Instead they call
him "master," and no matter how often they say it, they say it each time
as though they meant it.

The American students, even when they return to Paris rich and famous,
go at once to call upon the former master of their atelier, who, it may
be, is not at all famous or rich, and pay their respects.

And, no matter if his school of art has passed, and the torch he carried
is in the hands of younger Frenchmen, his former pupils still salute him
as master, and with much the same awe as the village cure shows for the
cardinal.

When the war came 3,000 of the French students of the Beaux-Arts, past
and present, were sent to the front, and there was no one to look after
their parents, families, or themselves, it seemed a chance for Americans
to try to pay back some of the debt so many generations of American
artists, architects, and sculptors owed to the art of France.

Whitney Warren, the American architect, is one of the few Americans who,
in spite of the extreme unpopularity of our people, is still regarded by
the French with genuine affection. And in every way possible he tries to
show the French that it is not the American people who are neutral, but
the American Government.

One of the ways he offers to Americans to prove their friendship for
France is in helping the students of the Beaux-Arts. He has organized a
committee of French and American students which works twelve hours a day
in the palace of the Beaux-Arts itself, on the left bank of the Seine.

It is hard to understand how in such surroundings they work, not all
day, but at all. The rooms were decorated in the time of the first
Napoleon; the ceilings and walls are white and gold, and in them are
inserted paintings and panels. The windows look into formal gardens and
courts filled with marble statues and busts, bronze medallions and
copies of frescoes brought from Athens and Rome. In this atmosphere the
students bang typewriters, fold blankets, nail boxes, sort out woollen
gloves, cigarettes, loaves of bread, and masks against asphyxiating gas.
The mask they send to the front was invented by Francis Jacques, of
Harvard, one of the committee, and has been approved by the French
Government.

There is a department which sends out packages to the soldiers in the
trenches, to those who are prisoners, and to the soldiers in the
hospitals. There is a system of demand cards on which is a list of
what the committee is able to supply. In the tr