dignity vanished in a flash.
He stepped around his desk and shook Mr. Herrick eagerly by the hand.
He said there were many precious memorials and many rare objects which
might have their habitation in one spot like Paris, but which
nevertheless belonged to all civilized humanity, and that no diplomat
could perform a greater service to France and to mankind than to stay
in Paris and do what could be done to protect these precious memorials
and objects from destruction--a destruction which might be avoided if
an authorized spokesman of that humanity were present to protest.

* * * * *

The stampede out of Paris grows hour by hour. It is a contagion and
seizes all classes. A week ago it was a short street indeed which did
not boast at least one Red Cross Hospital; now most of them are
deserted, for the fashionable women who followed the fashion in
joining hospitals have now again followed the fashion and fled,
pell-mell.

The newspaper men and the "war correspondents" have been particularly
concerned for their own safety. By supreme efforts, I today managed
to obtain conveyances to transport several of them out of the
city--men with sweat on their brows and hands that trembled. There is
an element of humor in it all, despite the sadness. One of the staff
remarked, "Do you notice how all the newspaper men, who for weeks have
been pestering us with requests to be sent to the front, now demand as
insistently to be sent away, when the front is at last coming to
them?" In time of peace diplomats and war correspondents are easily
the most pugnacious people in the world. If one has taken them at
their own estimation the resulting contrast is painful.

Today we took over the interests of Great Britain, Japan, and
Guatemala. We have represented Germany, Austria, and Hungary since the
beginning of August, so that, including the United States, we are now
seven embassies in one.

* * * * *

_Friday, September 4th._ Last evening all Paris awaited the "six
o'clock Taube" which has become for the French a regular and almost
welcome feature of each day's happenings. At four o'clock a French
aviator in a monoplane took the air and mounted up, up, up, in slow
wide circles whose center was the Tour Eiffel, until he finally
reached an altitude of some 10,000 feet. Then, a mere speck in the
cold, thin air, he circled slowly around and around, waiting for the
German--who neve