responsibility for acts that to my mind would not adequately meet the
emergency. Under the circumstances, there are only three ministers that
count for anything; those of war, foreign affairs, and finance." M.
Clemenceau said: "There must be something wrong with the mobilization
scheme, because when our troops were outnumbered at the front, there
were great quantities of young officers and men who for ten days had
been awaiting, at their various points of assembly, orders to join their
corps, and at the last moment were told to go home."

On the other hand, M. Millerand, Minister of War, has visited General
Joffre at the army headquarters and returned to Paris to-night "very
satisfied with the situation."

I took a spin in an automobile to-day to Versailles, and thence to Buc
with its red brick aerodrome tower, sheds, and long rows of hangars.
Here were groups of airmen in the rough, serviceable French sapper
uniform--loose-fitting blue coat, blue trousers with a double red
stripe, blue flannel scarf about their necks, as if they had all got
sore throats, and blue pointed forage caps. Here is Chevillard, that
wonderful gymnast of the air. There is Verrier, and here, driving a
sporting-looking car, is Carpentier, whose more familiar costume is a
pair of white slips and a pair of four-ounce gloves. For Carpentier has
been mobilized, too. Instead of making thousands of dollars this month
by his fight with Young Ahearn, and possibly other matches with
Bombardier Wells and Gunboat Smith, he, too, is on the pay list of the
army at next to nothing a day. He is attached to the flying center as a
chauffeur, and that car he is driving is his own, only he cannot take it
out without orders now.

[Photograph: Etienne Alexandre Millerand, Minister of War, August 27,