pipes in that fashionable restaurant.

Among the picture post-cards then on sale was one of Marianne, who
is France, bound for the front in an aeroplane with a crowing French
cock sitting on the brace above her. Marianne looked as happy as if
she were going to the races; the cock as triumphant as if he had a
spur through the German eagle's throat. However, there was little
sale for picture post-cards or other trifles, while Paris waited for the
siege. They did not help to win victories. News and not jeux d'esprit,
victory and not wit, was wanted.

For Marianne went to war with her liberty cap drawn tight over her
brow, a beat in her temples, and her heart in her throat; and the cock
had his head down and pointed at the enemy. She was relieved in a
way, as all Europe was, that the thing had come; at last an end of the
straining of competitive taxation and preparation; at last the test. She
had no Channel, as England had, between her and the foe. Defeat
meant the heel of the enemy on her soil, German sentries in her
streets, submission. Long and hard she had trained; while the outside
world, thinking of the Paris of the boulevards, thought that she could
not resist the Kaiser's legions. She was effeminate, effete. She was
all right to run cafés and make artificial flowers, but she lacked beef.
All the prestige was with her enemy. In '70 all the prestige had been
with her. For there is no prestige like military prestige. It is all with
those who won the last war.

"But if we must succumb, let it be now," said the French.

On, on--the German corps were coming like some machine-
controlled avalanche of armed men. Every report brought them a little