playing the fiddle. She was barefoot, and Henry, who has a keen
eye, noticed that she had her toes rouged! But she always was good
for four encores, and she usually got a good start at the fifth from
Henry and me; we had just that much national pride! Great throngs
of soldiers filled these gay show houses. The French, the English,
and the Australians seemed satisfied with them. But the Canadians
and Americans sniffed. To them Paris is a poor show town.

One night we fell into a Boulevard show the like of which we had
never seen before. It was a political revue! The whole evening was
devoted to skits directed at the ministry, at the food administration,
at the scandals in the interior department and the deputies, at the
high taxes and the profiteering of the munition makers. The skits
were done in dialogue, song and dance, and the various forms of
burlesque. A good crowd--but not a soldier crowd--sat through it
and applauded appreciatively. Imagine an American audience devoting
a whole evening to a theatrical performance exclusively concerned
with Hoover, Secretary Daniels, Colonel Roosevelt, former Mayor
Mitchel, and LaFollette. In America we get little politics out of
the theater. In France, where they distrust the newspapers, they get
much politics from the theater. The theater is free in France--and
apparently not so closely censored as the newspapers. We learned that
night at the revue of a coming cabinet crisis, before the newspapers
announced it. And in learning of the crisis we had this curious
social experience, which we modestly hoped was quite as Parisian as
the Revue. During the first act of the show it was Greek to Henry
and me. We could understand a vaudeville show, and by following
the synopsis could poke along after the pantomime in a comedy. But
here in this revue, where the refinements of sarcasm and satire
were at play and that without a cue, we were stumped. Henry was