Of late one sees everywhere numbers of women in mourning, increasing so rapidly as to attract the attention of even the least observing. Paris still maintains a strange calm. The stillness of the city is positively oppressive. Even the newsboys drag slowly along calling in a disheartened voice their wares which no longer contain any news and which, in consequence, find few buyers. The people seem to realize from the very lack of news that this is to be a long and terrible war and that any decisive result cannot be at present expected. Letters are constantly arriving at the Embassy, forwarded to us with great care by French soldiers who have found them on the bodies of dead Germans, or received them from the hands of the dying. They are sent to us in the hope that we may eventually find means to transmit them to Germany to the relatives of the dead for whom they were intended. Today came such a note written by a German airman who had been shot down out of the sky. He had evidently realized that his time was short and had hurriedly scribbled on the back of a sheet of instructions printed in German script the few words he could summon strength to write. The scrap of paper was torn and smudgy and a thumb-print in blood was impressed on one corner. Each word was more shaky and labored than the preceding one, as if each had been traced only by a supreme effort. On it was written in German, "Good-bye, Mother and Father. My leg is crushed. The French are very kind and...." A foot-note had been added by some French soldier explaining that the man had died while he was writing, and giving the means of identification which had been found on the body. * * * * * _Monday, August 24th._ Yesterday and this morning I have observed a very singular psychological phenomenon. Neither yesterday nor today have the authorities given out any military news of importance and the papers have been as non-committal as usual, yet all Paris believes that the Allies have suffered a great and terrible defeat at a place in Belgium called Charleroi. The whole city is as if it were under a pall. Every face wears a fatalistic expression terrible to behold. I have read of such mysterious spreading of evil tidings, but have never before witnessed anything of the kind. It is a very curious manifestation, whether or not it proves to have any foundation in fact.[1] [Footnote 1: The French and British armies suffered a crushing defeat at Charleroi on August 22d-23d. As a result they were driven back a distance of 150 miles and only succeeded in making a stand after they had reached a point southeast of Paris.] * * * * * The French find a superstitious encouragement in an acrostic which some ingenious journalist has constructed out of the names of the Commanders-in-Chief of the French and British armies. Here it is: JOF | FRE ____|_____ | FRE | NCH * * * * *