lay unfinished as the workers, hastening to the call of war, had left the
work. Across Paris, which seemed as silent as the fields, to an hotel
with empty rooms! Five hundred empty rooms, with a clock ticking
busily in every room! War or no war, that old man who wound the
clocks was making his rounds softly through the halls from door to
door. He was a good soldier, who had heeded Joffre's request that
everyone should go on with his day's work.

"They're done!" said an American in the foyer. "The French cannot
stand up against the Germans--anybody could see that! It's too bad,
but the French are licked. The Germans will be here to-morrow or the
next day."

I could not and would not believe it. Such a disaster was against all
one's belief in the French army and in the real character of the
French people. It meant that autocracy was making sport of
democracy; it meant disaster to all one's precepts; a personal
disaster.

"Look at that interior line which the French now hold. Think of the
power of the defensive with modern arms. No! The French have not
had their battle yet!" I said.

And the British Expeditionary Force was still intact; still an army, with
lots of fight left in it.




Ill