When I came in this morning the place was packed with Germans. Some cheerful idiot had inserted a notice in the papers that all Germans were to be run out of the country, and that they should immediately apply to the American Legation. As the flood poured in, Leval got on the telephone to the Surete Publique and found out the true facts. Then we posted a notice in the hall. But that was not enough. As is always the case with humans, they all knew better than to pay any attention to what the notice said and each one of the hundred or more callers had some reason to insist on talking it over with somebody. When they once got hold of one of us, it was next to impossible to get away without listening to the whole story of their lives. All they had to do was to go down to the German Consulate-General, where we had people waiting to tell them all there was to know. It was hard to make them realise that by taking up all our time in this way, they were preventing us from doing things that were really necessary to serve them in more important matters. I said as much to several of them, who were unusually long-winded, but every last one replied that HIS case was different and that he must be heard out at length. Our refugee train left this morning and took eight hundred more of the poor people. Where they all turn up from, I don't know, but each day brings us a fresh and unexpected batch. Many of the cases are very sad, but if we stop to give sympathy in every deserving case, we should never get anything practical done for them. To-day's budget of news is that the French have got to Mulhouse and have inflicted a decisive defeat upon the Germans. According to reports, the Alsatians went mad when the French troops crossed the frontier for the first time in forty-four years. They tore up and burned the frontier posts and generally gave way to transports of joy. I would have given a lot to see the crowds in Paris. A letter came yesterday from Omer, the legation footman, who is at Tirlemont with the artillery. He said he had not yet been hit, although he had heard the bullets uncomfortably near. He wound up by saying that he had _beaucoup de courage_--and I believe him. It seems that some of the German troops did not know what they were attacking and thought they were in France. When brought here as prisoners, some of them expressed surprise to find that Paris was so small. They seem to have thought that they were in France and the goal not far away.