efore forced to take up with an
older and often inferior class of men which she would have scorned in
times of peace.

Rumour said that many of these women were starving, and judging by the
voracious manner in which they tackled pedestrians openly on the
streets at night there was ample ground for that belief. Men were
followed and grabbed by the arm who had no intention or desire to make
or receive any overtures.

It was so different to what one had heard of the French women of the
street that it came as a great revelation of how the times were out of
joint, and how difficult it really must have been for such people to
obtain the money necessary to live. One would have expected cruder
things in London but such was not the case, though there is this
difference that solicitation is not permitted on the streets of London
while it is in Paris.

Official Paris allows the people within its gates to do as they like
in matters of morals without let or hindrance. And so the "Petite
Parisienne" whose man had gone to the war and perhaps had been
killed, took to the streets again in search of another, and was forced
to take up with men she would have despised in other times.

English speaking people have no idea of the Parisian viewpoint on
questions of morality; in fact our view points are so diametrically
opposed to one another that we have no common ground for discussion.
The average Parisienne of the street is not immoral; she is unmoral,
that is to say she has no morals because she never did have any. She
has been accustomed to look upon herself as a commodity of barter and
trade and we cannot in fairness judge her as we judge women who have
been brought up to other ideals.

As I sat sipping my coffee one evening one of these women leaned
across the aisle and entered into conversation. As she rattled away a
poorly-clad child selling bunches of violets approached and looking at
me placed a bouquet on the table beside me. Mechanically I put my hand
into my pocket for a penny, but by the time I had found it to my
surprise the child had passed on. The woman stared at me and at the
retreating child and asked, "What did she do that for?"

"Perhaps because I smiled at her," I said.

The woman asked no more questions but got up and walked away; the
child's action had touched her as it had touched me and I like to
remember that on four different occasions little French children,
strangers to me had given me in this same sweet