All these Germans require four things: food, lodgings, protection, and proper police papers. We began by doling out to them from one to three francs each to be used to buy food. Our miserliness was due to the fact that, under existing economic conditions, even the Embassy could obtain only a limited amount of change, and it was essential that we make that go as far as possible. In order to obtain at one and the same time lodging and protection for our wards, Mr. Herrick arranged with the French government that the Lycée Condorcet in the Rue du Havre be set aside for the lodgment of German subjects. This building is guarded by a squad of police who allow no one to enter who is not the bearer of a certificate issued by the American Embassy. The Lycée Condorcet is a great barn of a place, from which nearly all the furniture has been removed, but it provides for the moment the two essentials, a roof and safety. No owner of an hotel or apartment will in these dangerous days harbor Germans, in each of whom he sees a possible spy, and the government, suddenly called upon to house thousands of aliens, responds to the appeal of the American Embassy as best it can. Hundreds of Germans will tonight sleep on the bare floor of the Lycée Condorcet, and be more thankful for that safe resting-place than ever they have been for the most comfortable bed or luxurious apartment.
No attempt was today made to provide Germans with the necessary police papers. We had indeed no time to consider anything but food, shelter, and safety. Tomorrow we shall attack that problem.
By three o’clock we had so systematized the work of handling the Germans that I found I could, with the aid of two assistants, attend to all the routine cases myself. This released the men at the other tables to reinforce the American office on the floor above, whose business had during the afternoon greatly increased. There was no means or time for estimating in advance just how many people could be crowded into the Lycée Condorcet, so I continued during the afternoon to issue certificates of admission to all the Germans whom I examined. On receiving their certificates most of them went at once to the Lycée to get off the streets. By six o’clock the place was so crowded that not another person could find room even to sit on the floor; therefore the late arrivals, after having wearily trudged two long miles from the Embassy to the Lycée, had to trudge back again from the Lycée to the Embassy. By eight o’clock there were nearly a hundred of these refugees huddled around the Chancellerie and it was late in the evening before I, by most desperate efforts, succeeded in making arrangements for them for the night.
The French police have promulgated a regulation that all Germans now in Paris are to be shut up in detention camps. They are ordered to report immediately to the nearest police station, where they will receive written notifications of the camps to which they have been assigned, and of the date of their departure. The detention camps are twelve in number and are located at Limoges, Gueret, Cahors, Libourne, Périgueux, Saintes, Le Blanc, La Roche-sur-Yon, Chateauroux, Saumur, Anger, and Flers. Several large trainloads will be shipped away from Paris each day for the next two weeks. Exceptions to this edict are to be made only in the case of Alsatians, and of those sick Germans who are possessors of a certificate from some French physician stating that they are too ill to endure transportation.
The frightened Germans find it difficult to understand the numerous details involved in this order, and are hopelessly confused by the various official papers they are required to obtain to safeguard them against the accusation of being spies. The Embassy endeavors to keep itself informed as to the latest police enactments, and these are clearly and courteously explained to all the Germans who apply to the Embassy for counsel or assistance.
Sunday, August 9th. During the past few days I have been absolutely absorbed with the affairs of the Germans. I am at present in charge of them and report results to the Second Secretary. I enter the Embassy before nine in the morning and it is after midnight before I leave its doors. None of the staff, not even Mr. Herrick himself, departs before that hour. If some of the peacefully sleeping Sovereign American Citizens who are so free with their criticisms during the daytime could see the members of the Embassy in the early hours of the morning at the end of our sixteen-hour day, they would perhaps pity themselves less. We work always at high pressure; meals are hurriedly swallowed at odd moments and at irregular hours. Each night I walk home across Paris, down the Rue Freycinet, over the Pont de l’Alma, through the Avenue Bosquet, Avenue Duquesne, Rue Oudinot to the Rue d’Olivet—and sleep. It is a long walk when one is dead tired, but there are no public conveyances at night and, indeed, few in the daytime. The walk takes nearly an hour, even at a fast gait, for at short intervals one is halted by policemen demanding explanations of this midnight journey. Few experiences have been more weird than this nightly trip through the familiar Paris streets, strangely dark and absolutely deserted.
Each day is now a haze of Germans and their troubles; of policemen, detectives, and soldiers, of tears and laughter, bits of the sublime and the ridiculous; of women who have been robbed and men who have been arrested as spies; of constant struggles to secure papers for poor hounded creatures, which one policeman demands and another refuses to grant; of beaten faces and tear-stained cheeks; of French women endlessly begging unobtainable news of sons lost in Germany, and of petty crookednesses on the part of those we are trying to help and protect.
Affairs are, however, running more smoothly. We have found means to get small change in large quantities, and I now know personally most of the police officials who are concerned in German affairs.