promptly conducted to his domicile by the first policeman he meets.

I received a cablegram tonight explaining that there is at the moment
no means of forwarding money from New York to Paris. This makes my
financial situation awkward, as I now have only three hundred francs.
The worst of it is that one cannot even resort to the expedient of
borrowing, because all one's friends are suffering a like stringency.

Today is, officially, the "third day of mobilization." From now on
France will live not by calendar, but by mobilization, days. One
speaks not of "Sunday, August 2d," but of the "first day of
mobilization." Neither days of the week nor of the month exist any
longer. All government decrees, railroad schedules, and military
orders are dated by the new era. Events follow a schedule which has
long since been prepared. When mobilization is announced the nation
turns away from its everyday life and from the world's calendar, and
starts a carefully rehearsed set of operations executed according to
an arbitrary schedule. One dimly remembers that if it were "peace
time" today would be Tuesday.

One sees everywhere on the sidewalk little knots of people talking in
low, troubled voices, and each time just as their conversation is well
started they are interrupted by a policeman who reminds them that it
is not permitted to _s'attrouper_ in the streets and that they must
move on.

Everywhere one sees speeding taxicabs, each containing a young
soldier, his family, and two or three bundles. The young man usually
wears a brand new uniform. The women of the family are invariably
weeping quietly as if to say: "I cannot help crying, because I am a
woman, but everything is all right and just as it should be!" When the
father is of the party, he has a calm face and sits beside his son
with his arm around the son's shoulders, and always the taxi speeds
madly, so that each time one gets only the most fleeting glimpse of
the family within.

There are very few soldiers left in Paris,--not a fifth as many as
usual; those that one does see are most of them driving heavily-loaded
army wagons and appear most disgusted with the unheroic service.
Auto-busses have completely disappeared from the streets, and this is
a great inconvenience; they are all at Versailles being converted into
meat wagons or ambulances. All the fast private automobiles are
requisitioned for the army, and one sees them tearing along vying in
speed with the flying