The long-distance gun which has been bombarding Paris has not terrorized the civil population, as the Germans intended. I was in and out of the city for a month after the gun began to do its deadly work, and I can attest to that fact. But I remember three occasions when the wrath of the Parisians rose to such a height that I shuddered to think of the retribution that was piling up for Germany. The first time was when a shell struck an historic old church, killing seventy-five Good Friday worshipers. The second was when the shell burst in a ward of a maternity hospital, making victims of mothers and newly born babes. The third time was when a factory was struck, and at least seven women workers were savagely slain. The shell struck the front of the factory, killing the head foreman who was just leaving the place. The man was torn limb from limb. The entire front wall of the factory crushed inward and fell upon the women seated at their work. Six were killed outright, one died on the way to the hospital, and thirty were desperately hurt. They were nearly all war widows, wives of soldiers and refugees, those slain women and their comrades in the factory. “After the church, after the nursery, the sewing room,” wrote the editor of _Le Matin_. “It will be said that the barbarians respect nothing.” Not religion, not infancy, not womanhood. What deepened the indignation in the minds of the French public was the almost sublime courage shown by the women in that factory. There was not a single moment of panic. Instantly picking themselves up, those who were unhurt began to lift out of the mass of bricks and shattered timbers the dead and wounded. They vied with one another in their calm, quick efforts to save life, and by the time the ambulances arrived all the wounded had received first aid. The next morning at the usual hour every woman, except the seriously wounded, reported for work. Not one stayed at home. “France can not spare workers now,” said one woman to President Poincaré, who personally visited the wrecked factory to congratulate these heroines. Such is the metal of French wives and mothers, who have always, until this war, lived rather secluded lives within their own homes. In sheer admiration the French men, who have hitherto monopolized the higher fields of industry, and who have laughed at the idea of women in political life, are now ready to yield to any demands that women may in future put forth. French women can probably have the vote for the asking. They have not made up their minds, in great numbers, that they want to vote. But the suffrage movement is well started, it has good leaders, women of education and social power, and there is no question as to the outcome. War has wrought great changes in the status of women in all the countries directly involved, and in France it has almost overturned the whole social theory. The rigid system of chaperonage of girls has been greatly relaxed.