With the French in France and Salonika

by Richard Harding Davis

This is not true of the French officers. The few you see are convalescents, or on leave. It is not as it was last October, when Paris was part of the war zone. Up to a few days ago, until after seven in the evening, when the work of the day was supposed to be finished, an officer was not permitted to sit idle in a café. And now when you see one you may be sure he is recovering from a wound, or is on the General Staff, and for a few hours has been released from duty.

Reproduction of placard warning France against spies.

It is very different from a year ago when every officer was fresh from the trenches—and, fresh is not quite the word, either—and he would talk freely to an eager, sympathetic group of the battle of the night before. Now the wall of silence stretches around Paris. By posters it is even enforced upon you. Before the late minister of war gave up his portfolio, by placards he warned all when in public places to be careful of what they said. “Taisez-vous! Méfiez-vous. Les oreilles ennemies vous écoutent.” “Be silent. Be distrustful. The ears of the enemies are listening.” This warning against spies was placed in tramways, railroad-trains, cafés. A cartoonist refused to take the good advice seriously. His picture shows one of the women conductors in a street-car asking a passenger where he is going. The passenger points to the warning. “Silence,” he says, “some one may be listening.”

There are other changes. A year ago gold was king. To imagine any time or place when it is not is difficult. But to-day an American twenty-dollar bill gives you a higher rate of exchange than an American gold double-eagle. A thousand dollars in bills in Paris is worth thirty dollars more to you than a thousand dollars in gold. And to carry it does not make you think you are concealing a forty-five Colt. The decrease in value is due to the fact that you cannot take gold out of the country. That is true of every country in Europe, and of any kind of gold. At the border it is taken from you and in exchange you must accept bills. So, any one in Paris, wishing to travel, had best turn over his gold to the Bank of France. He will receive not only a good rate of exchange but also an engraved certificate testifying that he has contributed to the national defense.

Another curious vagary of the war that obtains now is the sudden disappearance of the copper sou or what ranks with our penny. Why it is scarce no one seems to know. The generally accepted explanation is that the copper has flown to the trenches where millions of men are dealing in small sums. But whatever the reason, the fact remains. In the stores you receive change in postage-stamps, and, on the underground railroad, where the people have refused to accept stamps in lieu of coppers, there are incipient riots. One night at a restaurant I was given change in stamps and tried to get even with the house by unloading them as his tip on the waiter. He protested eloquently. “Letters I never write,” he explained. “To write letters makes me ennui. And yet if I wrote for a hundred years I could not use all the stamps my patrons have forced upon me.”

These differences the year has brought about are not lasting, and are unimportant. The change that is important, and which threatens to last a long time, is the difference in the sentiment of the French people toward Americans.

Before the war we were not unduly flattering ourselves if we said the attitude of the French toward the United States was friendly. There were reasons why they should regard us at least with tolerance. We were very good customers. From different parts of France we imported wines and silks. In Paris we spent, some of us spent, millions on jewels and clothes. In automobiles and on Cook’s tours every summer Americans scattered money from Brittany to Marseilles. They were the natural prey of Parisian hotel-keepers, restaurants, milliners, and dressmakers. We were a sister republic, the two countries swapped statues of their great men—we had not forgotten Lafayette, France honored Paul Jones. A year ago, in the comic papers, between John Bull and Uncle Sam, it was not Uncle Sam who got the worst of it. Then the war came and with it, in the feeling toward ourselves, a complete change. A year ago we were almost one of the Allies, much more popular than Italians, more sympathetic than the English. To-day we are regarded, not with hostility, but with amazed contempt.

This most regrettable change was first brought about by President Wilson’s letter calling upon Americans to be neutral. The French could not understand it. From their point of view it was an unnecessary affront. It was as unexpected as the cut direct from a friend; as unwarranted, as gratuitous, as a slap in the face. The millions that poured in from America for the Red Cross, the services of Americans in hospitals, were accepted as the offerings of individuals, not as representing the sentiment of the American people. That sentiment, the French still insist in believing, found expression in the letter that called upon all Americans to be neutral, something which to a Frenchman is neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring.

We lost caste in other ways. We supplied France with munitions, but, as a purchasing agent for the government put it to me, we are not losing much money by it, and, until the French Government protested, and the protest was printed all over the United States, some of our manufacturers supplied articles that were worthless. Doctor Charles W. Cowan, an American who in winter lives in Paris and Nice and spends his summers in America, showed me the half section of a shoe of which he said sixty thousand pairs had been ordered, until it was found that part of each shoe was made of brown paper. Certainly part of the shoe he showed me was made of brown paper.