On the Eve of War.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 90, 11 September 1914, Page 3

On the Eve of War.

S HOW PARIS FACED 1T.5 PERIL. PREPARED FOR THE WORST. THE ORDER OF MOBILISATION. I This is a changed Pario, quieter, more nobiT, more suixlucd, wrote the Daily ila.il correspondent two da-s before tue I. declaration of war. For the people who Igo about her streets, though they do the sarnie 'things and do tliem in the same way as last week, are filled, with very different thoughts. 1m each mind there is a grim background to every other thought. It is the prospect of the wounds and the death, tlie ruin and the suffering, of war to lie endured, perhaps in a fortnight's time on that eastern frontier, to which Frenchmen have lookud so anxiously for 44 years. _ There is just one subject of convensaiion. Already it would be 'monotonous if it had not the grim interest of a matter of life, and death. "It is for when, the mobiisationV" The words are said not 'boastingly, not sadly, nor yet gaily—just calmly. It "seems strange that the French, so ready for noisy demonstration on subjects ci less import, slioiud find themselves nearer to the day of reckoning with their old enemies than they have been since tliev last fought them a generation and ahaif ago, and yet remain -tranquil, unexeited, no more than deeply interested, and clearly resigned, if the worst is indwd to come, to- meet it firmly.

' Throughout Paris, anil indeed all over France, people are engaged in effecting a sort of discount of the ordeal that seems to be drawing on so fast. They are trying to forence, to prepare for eventualities, to harden themselves to the trial by reflecting well upon it in cold blood. "I shall be left with four children on my hands," said a woman in the oEinilms this morning. "What will become of us? God knows" —and yet the tone was not one of bitterness. "The Government will look after us." answered another. "You will see. There will ibe distributions of bread. It will not again be like the last time. Ah, no."

"WHAT DAY DO YOU 00?" "What day do you go?" It is the question you will hear wherever men in the prime of life are gathered together. For on each reservist's military papers it is indicated how soon after the date of the order of mobilisation he ■must, rejoin his regiment. Some must start at once. "I rejoin at .'foul the first day,'' said tne telephonist downstairs with a smile. Tnul—right on the German frontier. Life has abrupt changes for men of a O.ntinental nation; to be working a private telephone exchange one day, and hardly more than a few hours later perhaps to be right, in the thick of (he most desperate batU'o of nations since the beginning of the world.

I was in a Ministry 10-dav—the most. craiifortaHile of all the French Ministeries, f think, with soft carpets and tapestries and mar'ole and panelling. The attache to whom I wa,j. talking is a big mail, but one who evidently takes care to dine well, lie is ahv.'.ys beautifully dress-rd and his patent-leather boots, with their while cloth tops, have to be carried (o and from the Ministry every day in a neat lit tile car, He was leaning back in a gilr, red .'ilk Louis XVf. chair. "Next week." he said suddenly, with a short Hugh, "1 dare sa'. I shall be much les-i comfortable—a rifle on my shoulder and :\ pack on my back, eh?—and sleeping: under a hedge in the rain. 1 join the second day."

THE BARKER cnRASSITT.. One's acquaintances begin to take on a romantic interest, of which thev would have seemed ha>dly capable a week ago. jDuclos, whom t sec in the editorial olticcs of a newspaper in the small hours of every morning, smoking countless .liarylanl cigarotti.s, is. it seem?, an artilleryman, and dins'a medal for being the best gunlayor m hi* 'kitten-, iiij concienv is a' dragoon. The waiter, who has grown to tolerate my hahit of taking cream with ec.fl'cc after dinner, will V a "sons-0f1.. - ' giving orders inKtontl of taking them. One has a sudden seriou.-ne.-s of iiK'f.Vicncy nMongall these people who arc so ready to take their piaces as .parts of the fighting machine, coupled with a vague feelins of resentment (hat ail tills time they have heen [living dimhle lives. Who would hay,, dreamed, for instance, tint that tall young man who cuts one's hair so satisfactorily twice a month i., really a cuirassier, and will verv likely he chanijncr about in a gleaming breastplate this lime next month, ii.ourishiii r a heavy (sabre to cut oft heads' instead ,of trimming them ? And if mobilisation does cnmc th" first general mobilisation in franco for 41 years-what wit! be the VjlVct inon our life i : , Paris? There will b:>. „f ~ L'reat scenes at. the railway stations. . s men of all classes start off to join their reeiim-ii' s packed in luggage ami cattle trucks-ill distinction between (hem hist in the gtea.t democracy of war. There will be the weeping of women and children, the cheers of the mini left behind, ilca-ni-strations of patriotic fec'ing in the squares of Paris.

IV-siblv martial law will be at once proclaimed in the capital. The pnli-.i' will be armed with rilles. I'uiiMiment for (bsrrder and law breaking wiil be sharp and speed-, administered by a council of war.- There will be a chasse aiix espions (spy hunt) as at the beginning of the Franco-Prussinn war. Alnu.is't immisliaf Iv, too. (lie greater number of our motor-Vat's will d'siopear' from the Paris streets. Last autumn, at the grand manoeuvres in tile south-west. T remember inv siii prise to meet suddenly at a turn in the road a familiar Modcleine.Bastille omnibus careering along at best -peed, crowded even ir.iore than usual with carcases of dead beef instead of Jivin- Rari-hins. Tlie taxicabs, too, will either 1"? takin for tran-iiorf .purposes or will remain in their garages' for lack of ehiuffeurs, since most of the Paris taxirabdri'vers are under 4.1 and will b" called to the war.

Trains will be l-'rc and um-eri u'n, horses anil curbs will be pre.-ed into the service of the imincn.-e ta.il f nrovvion and ammunition supply wlr-.'i the FriflK'h armies will d'-ag alter them.

PROBLEM OK FEEDIXO PAWS. P.usiness of every kind, it is to b-> expected will be almost stationary. The salesmen will nave joined the nr:.nv. Purchasers wiM he too chary of spending money to buy more thin the bare necessaries of life. Ford i-uppli-s wiil be, "perhaps!, niitionaliwd: for the problem of feeding Paris, with its civilian population of 3.000,001) and its garrison of 100.MS0. when so much of the r.'.li'ii.'i •ictoek that, normally brin»,s her her, daily food is needed for the servicef'pf

'.the .armv, will be ono of the chief nrobhsms that Will face the general staff. Newspapers Will have difficulty in appearing with so -many of the people whoso services go to their making called away. In any ease, it is unlikely that the court martial would allow news of tue war to 'he published in Paris except in the [form of official communiques. ■ Amonp all the commlications and the wise of civilisation these things seem all unreal—ther e is only the endless roar of tile newsboys- selling special «li'tions on the boulevards, that conies through the or/en window as I write, to remind one that these possibilities are really of to-morrow aiwl not of one's own imagining. But just as in Sofia and Constantinople one dined at case with men who three weeks later were dead and thrown into a common soldier's PTave so here in France one cannot realise tnat one is now very near to the terrible facts of suffering and death that lie so close beneath the surface of what we call our civilisation.