After dinner last evening I happened to be near the Cafe du Croissant near the Bourse and in the heart of the newspaper quarter of Paris. Suddenly an excited crowd collected. "Jaures has been assassinated!" shouted a waiter. The French deputy and anti-war agitator was sitting with his friends at a table near an open window in the cafe. A young Frenchman named Raoul Villain, son of a clerk of the Civil Court of Rheims, pushed a revolver through the window and shot Jaures through the head. He died a few moments later. The murder of the socialist leader would in ordinary times have so aroused party hatred that almost civil war would have broken out in Paris. But to-night, under the tremendous patriotic pressure of the German emperor's impending onslaught upon France, the whole nation is united as one man. As M. Arthur Meyer, editor of the _Gaulois_, remarked: "France is now herself again! Not since a hundred years has the world seen '_France Debout!_'" At four o'clock this afternoon I was standing on the Place de la Bourse when the mobilization notices were posted. Paris seemed electrified. All cabs were immediately taken. I walked to the Place de l'Opera and Rue de la Paix to note the effect of the mobilization call upon the people. Crowds of young men, with French flags, promenaded the streets, shouting "Vive La France!" Bevies of young sewing-girls, _midinettes_, collected at the open windows and on the balconies of the Rue de la Paix, cheering, waving their handkerchiefs at the youthful patriots, and throwing down upon them handfuls of flowers and garlands that had decked the fronts of the shops. The crowd was not particularly noisy or boisterous. No cries of "On to Berlin!" or "Down with the Germans!" were heard. The shouts that predominated were simply: "Vive La France!" "Vive l'Armee!" and "Vive l'Angleterre!" One or two British flags were also borne along beside the French tricolor. I cabled the following message to Mr. Ogden Reid, editor of the _New York Tribune_: Tribune, New York, Private for Mr. Reid. Suggest supreme importance event hostilities of Brussels as center of all war news. Also that Harry Lawson, _Daily Telegraph_, London, is open any propositions coming from you concerning _Tribune_ sharing war news service with his paper. According best military information be useless expense sending special men to front with French owing absolute rigid censorship. BARNARD. I based this suggestion about the supreme importance of Brussels because it has for years been an open secret among military men that the only hope of the famous _attaque brusquee_ of the German armies being successful would be by violating Belgian neutrality and swarming in like wasps near Liege and Namur, and surprising the French mobilization by sweeping by the lines of forts constructed by the foremost military engineer in Europe, the late Belgian general, De Brialmont.