The less pretentious eating places of the modest diner, such as Duval's dining-rooms or the Bouillon Boulant, served good meals at reasonable prices. These latter are akin to the Child's restaurants in America. But already the food question was beginning to cause some anxiety throughout the world, because of the lessened production and increased consumption due to the millions of men taken from productive occupations who had to be kept fit as fighters. For this reason I decided one day to see how cheaply I could obtain a satisfying meal during wartime in Paris. The Diner de Paris advertised exceptionally cheap meals, and they seemed to be well patronized, so I entered one of these eating places. The large dining-room was filled to overflowing with a well-dressed throng, no doubt mostly clerks from the adjoining business blocks. Here I partook of a tastily cooked meal of soup, roast pork and potatoes, apple pie, and a bottle of milk, all for the munificent sum of twenty-six cents, plus the regulation tip of two cents, most certainly a reasonable price for a good meal in the principal city of a country with the invader on its soil. Unfortunately since that time the food situation in all the countries at war has become much more complicated. The hotels of the first class still kept open doors, and a few of them seemed to have an air of prosperity, but these were very few. Many of them who, in the season, considered it "infra-dig" to have more than a small card in the hotel columns of the daily papers, which card never hinted at their prices, had descended to the habit of advertising "special rates during the war." But others still preferred their small, select clientele--and a deficit--to accepting prosperity obtained by any such plebeian method. One point noticeable was the fact that unless the traveler carried them himself he saw no gold Louis or half-Louis, so much in evidence in times of peace. I had brought with me some English gold, but once it disappeared from my hand it never returned. A journalist friend of mine told me he was collecting the equivalent of one hundred dollars in gold to keep for an emergency, and was delighted when I gave him a few sovereigns in exchange for French money. The gold was being gathered in by the government, and today in France only paper money is used in exchange. All the smaller cities issue paper currency in denominations as low as one-quarter franc, or five cents.