nearer Paris. Ah, monsieur, they had numbers, those Germans!
Every German mother has many sons; a French mother only one or
two.

How could one believe those official communiqués which kept saying
that the position of the French armies was favourable and then
admitted that von Kluck had advanced another twenty miles? The
heart of Paris stopped beating. Paris held its breath. Perhaps the
reason there was no panic was that Parisians had been prepared for
the worst.

What silence! The old men and the women in the streets moved as
under a spell, which was the sense of their own helplessness. But few
people were abroad, and those going on errands apparently. The
absence of traffic and pedestrians heightened the sepulchral
appearance to superficial observation. At the windows of flats, inside
the little shops, and on by-streets, you saw waiting faces, everyone
with the weight of national grief become personal. Was Paris alive?
Yes, if Paris is human and not bricks and stone. Every Parisian was
living a century in a week. So, too, was one who loved France. In the
prospect of its loss he realized the value of all that France stands for,
her genius, her democracy, her spirit.

One recalled how German officers had said that the next war would
be the end of France. An indemnity which would crush out her power
of recovery would be imposed on her. Her northern ports would be
taken. France, the most homogeneous of nations, would be divided
into separate nationalities--even this the Germans had planned.
Those who read their Shakespeare in the language they learned in
childhood had no doubt of England's coming out of the war secure;