And the mairie holds a spirit of experiment. It houses not only courage and sympathy, but progress. The "XIV" has ventured on a Cuisine Populaire under Mme. Brunot's wholesome guidance. And so many other arrondissements have followed suit that Paris may be regarded as making a great experiment in the municipal feeding of her people. It is not charity, the food is paid for. In the "XIV" fifteen hundred persons eat a meal or two at the mairie each day. The charge is seventy-five centimes--fifteen cents, and one gets a soup, meat and a vegetable, and fruit. The world seems to be counselling us that if we wish to be well and cheaply fed we must go where there are experts to cook, where buying is done in quantity, and where the manager knows about nutritive values. If a word of praise is extended to the maire of the XIV arrondissement for his very splendid work, an example to all France, he quickly urges, "Ah, but Mme. Brunot!" And so it is always, if you exclaim, "Oh, the spirit of the men of France!" and a Frenchman's ears catch your words, he will correct, "Ah, but the women!" And the women do stand above all other women, they have had such opportunity for heroism. Whose heart does not beat the faster when the names Soisson and Mme. Macherez are spoken! The mayor and the council gone, she assumes the office and keeps order while German shells fall thick on the town. And then the enemy enters, and asks for the mayor, and she replies, "Le maire, c'est moi." And then do we women not like to think of Mlle. Deletete staying at her post in the telegraph office in Houplines in spite of German bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors, when they smashed her instruments and threatened her with death. One-tenth of France in the enemy's hands, and in each village and town some woman staying behind to nurse the sick and wounded, to calm the population when panic threatens, to stand invincible between the people and their conquerors! It is very splendid!--the French man holding steady at the front, the French woman an unyielding second line of defense. But what of France? Words of praise must not swallow our sense of obligation. Let us with our hundred millions of people face the figures. The death rate in France, not counting the military loss, is twenty per thousand, with a birth rate of eight per thousand. In Paris for the year ending August, 1914, there were forty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen births; in the year ending in the same month, 1916, the births dropped to twenty-six thousand one hundred and seventy-nine. The total deaths for that year in all France were one million, one hundred thousand, and the births three hundred and twelve thousand.