lightly wounded men in a desert
of beds. Because they could not speak French, perhaps, these rare
arrivals were mostly Turcos and Senegalese, so that when they
awakened in these wards and their eyes rolled round upon the white
counterpanes, the exquisite flowers and the painted ceilings, and
there beheld the beauty of women bending over their bedsides--
women whose beauty was famous through Europe--they murmured
"Allahu akbar" in devout ecstasy and believed themselves in a
Mohammedan paradise.

It was a comedy in which there was a frightful tragedy. The doctors
and surgeons standing by these empty beds, wandering through
operating-theatres magnificently appointed, asked God why their
hands were idle when so many soldiers of France were dying for lack
of help, and why Paris, the nerve-centre of all railway lines, so close
to the front, where the fields were heaped with the wreckage of the
war, should be a world away from any work of rescue. It was the
same old strain of falsity which always runs through French official
life. "Politics!" said the doctors of Paris; "those cursed politics!"

But it was fear this time. The Government was afraid of Paris, lest it
should lose its nerve, and so all trains of wounded were diverted from
the capital, wandering on long and devious journeys, side-tracked for
hours, and if any ambulances came it was at night, when they glided
through back streets under cover of darkness, afraid of being seen.

They need not have feared, those Ministers of France. Paris had
more courage than some of them, with a greater dignity and finer
faith. When the French Ministry fled to Bordeaux without having
warned the people that the enemy was at their gates, Paris remained
very quiet and gave no sign of wild terror or of panic-stricken rage.
There was no political cry or revolutionary outburst. No mob orator
sprang upon a cafe chair to say "Nous sommes trahis!" There was
not even a word of rebuke for those who had doctored the official
communiques and put a false glamour of hope upon hideous facts.
Hurriedly and dejectedly over a million people of Paris fled from the
city, now that the Government had led the way of flight. They were
afraid, and there was panic in their exodus, but even that was not
hysterical, and men and women kept their heads, though they had
lost their hopes. It was rare to see a weeping woman. There was no
wailing of a people distraught. Sadly those fugitives left the city which
ha