among nations. Antiquity, and many invasions of her soil have given
her an inviolable solidity, and the temperamental gaiety and keen
intelligence which pervades all classes have kept her eternally young.
She is as far from decadence as the crudest community in the United
States of America.

To the student of French history and character nothing the French have
done in this war is surprising; nevertheless it seemed to me that I
had a fresh revelation every day during my sojourn in France in the
summer of 1916. Every woman of every class (with a few notable
exceptions seen for the most part in the Ritz Hotel) was working at
something or other: either in self-support, to relieve distress, or to
supplement the efforts and expenditures of the Government (two billion
francs a month); and it seemed that I never should see the last of
those relief organizations of infinite variety known as "oeuvres."

Some of this work is positively creative, much is original, and all is
practical and indispensable. As the most interesting of it centers in
and radiates from certain personalities whom I had the good fortune to
meet and to know as well as their days and mine would permit, it has
seemed to me that the surest way of vivifying any account of the work
itself is to make its pivot the central figure of the story. So I will
begin with Madame Balli.


II


To be strictly accurate, Madame Balli was born in Smyrna, of Greek
blood; but Paris can show no purer type of Parisian, and she has never