"Messieurs et Mesdames,---My fellow-manager has just been
arrested on a charge of espionage. I have been forbidden to speak
more than these few words, to express my personal regret that I am
unable to give my personal attention to your needs and pleasure."

With a bow this typical French "patron"--surely not a German spy!--
turned away and retreated from the room. A look of surprise passed
over the faces of the French soldiers. The ladies raised their pencilled
eyebrows, and then--so quickly does this drama of war stale after its
first experience--continued their conversation through whiffs of
cigarette smoke.


5


But it was not of German spies that the French Government was
most afraid. Truth to tell, Paris was thronged with Germans,
naturalized a week or two before the war and by some means or
other on the best of terms with the police authorities, in spite of spy-
hunts and spy-mania, which sometimes endangered the liberty of
innocent Englishmen, and Americans more or less innocent. It was
only an accident which led to the arrest of a well-known milliner
whose afternoon-tea parties among her mannequins were attended
by many Germans with business in Paris of a private character.
When this lady covered up the Teutonic name of her firm with a Red
Cross flag and converted her showrooms into a hospital ward,
excellently supplied except with wounded men, the police did not
inquire into the case until a political scandal brought it into the
limelight of publicity.