s irreproachable
as ever.

The next morning, as if by magic, hundreds of taxis had sprung into
existence, though they were much in demand. And in spite of the soldiers
thronging the sunlit streets, Paris was seemingly the same Paris one had
always known, gay--insouciante, pleasure-bent. The luxury shops appeared
to be thriving, the world-renowned restaurants to be doing business
as usual; to judge from the prices, a little better than usual; the
expensive hotels were full. It is not the real France, of course, yet it
seemed none the less surprising that it should still exist. Oddly enough
the presence of such overwhelming numbers of soldiers should have failed
to strike the note of war, emphasized that of lavishness, of the casting
off of mundane troubles for which the French capital has so long been
known. But so it was. Most of these soldiers were here precisely with
the object of banishing from their minds the degradations and horrors of
the region from which they had come, and which was so unbelievably near;
a few hours in an automobile--less than that in one of those dragon-fly
machines we saw intermittently hovering in the blue above our heads!

Paris, to most Americans, means that concentrated little district
de luxe of which the Place Vendome is the centre, and we had always
unconsciously thought of it as in the possession of the Anglo-Saxons. So
it seems today. One saw hundreds of French soldiers, of course, in all
sorts of uniforms, from the new grey blue and visor to the traditional
cloth blouse and kepi; once in a while a smart French officer. The
English and Canadians, the Australians, New Zealanders, and Americans
were much in evidence. Set them down anywhere on the face of the globe,
under any conditions conceivable, and you could not surprise them; such
was the impression. The British officers and even the British Tommies
were blase, wearing the air of the 'semaine Anglaise', and the "five
o'clock tea," as the French delight to call it. That these could have
come direct from the purgatory of the trenches seemed unbelievable.
The Anzacs, with looped-up hats, strolled about, enjoying themselves,
halting before the shops in the Rue de la Paix to gaze at the priceless
jewellery there, or stopping at a sidewalk cafe to enjoy a drink. Our
soldiers had not seen the front; many of them, no doubt, were on leave
from the training-camps, others were on duty in Paris, but all seemed in
a hurry to get somewhere, bou