“It has been repeatedly and persistently asserted, in hastily written articles and books, that the war has created an entirely ‘new’ Paris. Journalists and novelists have proclaimed themselves astonished at the ‘calm’ and the ‘seriousness’ of the Parisians, and at the ‘composed’ and ‘solemn’ aspect of every street, corner and stone in the city; and how elaborately, how melodramatically have they expatiated upon the abolition of absinthe, the closing of night-restaurants, the disappearance of elegant dresses, the silence of the Apaches, the hush in the demi-monde, and the increased congregations in the churches! “‘A new, reformed Paris,’ our critics reiterate. ‘The flippancy has vanished, the danger of decadence has passed—and in place of extravagance and hilarity we find economy, earnestness and dignity.’ “Now, with these hastily conceived reflections and criticisms I beg leave to disagree. It is not a ‘new’ Paris that one beholds to-day, but precisely the very Paris one would expect to see. No city, at heart, is more serious, more earnest, more alive to ideas and ideals: no other capital in the world works so hard, creates so much, feels so deeply, labours and battles so incessantly and so consistently for the supreme cause of liberty, justice and humanity. Crises, and shocks, and scandals, if you like—but what generous reparations, what glorious recoveries! Stifling cabarets, lurid restaurants, rouge, and patchouli, and startling deshabille, if you please; but all those dissipations were provided for the particular pleasure and well-filled purses of Messieurs les Étrangers—at least twenty foreigners to one Frenchman on the hectic hill of Montmartre; and what a babel of English and American voices _chez_ Maxim, until five or six in the morning, when the average Parisian was peacefully enjoying his last hour’s sleep! The statues and monuments of Paris, the free Sorbonne University, the quays of the Seine with their bookstalls, the incomparable Comédie Française, the stately French Academy, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Panthéon (with its noble motto: ‘Aux Grands Hommes, la Patrie Reconnaissante’), the Arc de Triomphe, Notre-Dame; do these (and innumerable other) illustrious institutions, so cherished by the Parisians, appear compatible with ‘flippancy,’ ‘incoherency’ and ‘the danger of decadence’? And the profound, ardent patriotism of the Parisians—how else could it have manifested itself save in the noble, supreme spectacle of courage, determination and self-sacrifice which we are witnessing to-day? No; it is not a ‘new’ Paris, but the very Paris one expected to see; hushed but proud; stricken yet self-confident; wounded, even stabbed to the heart after eleven months of war—but heroic, indomitable”—the Amazing City—the worthy capital of, as Mr Kipling says, “the Land beloved by every soul that loves and serves its kind.”