Monday night a calm so intense that one felt frightened. Boulevards deserted, cafes closed, hotels shuttered. Patrols of the Civil Garde in massed formation. France was keeping her pledge to high civilization. Yellow circulars were pasted on the buildings warning all that France was in danger and appealing by that token to all male citizens to guard the women and the weak. At daylight only was the dead silence broken; France was marching to war at that hour. Will any one who was here forget that daily daybreak tramp, that measured march of the thousands going to the front? Cavalry with the sun striking the helmets; infantry with their scarlet overcoats too large; aviators with their boxed machines, the stormy petrels of modern war; and the dogs, veritably the dogs of war, going on the humanest mission of all, to search for the wounded in the woods of battle. And, side by side with the marching millions, on the pavement, were the women belonging to them; the women who were to stay behind. As though the Judgment Trumpet had sounded, France was changed in the twinkling of an eye. And added to that subconscious terror that lurked in every American soul of another revolution--a terror that was dispelled after the third day when France reached out her long arm and mobilized her people into a strong component whole with but one heart, was an inexplainable dread of this terrible calm. We knew about trained armies going to war, but here was a situation where the Biblical description of the Last Day was carried out, the man at the wheel dropped his work and was taken; he who was at the plowshare left his furrow.... First we were afraid we would not have enough to eat. A famine was prophesied, and the credulous who know nothing of the vast sources which supply France with food clamored to get to England. Then there were frenzied stories of hotels closing and prices soaring. None of which happened or had any chance of happening. Food was never better, and today we have fruit that melts in the mouth; fish that swims in the sauce, the lack of which Talleyrand deplored in England; little green string beans that no other country produces or knows how to cook. Prices never rose for the fraction of a sou. If one had a credit at a hotel, all was well, but unless one had ready money in small notes, none of the restaurants would accept an order. Here, and here only, was a snag concerning food. It is true that women went for twenty-four hours without food, but the reason was the lack of small change, not of eatables.