ing to find any
pocket, bag, or haversack not already filled. They were all laughing,
the little, fat mother rather mechanically, when the whistle blew.

It was one of those shrill, long-drawn whistles without which in Europe
no train can start. It had a peevish, infantile sound, like the squeak
of a nursery toy. But it was as ominous as though some one had fired a
siege-gun.

The soldiers raced for the cars, and the one in front of me, suddenly
grown grave, stooped and kissed the fat, little mother.

She was still laughing; but at his embrace and at the meaning of it, at
the thought that the son, who to her was always a baby, might never
again embrace her, she tore herself from him sobbing and fled--fled
blindly as though to escape from her grief.

Other women, their eyes filled with sudden tears, made way, and with
their fingers pressed to their lips turned to watch her.

The young soldier kissed the wife, or sister, or sweetheart, or whatever
she was, sketchily on one ear and shoved her after the fleeing figure.

"Guardez mama!" he said.

It is the tragedy that will never grow less, and never grow old.

One who left Paris in October, 1914, and returned in October, 1915,
finds her calm, confident; her social temperature only a little below
normal.

A year ago the gray-green tidal wave of the German armies that
threatened to engulf Paris had just been checked. With the thunder of
their advance Paris was still shaken. The withdrawal of men to the
front, and of women and children to Bordeaux and the coast, had left the
city uninhabited. The streets were as deserted as the Atlantic City
board walk in January. For miles one moved between closed shops. Along
the Aisne the lines had not been dug in, and hourly from the front
ambulances, carrying the wounded and French and British officers
unwashed from the trenches, in mud-covered, bullet-scarred cars, raced
down the echoing boulevards. In the few restaurants open, you met men
who that morning had left the firing-line, and who after dejeuner, and
the purchase of soap, cigarettes, and underclothes, by sunset would be
back on the job. In those days Paris was inside the "fire-lines." War
was in the air; you smelled it, saw it, heard it.

To-day a man from Mars visiting Paris might remain here a week, and not
know that this country is waging the greatest war in history. When you
walk the crowded streets it is impossible to believe that within forty
miles of you milli