[Illustration: Robert Woods Bliss, First Secretary of the United States Embassy in Paris, September, 1914.] A number of complications have arisen by discharged servants filing statements against their former employers, denouncing them as "probable spies." Several examples of this have already occurred with prominent American ladies who permanently reside here. I spoke with M. Hennion, the prefect of police, on the subject, and he said that "such malicious accusations"--and he showed me a pile of denunciations nearly a yard high--"were never acted upon, unless under _really suspicious circumstances_." One of Mr. Herrick's callers at the American Embassy was Mme. Henri de Sincay, a grand-daughter of General Logan, of Civil War fame. She is the wife of a French army officer and when the war broke out was living in a chateau near Liege. She fled to Brussels with her child, and then, leaving the latter there with her sister-in-law, came to Paris to say good-by to her husband, who is attached to the aviation corps near Versailles. Now Mme. de Sincay cannot return to her child, but she is not worrying over the situation and has offered her services to the American Ambulance here in Paris. The earnest, practical way in which General Victor Constant Michel, Military Governor of Paris, carries out his work, is admirable. General Michel has quietly despatched large numbers of the unruly youths of Belleville, Montmartre, and Montparnasse,--known as the "apaches"--to the country, in small gangs, to reap the wheat harvest, and he also employs them in the government cartridge and ammunition factories. In Paris, they have completely vanished from sight. The prohibition of the drinking and sale of absinthe, not only in Paris, but throughout France, was also due to the foresight of the Military Governor. General Michel, although a rigid disciplinarian and a masterful organizer, is extremely affable and agreeable. He was born at Auteuil in 1850, and after graduation from Saint-Cyr, the French West Point, served in the war of 1870-1871 as second lieutenant of infantry. In 1894 he was made colonel of an infantry regiment and showed such proficiency during the manoeuvers that he became general-of-brigade in 1897. He was made general-of-division in 1902; he is member of the Supreme War Council, and in 1910 was awarded the high distinction of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. _Monday, August 24._ Twenty-second day of the war. Hot day with bright blue sky and southeasterly wind. Thermometer at five P.M. 27 degrees centigrade.