At this period of the war the restaurants of Paris—and no other city is so famous for its restaurants—were not appreciably curtailed in their food supplies. They still served the well-seasoned, dainty dishes of the French chefs, though their clientèle was considerably smaller in numbers.
You could still get a delicious cut off the joint at Boeuf à la Mode near the Palais Royal; or you could have a choice of many luscious dishes at Voison\'s well-known dining place. If you preferred French society, you could still go to Larue\'s aristocratic restaurant, opposite the Madeleine, patronized by the society of Paris. Prunier\'s oyster house was apparently as busy as it had been in the piping times of peace and tourists; and the most deliciously cooked fish in Europe—according to my taste—was still being served at Marguery\'s under the title of Sole à la Marguery.
The less pretentious eating places of the modest diner, such as Duval\'s dining-rooms or the Bouillon Boulant, served good meals at reasonable prices. These latter are akin to the Child\'s restaurants in America. But already the food question was beginning to cause some anxiety throughout the world, because of the lessened production and increased consumption due to the millions of men taken from productive occupations who had to be kept fit as fighters.
For this reason I decided one day to see how cheaply I could obtain a satisfying meal during wartime in Paris. The Diner de Paris advertised exceptionally cheap meals, and they seemed to be well patronized, so I entered one of these eating places. The large dining-room was filled to overflowing with a well-dressed throng, no doubt mostly clerks from the adjoining business blocks. Here I partook of a tastily cooked meal of soup, roast pork and potatoes, apple pie, and a bottle of milk, all for the munificent sum of twenty-six cents, plus the regulation tip of two cents, most certainly a reasonable price for a good meal in the principal city of a country with the invader on its soil. Unfortunately since that time the food situation in all the countries at war has become much more complicated.
The hotels of the first class still kept open doors, and a few of them seemed to have an air of prosperity, but these were very few. Many of them who, in the season, considered it "infra-dig" to have more than a small card in the hotel columns of the daily papers, which card never hinted at their prices, had descended to the habit of advertising "special rates during the war." But others still preferred their small, select clientèle—and a deficit—to accepting prosperity obtained by any such plebeian method.
One point noticeable was the fact that unless the traveler carried them himself he saw no gold Louis or half-Louis, so much in evidence in times of peace. I had brought with me some English gold, but once it disappeared from my hand it never returned. A journalist friend of mine told me he was collecting the equivalent of one hundred dollars in gold to keep for an emergency, and was delighted when I gave him a few sovereigns in exchange for French money. The gold was being gathered in by the government, and today in France only paper money is used in exchange. All the smaller cities issue paper currency in denominations as low as one-quarter franc, or five cents.
Among my letters was one of introduction to the director of a large hospital in the Rue de la Chaise. This hospital was supported by funds collected by La Presse, a daily journal of Montreal, and so it was partial to any Canadian visitors, though it received as patients only French officers and soldiers. The institution was doing much good work, all of which was done by Paris medical men, Dr. Faure, a well-known surgeon, performing most of the operations. My reception was cordial, and I became a regular visitor to its operating theater during my stay in the city.
On one of my early visits I was watching Dr. Faure remove some dead bone from an old wound of the leg, when a tall, distinguished lady entered. She had donned a sterilized gown over her street dress, and was apparently a visitor like myself. Noting that Dr. Faure\'s English and my French were both a trifle labored, she, during my visits, acted as interpreter for us, her English having the soft intonation of the educated Britisher. She informed me that she was neither doctor nor nurse, but was simply learning something of nursing in order that she could be of service to her country in its need, though she had a little son and daughter of her own to care for. That was the extent of my knowledge of her, though I saw that she was treated with more than ordinary consideration by surgeons, and nurses, one of the younger surgeons, by the way, being a stepson of the idolized Joffre.
The last day I visited the hospital she was not there, and as I was leaving Paris the following day I left my card for her with one of the sisters, with a word of thanks scribbled upon it for her kindness to a stranger. That afternoon I went to Cook\'s to get my railway tickets, and as I came out of the door this lady stepped from an automobile to enter Cook\'s. Recognizing me, she told me that she had been at the hospital after I had left, and had been given my card. She was leaving the following day for Switzerland for a two weeks\' rest; and hoped that when I returned to Paris I would call and meet her husband.
"I should be delighted, madam, but I fear I do not know your name."
"Comtesse (Countess) de Sonlac," she replied.
All the French women were doing their bit. A very clever, cultured woman-journalist whom I met at the home of a high Canadian official in Paris was leaving in a few days to take a position as cook on an ambulance train in the north of France!
At night the streets of Paris were well lit up, even more brightly than those of London, though a little later, after the Germans had made a couple of Zeppelin raids, the lighting was dimmed. When a raid was expected the police warned the people by the blowing of sirens, and the hurrying about of motor cars under police direction tooting foghorns. The warnings were given when word had been received that Zeppelins had been seen going toward Paris; and on receiving these warnings the street lights were extinguished, and all other lights that could be seen, including the headlights of motor cars, had to be switched off.
The Opera was closed, but most of the theaters were in full swing, for it had been found that the people must have some recreation, and the order issued at the beginning of the war closing all places of amusement had been rescinded. The far-famed and somewhat notorious Moulin Rouge music hall, well known to all visitors to Paris, had been burned a short time before, and had but recently reopened its doors at the Folies Dramatique in the Place République. Wandering one evening along the boulevards I came to it, and entered. A very ordinary vaudeville was in progress, equaling neither in quality nor in gayety the performances at the original Red Mill in Montmartre. Here and there throughout the evening skits in English were put on, in compliment to their British allies; just as French playlets are common today in the London theaters—a social touch to the Entente Cordiale.
About ten-thirty I tired of the rather tawdry performance, and made my exit to find the streets in pitch black darkness, only broken here and there by the small side-lights of a flitting automobile or a dim light far back in a boulevard café. A gendarme, with whom I accidentally collided as I strolled slowly along the street, told me that a warning had been sent out that the Zeppelins were coming. Rain was pattering on the pavement which glistened as the automobiles hurried by, and occasionally searchlights swept overhead, flashing from l\'étoile. The people were good naturedly jostling their way along, and as someone near me struck a match to help him grope his way, a giggle was heard and a bright-eyed French girl pulled herself back from the escort who had just kissed her. They apparently were not worrying about the Zeppelins that were coming, and so far as I could see neither was anyone else. As the people collided in the dark, jokes and friendly banter were bandied to and fro. Someone on the opposite side of the boulevard knocked something down which hit the pavement with a crash, and a gay voice cried:
"C\'est un obus! Les bodies, les boches!" (It\'s a shell! The boches, the boches!) And a roar of laughter greeted the remark.
All took the expected raid as a joke; and yet a few nights before the Zeppelins had reached Paris and had done some damage to property and life by dropping what the Parisians gaily call "a few visiting cards." But this attack reached only the outskirts of the city, though the inhabitants had no way of knowing that such would be the case.
The following day I had dinner with some friends who live on the Champs Elysées, and the hostess was envying one of her maids who had had "the good fortune" to be spending the previous night with her family on the outskirts of the city, and had seen the Zeppelins!
In the more than two years since that time, I have been in London during a number of air raids, some by Zeppelins and others by aeroplanes. The last was on July 7, 1917, on which occasion twenty-two planes sailed over London, dropping bombs and doing considerable damage in broad daylight. The people of London accepted these raids as spectacles too precious to miss. I was writing a letter in the Overseas Officers\' Club in Pall Mall at the moment when I received my first intimation that anything out of the ordinary was happening. This intimation came to me by my noticing that everyone in the club, men and women alike, was rushin............