exceptions will be dealt with later. France, like all nations,
contains every variety of human nature, and, with its absence of
illusions and its habit of looking facts almost cynically in the face,
would be the last to claim perfection or even to conceal its
infirmities. But the right side of its shield is very bright indeed,
and the hands of many millions of women, delicate and toil-hardened,
have labored to make it shine once more in history.

The Mayoress of a small town near Paris told me of three instances
that came within her personal observation, and expressed no surprise
at one or the other. She probably would not have thought them worth
mentioning if she had not been asked expressly to meet me and give me
certain information. One was of a woman whose husband had been a
wage-earner, and, with six or eight children, had been able to save
nothing. The allocation was not declared at once and this woman lost
no time bewailing her fate or looking about for charitable groups of
ladies to feed her with soup. She simply continued to run her
husband's estaminet (wine-shop), and, as the patronage was
necessarily diminished, was one of the first to apply when munition
factories invited women to fill the vacant places of men. She chose to
work at night that she might keep the estaminet open by day for the
men too old to fight and for the rapidly increasing number of
"réformés": those who had lost a leg or arm or were otherwise
incapacited for service.

A sister, who lived in Paris, immediately applied for one of the
thousand vacant posts in bakeries, cut bread and buttered it and made
toast for a tea-room in the afternoon, and found another job to sweep
out stores. This woman had a son still under age but in training at
the Front. He had been in the habit of paying her periodical visits,