Paris, Sept. 24.
A score of special trains rushed thousands of French reservists to the German frontier garrisons from here late today im response to the Government's new partial mobilisation. order.
The momentum of departures increased hourly as men who had been called to the colours arrived ate steadily increasing rate in taxicabs, subways, buses and afoot to board the special military trains. Despite efforts to keep the men moving, however, as many as 10,000 thronged the courtyard of the station here this afternoon waiting for the arrival of additional special trains.
Scores of extra traffic police were put on duty immediately in the railway station district in an effort to break up trafic blocks. A detachment of railway service troops in khaki war uniforms and carrying full equipment, including gas masks, was charged with making up the special trains and mobile gendarmes were drafted into service as military police.
The first special train left here at 10.30 o'clock this morning but there were other departures late this afternoon for Strasbourg, Nancy, Verdun and other eastern concentration points. Besides the reservists, there were occasional small detachments of uniformed men being moved such as a unit of about 100 of the Fourth Hussars Regiment who were sent to Epernay.
Most of the men who departed from here late this afternoon and this evening will travel most of the night before reaching their garrisons. Mobilisation orders include the stipul: tion that the men take two day: rations with them. They feed themselves until they reach their garrisons and are given their uniforms. Most of those who left here today will be in uniform early tomorrow morning.
There were many pathetic scenes at the railway station where wives and sweethearts came to see their men off to the front. Many women were clinging to their men on the station platforms, but despite the increasing number of men and women arriving at the station throughout the cay, the scene was not comparable with the mobilisation scenes of early 1914, As if there wasn't enough excitement, a small fire broke out in the station pharmacy in the middle of the afternoon. A screeching litter of French fire engines rushed in from the surrounding districts to help the local brigade extinguish the fire.
The throng st the station included men of all descriptions and all ages up to the late thirties. There were thousands of factory workers, white mailer men and farmers from the countryside. A haig number of Tassocks and fat black hajs-—United ests also were conspicuous in their Press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.