those educated Frenchmen who, standing outside the political arena,
distrust all politicians, having but little faith in their honesty or
their ability. Who could tell whether France--the new France she
had been called--would rise above her old weaknesses and
confront the peril of this war with a strong, pure, and undivided spirit?


5


On August 1 there was a run on one of the banks. I passed its doors
and saw them besieged by thousands of middle-class men and
women drawn up in a long queue waiting very quietly--with a strange
quietude for any crowd in Paris--to withdraw the savings of a lifetime
or the capital of their business houses. There were similar crowds
outside other banks, and on the faces of these people there was a
look of brooding fear, as though all that they had fought and struggled
for, the reward of all their petty economies and meannesses, and
shifts and tricks, and denials of self-indulgences and starvings of soul
might be suddenly snatched from them and leave them beggared. A
shudder went through one such crowd when a young man came to
speak to them from the steps of the bank. It was a kind of shuddering
sigh, followed by loud murmurings, and here and there angry
protests. The cashiers had been withdrawn from their desks and
cheques could not be paid.

"We are ruined already!" said a woman. "This war will take all our
money! Oh, my God!"

She made her way through the crowd with a fixed white face and