_Wednesday, August 26_.


Twenty-fourth day of the war. Dull, cheerless weather, with a Scotch
drizzle in the afternoon and heavy rain in the evening. Southwesterly
wind. Temperature at five P.M. 20 degrees centigrade.

The great battle on the Sambre and Meuse continues with frightful
slaughter on both sides. The allies have been partially forced back but
resist with dogged determination.

Mrs. Hermann Duryea, a family relative of mine, and whose husband's
horse "Durbar" won the English Derby this spring, has come to Paris for
a few days from their country place near Argentan in Normandy, and is
stopping at her apartment in the Avenue Gabriel. Mrs. Duryea's
chauffeur, who is a young Frenchman, says that Belgian chauffeurs have
reached Normandy from the north, telling harrowing tales of the
brutality and cruelty of the Germans, and announcing that the "German
cavalry and armored motor-cars would soon prevent people from leaving
Paris." Mrs. Duryea, who is an exceedingly cool-headed, plucky woman,
came to me for advice. I told her that there was no probability at
present of communication from Paris to the westward being interfered
with. She sent some of her servants home to the United States and made
arrangements to rejoin her husband at Bazoches-en-Houlme, near Argentan.
The chateau has, through the generosity of the Duryeas, been turned into
a Red Cross hospital.