One sees everywhere on the sidewalk little knots of people talking in low, troubled voices, and each time just as their conversation is well started they are interrupted by a policeman who reminds them that it is not permitted to s’attrouper in the streets and that they must move on.
Everywhere one sees speeding taxicabs, each containing a young soldier, his family, and two or three bundles. The young man usually wears a brand new uniform. The women of the family are invariably weeping quietly as if to say: “I cannot help crying, because I am a woman, but everything is all right and just as it should be!” When the father is of the party, he has a calm face and sits beside his son with his arm around the son’s shoulders, and always the taxi speeds madly, so that each time one gets only the most fleeting glimpse of the family within.
There are very few soldiers left in Paris,—not a fifth as many as usual; those that one does see are most of them driving heavily-loaded army wagons and appear most disgusted with the unheroic service. Auto-busses have completely disappeared from the streets, and this is a great inconvenience; they are all at Versailles being converted into meat wagons or ambulances. All the fast private automobiles are requisitioned for the army, and one sees them tearing along vying in speed with the flying taxis, each one driven by a sapper with another sapper in the footman’s place, while one or two officers sit calmly behind, trying to smoke cigarettes in spite of the wind.
There are persistent rumors throughout Paris of battles “near Metz” or “on the borders of Luxembourg,” of “two hundred and thirty thousand French troops already in Alsace,” “ten thousand French killed at Belfort,” or “forty thousand German prisoners taken.”
The papers already announce a series of German depredations across the border into the ten kilometer strip of country between it and the French armies. It is reported that German foragers are infesting this strip, carrying off everything of value. Yesterday morning the papers printed the first “war story,” which recounts how a patrol of Uhlans penetrating some ten kilometers into French territory were halted by a French sentinel, a soldier nineteen years old. The German in command, thinking the sentinel was alone, shot him through the head and was himself in turn immediately shot dead by the boy’s comrades, who had been hidden near by in an improvised guard-house. The papers also announced that the president of the League of French Patriots in Alsace had been arrested and shot. These stories and others like them, coupled with the official report of the violation of Luxembourg and of the sending of a German ultimatum to Belgium, have intensely excited the French.
Until yesterday the people of Paris have been forbearing with such German subjects as are in the city. When these stories began to circulate certain elements of the population took prompt and drastic action against the German-owned shops of the city. During the day many such shops have been wrecked. The milk trust of Paris which sells “le Bon Lait Maggi” is popularly supposed to be owned by German capital. Its shops are in every quarter of the city, one might almost say on every street. They have today been the first objects of attack. One of these shops is in the Rue ——, not far from my apartment. I saw it wrecked this afternoon. There was no excitement, no hurry, no shouting. A crowd collected, apparently without concerted action, but as if by common impulse. There was no prearrangement or system about it and no “French” excitement. Most of the raiders were women. There was some jesting, and some dry wit, but mostly it was serious business.
The work of wrecking was carried forward painstakingly and thoroughly. The iron screen over the show-window was torn off and broken up and the window itself was smashed to bits, the door was broken open, every bit of glass or crockery was shivered to fragments against the sidewalk and the pieces were ground into powder under the heels of the raiders. Account books and bill-heads were torn sheet by sheet into the tiniest bits and strewn up and down the street for a block, and all woodwork was smashed into kindling. During the operations a patrol of policemen on bicycles went tearing by. They must have been on business of great and immediate importance since they had no time to stop nor to look either to the right or left. When the wrecking operations were quite completed another patrol came by. The sergeant in command dismounted. He wore a tremendous frown and with an authoritative sweep of his arm cried: “Qu’est ce que vous faites? Allez! Allez vous en! vous savez bien que nous sommes maintenant sous la loi militaire, et que c’est défendu de s’attrouper dans les rues! Allez! Allez!” (“What are you doing? Move along, get out of here! You know that we are now under martial law and that it is forbidden to collect in crowds in the streets. Move on, move on!”).
The crowd instantly dispersed, wearing faces of great solemnity. It is evident that he could not possibly have arrested the wreckers, for he had himself seen nothing and it is not to be supposed that they would have been witnesses against one another.
By night time there were many shops, factories, and cafés of German ownership which had thus been raided. The crowds did not always take time to make careful investigation before breaking up an establishment. I shall never forget the plight of the French proprietor of a café on the Place de l’Opéra who was standing in front of his completely wrecked shop using all the most eloquent French gestures, as he repeated over and over in helpless rage: “Sacré nom d’un nom, je suis caporal du cent-dixième de réserve et je pars au front après demain!” (“Sacred Name, I am Corporal of the 110th Reserve and I leave for the front the day after tomorrow.”)
Last evening I repeatedly heard the following conversation between Frenchmen, wherever they met: