A Surgeon in Arms

by R. J. Manion

At night the streets of Paris were well lit up, even more brightly than those of London, though a little later, after the Germans had made a couple of Zeppelin raids, the lighting was dimmed. When a raid was expected the police warned the people by the blowing of sirens, and the hurrying about of motor cars under police direction tooting foghorns. The warnings were given when word had been received that Zeppelins had been seen going toward Paris; and on receiving these warnings the street lights were extinguished, and all other lights that could be seen, including the headlights of motor cars, had to be switched off.

The Opera was closed, but most of the theaters were in full swing, for it had been found that the people must have some recreation, and the order issued at the beginning of the war closing all places of amusement had been rescinded. The far-famed and somewhat notorious Moulin Rouge music hall, well known to all visitors to Paris, had been burned a short time before, and had but recently reopened its doors at the Folies Dramatique in the Place République. Wandering one evening along the boulevards I came to it, and entered. A very ordinary vaudeville was in progress, equaling neither in quality nor in gayety the performances at the original Red Mill in Montmartre. Here and there throughout the evening skits in English were put on, in compliment to their British allies; just as French playlets are common today in the London theaters—a social touch to the Entente Cordiale.

About ten-thirty I tired of the rather tawdry performance, and made my exit to find the streets in pitch black darkness, only broken here and there by the small side-lights of a flitting automobile or a dim light far back in a boulevard café. A gendarme, with whom I accidentally collided as I strolled slowly along the street, told me that a warning had been sent out that the Zeppelins were coming. Rain was pattering on the pavement which glistened as the automobiles hurried by, and occasionally searchlights swept overhead, flashing from l'Étoile. The people were good naturedly jostling their way along, and as someone near me struck a match to help him grope his way, a giggle was heard and a bright-eyed French girl pulled herself back from the escort who had just kissed her. They apparently were not worrying about the Zeppelins that were coming, and so far as I could see neither was anyone else. As the people collided in the dark, jokes and friendly banter were bandied to and fro. Someone on the opposite side of the boulevard knocked something down which hit the pavement with a crash, and a gay voice cried:

"C'est un obus! Les bodies, les boches!" (It's a shell! The boches, the boches!) And a roar of laughter greeted the remark.

All took the expected raid as a joke; and yet a few nights before the Zeppelins had reached Paris and had done some damage to property and life by dropping what the Parisians gaily call "a few visiting cards." But this attack reached only the outskirts of the city, though the inhabitants had no way of knowing that such would be the case.

The following day I had dinner with some friends who live on the Champs Elysées, and the hostess was envying one of her maids who had had "the good fortune" to be spending the previous night with her family on the outskirts of the city, and had seen the Zeppelins!

In the more than two years since that time, I have been in London during a number of air raids, some by Zeppelins and others by aeroplanes. The last was on July 7, 1917, on which occasion twenty-two planes sailed over London, dropping bombs and doing considerable damage in broad daylight. The people of London accepted these raids as spectacles too precious to miss. I was writing a letter in the Overseas Officers' Club in Pall Mall at the moment when I received my first intimation that anything out of the ordinary was happening. This intimation came to me by my noticing that everyone in the club, men and women alike, was rushing into the streets to see the German planes overhead, surrounded by the bursting shells of our anti-aircraft guns. Only in the immediate neighborhood of the exploding bombs was anything but curiosity shown by the populace. The spots where the bombs struck attracted the curious during the rest of the daylight hours.

All of which goes to show that human nature is much the same the world over—except in Germany, where by some kind of perverted reasoning the people seem to imagine that these child-mutilating, women-killing raids cause widespread terror amongst the English and French people. The real result is disgust for such barbarous methods, hatred against the Huns who employ them, and a more firm determination on the part of the allies to continue the war until the German perpetrators of these atrocities, realizing the enormity of their offenses against the laws of civilization and real culture, decide to honor their treaties, abide by the laws of nations, and keep faith with the other people of the world.

On Sunday morning I visited Napoleon's old church, the Madeleine, noting as I walked along the streets that any business houses with German names had an extra allowance of French and allied flags across their fronts. These air raids made them nervous! The Madeleine was jammed to the doors, many of those present being, like myself, strangers in the city. The service was an elaborate high mass, and I found it high in more ways than one, for four collections were taken up: the first for the seats; the second for the clergy; the third for les blessés—the wounded; and the fourth for the soldiers. I could not help but think that they should have taken up a fifth from the soldiers, the clergy, and the wounded, for the rest of us, for when I got outside I possessed only my gloves and a sense of duty well done!

That afternoon I visited the Bois de Boulogne. Thousands were there. It might easily have been a Sunday during any of the previous forty years of peace. On superficial inspection one could not see any sign of the injury done to the trees due to many of them being cut down at the beginning of the war in preparation for the defense of Paris. The tea houses of the Bois were doing their usual business, and it was just as difficult as at other times to find a table.