PARIS IN WAR TIME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1939, Page 6

PARIS IN WAR TIME

CITY NO LONGER GAY STREETS OF CLOSED SHOPS. WOMEN AS WELL AS MEN IN UNIFORM. (By William H. Chamberlin, in the “Christian Science Monitor”). PARIS. Four weeks of war and Paris is almost unrecognisable. The glamour, the chic, the gaiety are gone. The welldressed women who formerly crowded the fashionable boulevards and cafes are gone; many of the cafes are closed. The most famous Paris streets, Rue de la Paix, Avenue de I’Opera, seem forlorn and deserted, with their rows of closed shops bearing the familiar sign: “Closed on account of mobilisation.” The large department stores are almost empty, with about half a dozen customers on a floor, mostly sad-look-ing women dressed in black. Nor is there much of an assortment of goods in the shops. For the masses of women and children who were evacuated from Paris after the outbreak of the war (it has been estimated that from a third to a half of the population left the city) bought what they needed before their departure and the stores have not ordered new stocks. My wife was recently looking for a simple navy blue felt hat in a department store and found only three hats in stock, of which one had to be taken from the window display. The leading creators of women's fashions, Lucien Lelong, for instance, have closed their doors, with many of their employees at the front. THE EXODUS OF MEN. It is difficult for anyone not living in Paris to realise how complete has been the exodus of men, except for the very young and very old. From our own experience, our butcher, our grocer, our milkman, our iceman, our shoemaker, my wife’s tailor have all been called. Our maid fled to her home in the country on the day when war broke out and her successor had been working for a family in which the head had been called up as a reserve officer. There are men in uniform (recently the British uniform is seen more and more frequently) riding in motorcycles or automobiles or walking in groups. The French are often accompanied by women. A good many women are also in uniform. Besides the subway and bus guards and conductors there are Red Cross nurses and women in charge of “passive defense," responsible for order in the abris or underground air raid shelters, and for first aid to victims. During the first days of the war there were several air raid warnings, from the sirens which sent people, at any hour of the day or night, scurrying to the cellars which are considered strong enough to withstand the shock of bombing, carrying their gas masks with them. However, no bombs fell after the alarms and Paris is now in many ways less agitated than it was during the first days of the war. Some people who hurried off to the provinces immediately after the outbreak of hostilities have now returned, despite the disapproving warnings which are periodically issued by the authorities. Blackouts are still enforced; but closing hours for movingpicture theatres and cafes have been advanced respectively to ten and eleven p.m. People are also now more inclined to leave their gas masks at home, although the cylindrical cases in which these masks are carried are still a very conspicuous feature of Paris street life. Only recently I noticed a little girl of about six carrying a gas mask in one hand, while she fondled a large doll in the other. In general, however, Paris has become almost a childless city. PROTECTION AGAINST BOMBS. The famous fountains on the Rond Point of the Champs-Elysees are no longer playing and the little crystal pigeons and rabbits which formerly squirted up streams of sparkling water are mournfully silent. The large statues, representing various French cities, on the Place de le Concorde and the obelisk, the Paris companion to London’s “Cleopatra's Needle” are being covered with scaffolding and sandbags in an effort to safeguard them against bombing. But if the gaiety and joy of life are gone from Paris, the French wit, the keen humour, the individuality in taste persist. “L’Oeuvre," one of the popular newspapers, still publishes its delightful cartoons, somewhat reminiscent of the New Yorker. The French artistic instinct has found a new means of expression in the arrangement of the strips of paper which are pasted over almost all windows in order to avert bomb concussions. The strips are of varied colours. from pale blue and sea green to the ordinary white and brown. For designs the Parisians have selected all sorts of geometrical figures, squares, oblongs, circles, parallel lines and radiating star lines. A large florist has put up a beautiful flower arrangement in paper of varied colours and a steamship company offers an artistically designed ironical island, with a ship approaching it.