cellars under bombardment, and the children surviving, sometimes. Then after weeks of this, they arrive here, for it is certainly true of Paris as of Rome, that "all roads lead to Rome," to find that they being refugees must pay rent. No one wants to take them in when they have many children. The Government is wonderful the way it does give its "allocation" to them. The Mairies give coal once a month and potatoes twice; and the schools give sabots or jalottes every three months. But even with this, it is hard, after having had a "home," to live in hôtels all in one room, or two at the most (and these people that were a pretty good class of persons formerly). I don't know whether their mental as well as physical suffering is more pitiful than those common miners' families, refugees who always lived a squalid life, but whose actual physical misery is usually worse than the first class. Of course, the Parisians have a certain definite advantage right from the first, because, according to law, they do not have to pay rent; that is, none who have a member at the front, and goodness knows that includes all Parisiennes, at any rate. This law does not refer to refugees, so you see it makes a good big difference in the comparative cost of living. I suppose that it must be the Rockefeller Foundation that gives so many of these people from the "pays envahis" such excellent aid if they pass through Switzerland. We hear over and over again that in "Suisse on est bien traité." Just at present, things are very busy here, for Mrs. Shurtleff is opening two new départements,--grocery and tuberculosis. The former will be invaluable, for so many of the people are sick through lack of proper food; and, after all, with one franc twenty-five centimes a day allocation for the wife or mother, and seventy-five centimes per day for the children under sixteen years, and only fifty centimes per kid if there is no member at the front, with the average family now, with the very varying rent, sometimes very high and other times comparatively low, it is, even with a small supply of coal and potatoes (erratically given, for the most part), hard for a family that is run down, after the exposures and general strain of their flight, to have enough money left, when they have paid their rent, to buy very nourishing and very much food. It is most interesting to find every day new twists and turns as to what the different Comités and Mairies will and will not do. They are cutting down on everything as much as they can, and you can hardly blame them. But the inconsistencies are amusing at times;--one family does not get its "allocation de réfugié," generally known as "chaumage" (differing from "allocation militaire" in that it is given, although there is no member of the family at the front), because they have only four children! Yet if there were five children or more, they would receive only four pairs of shoes from the schools every three months, so