Go where you will, even among those of the very
poor who have lost their breadwinners, and you will hear few criticisms
and no complaints. The little midinette thrown out of employment, the
shopkeeper faced with ruin, the artist reduced to actual want--they also
are in the fighting line, and they are proud of it. The women of the
thrifty middle class consider it just as much their duty to devote their
savings of years to the common cause as their husbands and brothers do
to bear arms against the enemy; only in the last extremity of need do
they make appeal to the "Secours National" for assistance. And when they
do, they are well content to live on a maintenance allowance of 1s. a
day and 5d. for every child.
The other Sunday morning at the hour of mass, when two German aeroplanes
were engaged in their genial occupation of throwing bombs over the
residential and business quarters of the city, I assisted at several
sidewalk conversations in the district lying between the Madeleine and
the Rue de Rivoli. Nowhere did I find the least sign of excitement.
Indeed, there was curiously little interest shown as to the results of
the explosions in that neighborhood; only a grim acceptance of this
daily visitation as something to be added to the score in the final day
of reckoning and some expression of surprise that the French aeroplanes
(supposed to be constantly on the alert for these visitors) should not
have found some means of putting an end to the nuisance.
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