poor; that for his sou or her handiwork there is no need. The
_midinettes_, the "cash" girls of the great department stores and
millinery shops, had no money to contribute, so some one thought of
giving them a chance to help the soldiers with their needles.

It was purposed they should make cockades in the national colors. Every
French girl is taught to sew; each is born with good taste. They were
invited to show their good taste in the designing of cockades, which
people would buy for a franc, which franc would be sent to some soldier.

[Illustration: A poster inviting the proprietors of restaurants and
hotels and their guests to welcome the soldiers who have permission to
visit Paris, especially those who come from the districts invaded by
the Germans.]

The French did not go about this in a hole-in-a-corner way in a back
street. They did not let the "cash" girl feel her artistic effort was
only a blind to help her help others. They held a "salon" for the
cockades.

And they held it in the same Palace of Art, where at the annual salon
are hung the paintings of the great French artists. The cockades are
exhibited in one hall, and next to them is an exhibition of the precious
tapestries rescued from the Rheims cathedral.

In the hall beyond that is an exhibition of lace. To this, museums,
duchesses, and queens have sent laces that for centuries have been
family heirlooms. But the cockades of Mimi Pinson by the thousands and
thousands are given just as much space, are arranged with the same taste
and by the same artist who grouped and catalogued the queens' lace
handkerchiefs.

And each little Mimi Pinson can go to the palace and point to the
cockade she made with her own fingers, or point to the spot where it
was, and know she has sent a franc to a soldier of France.

These days the streets of Paris are filled with soldiers, each of whom
has given to France some part of his physical self. That his country may
endure, that she may continue to enjoy and teach liberty, he has seen
his arm or his leg, or both, blown off, or cut off. But when on the
boulevards you meet him walking with crutches or with an empty sleeve
pinned beneath his Cross of War, and he thinks your glance is one of
pity, he resents it. He holds his head more stiffly erect. He seems to
say: "I know how greatly you envy me!"

And who would dispute him? Long after the war is ended, so long as he
lives, men and women of France will honor him, a