stranger within her gates ever
forget the courtesy of Paris.

At night powerful searchlights backed up by artillery guard the city
from the monster of the air.

This is fiction come true. It is Conan Doyle, Kipling, Wells come to
measure. From the moment of sunset until sunrise those comets with an
orbit patrol the skies. Pointing with blazing fingers to the moon and
the stars, to the horizon, they proclaim that Paris watches while her
people sleep.

The idea has given comfort to thousands. You, in your safe, tranquil
homes, cannot know the pleasure it gives to look out of the window in
the wakeful nights and watch those wheeling comets circling, circling to
catch the Zeppelin that may come.

And behind the light is the gun. Rooftop artillery! The new warfare! On
the roof of the fashionable Automobile Club on the Place de la Concorde
the little blue firing guns wheel with the blazing fingers. Always ready
to send shot and shell into a bulging speck in the sky that does not
return the luminous signals. So on the roof of the Observatoir, so on
the encircling environs; sometimes three, sometimes six, they are always
going. People stand in the streets to watch, hypnotized by the moment
into horizon gazing. There will be a speck in the sky; people grow
tense; the comet catches it; is that wigwagging on the roof, those
challenges in fire, returned? No. The speck passes; we breathe again.
And so it goes: a ceaseless centre of interest. It is the novelty of the
world war.

The highest artillery in the world is on the Eiffel Tower. At its dizzy
top, pointing to the sky, are machine guns that are trained to fire at
an enemy's balloon. It is an answer to the prayer of the people that
these guns have not yet been used.

But it is not only in the artillery on the top of the Eiffel Tower that
interest centres; it is in the wireless that sends the messages to land
and sea, safeguarding armies and navies, patrolling the earth and water.
Strange, isn't it, that the plaything of a nation has become its
safeguard?

That was a stirring day when Paris sang "God Save the King." Gen. French
arrived from London, coming quietly to confer with M. Viviani, the
Minister for War, and with President Poincare. He was the first English
General to come to the aid of France since Cromwell commissioned the
British Ambassador to go to the aid of Anne of Austria. And the French
heart responded as only it can; the people stood, with raised hats, i