mong the picture post-cards then on sale was one of Marianne, who
is France, bound for the front in an aeroplane with a crowing French
cock sitting on the brace above her. Marianne looked as happy as if
she were going to the races; the cock as triumphant as if he had a
spur through the German eagle's throat. However, there was little
sale for picture post-cards or other trifles, while Paris waited for the
siege. They did not help to win victories. News and not jeux d'esprit,
victory and not wit, was wanted.

For Marianne went to war with her liberty cap drawn tight over her
brow, a beat in her temples, and her heart in her throat; and the cock
had his head down and pointed at the enemy. She was relieved in a
way, as all Europe was, that the thing had come; at last an end of the
straining of competitive taxation and preparation; at last the test. She
had no Channel, as England had, between her and the foe. Defeat
meant the heel of the enemy on her soil, German sentries in her
streets, submission. Long and hard she had trained; while the outside
world, thinking of the Paris of the boulevards, thought that she could
not resist the Kaiser's legions. She was effeminate, effete. She was
all right to run cafes and make artificial flowers, but she lacked beef.
All the prestige was with her enemy. In '70 all the prestige had been
with her. For there is no prestige like military prestige. It is all with
those who won the last war.

"But if we must succumb, let it be now," said the French.

On, on--the German corps were coming like some machine-
controlled avalanche of armed men. Every report brought them a little
nearer Paris. Ah, monsieur, they had numbers, those Germans!
Every German mother has many sons; a French mother only one or
two.

How could one believe those official communiques which kept saying
that the position of the French armies was favourable and then
admitted that von Kluck had advanced another twenty miles? The
heart of Paris stopped beating. Paris held its breath. Perhaps the
reason there was no panic was that Parisians had been prepared for
the worst.

What silence! The old men and the women in the streets moved as
under a spell, which was the sense of their own helplessness. But few
people were abroad, and those going on errands apparently. The
absence of traffic and pedestrians heightened the sepulchral
appearance to superficial observation. At the windows of flats, inside
the little shops, and on by