paris has kept her out-of-date vehicles on exhibition in active use on the boulevards. These conveyances, so recently looked down upon for their slow pace as compared with the speed of taxis, are now restored to something of their former prestige.