be retained in the _usine_ at all costs.

These men took their orders meekly. Perhaps they were amused. The
French are an ironic race. Perhaps they bided their time. But they
never dreamed of disobeying those Amazons whose foot the Kaiser of all
the Boches had placed on their necks.

IV

One of the greatest of these _Usines de Guerre_ is at Lyons, in the
buildings of the Exposition held shortly before the outbreak of the
war. I went to this important Southern city (a beautiful city, which I
shall always associate with the scent of locust[B]-blossoms) at the
suggestion of James Hazen Hyde. He gave me a letter to the famous
Mayor, M. Herriot, who was a member of the last Briand Cabinet.

[B] It is called acacia in Europe.

M. Herriot was also a Senator, and as he was leaving for Paris a few
hours after I presented my letter he turned me over to a friend of his
wife, Madame Castell, a native of Lyons, the daughter of one silk
merchant and the widow of another. This charming young woman, who had
spent her married life in New York, by the way, took me everywhere,
and although we traversed many vast distances in the Mayor's
automobile, it seemed to me that I walked as many miles in hospitals,
factories, ateliers (workrooms for teaching the mutilated new trades),
and above all in the _Usine de Guerre_.

Here not only were thousands of women employed but a greater variety
of classes. The women of the town, unable to follow the army and too
plucky to live on charity, had been among the first to ask for work.
The directeur beat his forehead when I asked him how they behaved when
not actually at the machines, but at least they had proved as faithful
and skillful as their more respectable sisters.

Lyons was far more crowded and lively than Paris, which is so quiet
that it calls to mind the lake that filled the crater of Mont Pelee
before the eruption of 1902. But this fine city of the South--situated
almost as beautifully as Paris on both sides of a river--is not only a
junction, it not only has industries of all sorts besides the greatest
silk factories in the world, but every train these days brings down
wounded for its many hospitals, and the next train brings the family
and friends of these men, who, when able to afford it, establish
themselves in the city for the period of convalescence. The
restaurants and cafes were always crowded and this handsome city on
the Rhone was almost gay.

There were practically n