At the beginning of the war the French Government declared a moratorium, which is the suspension of rent payments for every one in Paris paying a rent of less than two thousand francs or possibly three thousand francs. With practically all the men mobilized, many families would have starved but for this provision. The wives or widows of soldiers are given a regular income by the French Government called "allocation,"--one franc twenty-five centimes a day and seventy-five centimes for each child. The soldiers themselves get five sous a day (formerly three sous), which barely enables them to get necessities and soap and tobacco, etc. "Chaumage" is money given to woman refugees if they have no men fighting. One franc twenty-five centimes a day for all over sixteen not working (mothers of little children, invalids, blind, etc.), and fifty centimes for children. There is a special old-age pension for men and women over sixty. In addition to these pensions there are committees--Comité Franco-Belge, Comité de la Marne, Secours des Meusiens, etc., who help refugees by giving money and clothes to special cases. They are so swamped with demands, however, that they cannot do much. It is a marvel to me what they and the French Government can do and what complication of financial adjustment is apparently carried on successfully. Where does the money come from to finance this war? Perhaps it would seem that considering the chaumage, the refugees are nearly as well off as the Parisians, but I assure you it is not so: the moratorium makes a vast difference, and, above all, the strangeness of Paris, ignorance of where to find places to live and work, ill health often contracted from the hardships of the way down and the frightful shock of living through bombardment. Many of them, you see, were fairly well off in Rheims or Lille or Maubeuge, or wherever they came from, and had to flee with only the clothes they had on their backs. The people who try to do much with little and live up to their former way of living appeal to my sympathy more than the most squalid who really have the greatest misery.