was some difficulty in getting their
pay and, in Paris, money did not last long. I did my best to try and
help them, and later our system of payment was improved. It was
perhaps just as well for some of them that their money was short.

Poor old Paris looked very shabby to one who remembered her in former
days with her clean streets and many-fountained parks. She wore the
air of shabby gentility. The streets were not clean; the people were
not well-dressed, the fountains no longer played. France had been hard
hit by the war, and the ruin and desolation of her eastern borders
were reflected in the metropolis. I spent most of my time in Paris
trying to keep men straight, with more or less success. I can imagine
nothing worse for a lonely young fellow, who had taken his leave after
weary months in the front line, than to find himself in the midst of
the heartless gaiety of the French capital. On all sides the minions
of vice, diseased in mind and body, lay in waiting for their prey. To
one who loved Canada and longed for the uplifting of the pure life of
Canadian homes, it was a spectacle which filled the heart with anxiety.
Before I left Paris, I wrote a letter to the Continental Daily Mail
advocating the taking over of some hotels which could be turned into
hostels or clubs for soldiers while on leave. This, I am happy to (p. 188)
say was afterwards done.

I met many of our men at the soldiers' tea-rooms called "A corner of
Blighty" in the Place Vendome, and I organized several dinner and
theatre parties which went off very pleasantly. When the men had
companionship, they did not feel the lure of vice which came to them
in moments of loneliness. I met some interesting people in Paris, and
at a Sunday luncheon in the charming house of the Duchess de la M---- I
met Madame ----, the writer of a series of novels of rather lurid
reputation. The authoress was a large person with rich orange-coloured
hair, powdered cheeks, and darkened eyelashes. She wore a large black
hat, enormous solitaire pearl ear-rings, and, as a symbol of her
personal purity, was arrayed in white. She lamented the fact that
women writers were not allowed to visit the front. When I told her
that Mrs. Humphrey Ward had been there, she said, "Oh yes, they
allowed her to go because they said she could write good English, but
she cannot get the ear of the American people in the way _I_ can."

There were two or three French officers present, one of whom was