a price fixed by law; which was a good thing too, seeing that thereby
the extortioner and the profiteer lost their chances to gain unduly
through the necessities of the populace. So far as I was able to
ascertain, nobody on the island actually suffered--except the present
writer of these lines; and he suffered chiefly because he could not
restrain himself from comparing the English foods of pre-war periods
with the English foods of the hour.

If things were thus in England, what would they be in France? This was
the question I repeatedly put to myself. But when I got to France a
surprise awaited me. It was a surprise deferred, because for the
first week of my sojourn upon French soil I was the guest of the
British military authorities at a château maintained for the
entertainment of visiting Americans who bore special credentials from
the British Foreign Office.

Here, because Britain took such good and splendid care to provide
amply for her men in uniform, there was a wide variety of good food
and an abundance of it for the guests and hosts alike. I figured,
though, that when I had passed beyond the zone of this gracious
hospitality there would be slim pickings. Not at all!

In Paris there was to be had all the food and nearly all the sorts of
food any appetite, however fastidious, might crave. This was before
the French borrowed the card system of ration control in order to
govern the consumption of certain of the necessities. Of poultry and
of sea foods the only limits to what one might order were his interior
capacity and his purse. Of red meats there was seemingly a boundless
supply.