The Living Present

packages-which, by the way, covered the top of the automobile and were piled so high inside that we disposed ourselves with some dif

nd-thread, buttons, pocket mirrors, post-cards, pencils, are a few of the articles I recall. The members of the Commit

onet every few yards, but in 1916 we rolled on unhindered. Paris is no longer in the War Zone, although as we passed the fort

ations provided for them, principally through the instrumentality of another remarkable Frenchwoman, Mlle. Javal, now number about one hundred and thirty, and are either behind the lines or in the neighborhood of Paris or other large cities. The one we visited, Le Bourget, is amon

sit stood Madame Balli, Mrs. Allen, Mr. Holman-Black and myself, and we handed out packages with a "Bonne chance" as the men filed by. Some were sullen and unresponsive, but many more looked as pleased as

ion. To each of these we gave several of the black cigarettes dear to the tobacco-proof heart of the Frenchman, a piece of soap, three picture post-cards, and chocolate. I think they were as g

ts. Nowhere, not even in the War Zone, did war show to me a grimmer face than here. As these men are in good health and tarry barely forty-eight hours, little is done for their comfort. Soldiers

apping the heavy loads they carried on their backs. They were sleeping soundly. Every bed was occupied by a sprawling figure in his stained, faded, muddy uniform.

coffee and cocoa, bread, cakes and lemonade, to those weary men as they come in, but also have made their little sheds look gaily hospitable with flags and pictures. The Miss Gracies had even induced some one to build

a woman of the village close by, I wondered with some apprehension if she were meaning to reward us for our excessive virtue. But they were an impromptu treat f

lingness to help. It was a strange sight, that line of charming women with kind bright eyes, and, although simply dressed, stamped with the world they moved in, while standing and lying about were the tired and dirty poilus-even those that stood were slouching as if resting their backs whil

owded with soldiers off duty, or as empty as old gray shells, nothing induced in me the same vicious stab of hatred for war as this scene. There is only one thing more abominable than war and that is the pacificist doctrine