Such was the impression made by the calm confidence of a people already meeting the German forces at the point where their inadequately fortified boundaries had been treacherously attacked. The impression may have been partly due to contrast with some days amid the wild confusion and panic of Paris, where, almost devoid of funds (since all letters of credit were valueless), we had existed, with several other stranded travellers, on the charity, or rather faith, of a prominent hotel proprietor. During that never-to-be-forgotten sojourn in the famous capital, we had witnessed something resembling the frenzied excitement of revolution days. The entire population, expecting a repetition of the horrors of 1870, was in a fever of alarm; distraction and tumult reigned on every side. Streets rang night and day with the hysterical cries of newsvendors announcing some unlooked-for lightning flash through the cloud of storm rapidly spreading darkness over the world; echoed to the ceaseless tramp of troops hurrying to the front, and with the shrieks and howls of applause raised by half-maddened crowds thronging the thoroughfares. Lightning alone can symbolize the rapid shocks that reached us, almost hourly, during those first days. But, as these events are well known, and their recital not an object of this account, they may be left to the more able hands now, doubtless, engaged in presenting them as each writer deems advantageous to his own nation. Paris, representing the dazed and horrified condition of the whole war-stricken country, indeed appeared mad at that time. “_C’est la guerre!_” was the explanation of every eccentric act; every scarcity; every failure to carry on business. All classes were in the streets, gesticulating, arguing, or shouting wildly to the hastily-mustered troops marching, gay and confident, toward a hell of horrors no one then could even picture. “_C’est la guerre!_” came with dogged bitterness from the lips of mothers, in whose eyes still lingered the tears through which they had smiled farewell to sons they would never see again—from the man behind the counter who absent-mindedly regretted that he had not some article asked for, until it was pointed out to him, in his stock, by a persistent client. To the French “_La Guerre_” meant the pitiless monster of Bismarck’s time, whose awful shadow still darkened the minds which could remember Germany’s last subtly-planned and opportune onslaught. Although later on, as all the world knows, France faced the situation with admirable courage and a wonderful spirit of self-sacrifice and determination, at that time her people appeared distraught by a calamity too little provided against, and too appallingly suggestive of disaster to be contemplated with the calm and faith quickly developed after the great Marne victory.