Mr. Herrick told me this afternoon that a few days ago the Telegraph Office refused his cipher cables to Washington. The Ambassador at once protested at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the Minister, M. Doumergue, forthwith gave orders authorizing the telegraph office to accept his cipher messages. The Austrian Ambassador, who is still here, is not permitted to communicate by cipher telegrams with his Government. This is quite natural. _Monday, August 10._ Ninth day of mobilization. Hot, sunny weather. Temperature at five P.M. 29 degrees centigrade. Light southerly breeze. Depicted on all faces this morning is anxious but confident expectation, for the public are conscious that a desperate encounter between two millions of men is impending in Belgium and on the Alsace-Lorraine border from Liege to Colmar. The French capital is, at the present moment, a city of strange contrasts. Mothers, wives, sisters, and brides were last week red-eyed from the sorrow of parting. Now these same women have decorated their windows with bunting and have no thought other than of working as best they may to help the national cause. In the streets, the shrill voices of children pipe the latest news from the front; small girls cry grim details of the war. All prisoners charged with light offenses who are mobilizable have been allowed to go to the front to rehabilitate themselves. The central prison of Fresnes, which ten days ago contained nine hundred criminals, has now only two hundred and fifty left. And all the time Paris lives an every-day, humdrum life, makes the best of everything, and never complains. Day by day the aspect of the streets becomes more normal, for the reason that more and more vehicles are freed from military service and can now resume their ordinary duties of transporting the public. Pending the return of the motor-omnibuses, a service of _char-a-bancs_ has been started on the boulevards, which reminds Parisians of the days of the popular "Madeleine-Bastille" omnibus. Diplomatic relations between France and Austria-Hungary were broken off to-day. War however has not been declared between France and Austria.