Life in Paris grows harder every day, Worst of all is the cold, f no one is ever sure of his scanty coal ration and Paris winters are cold and wet. The next privation is the lack of soap. agine taking a bath in an unheated bathroom with ice-cold water and no soap, Another thing you can seldom buy isa pair of stockings, Before I left, young women were painting their legs to look like stockings but that is a chilly makeshift in winter, The Germans snatch up all the luxury goods for their own womenfolk and I must say that this had a remarkable effect on the German women I saw in Paris, At first the only German females were obviously of the oldest profession. Then came an invasion of girls in gray uniforms, tunies and longish skirts, forage caps, gray flannel shirts, black oxfords and thick gray stockings, All wore their faces as nature made them and most One night the manifestations passed all bounds, The lights were turned on, a German mounted the stage and said that the newsreel would be run over again, and at the slightest demonstration one Frenchman would be taken from each row and he would—disappear, The lights were lowered, the film re-run and when they put them on again, there was not a French person left in the house, A friend told us of an cld woman shopkeeper who discovered some stockings and announced a sale, Immediately the women of the quarter queued up to take advantage of it. A German soldier shoved them aside and entered the shop first. The old lady said very politely: "Yes. Mon-jour, what can I do for you? "Stockings." he snapped, "Certainly Monsieur, please take the end of th line" "No, Me, German," he said thumping his chest, "Ah. Monsieur," returned the old lady, "we are all Germans now, Please go to the end of the line" He went, Germans, in my experience, and I have lived in their country, are so imbued with the necessity y of blind obedience that they recognize authority even from the vanquished, I tried this out myself, Germans ride free in the subway and spend a lo of their time riding grandly in the first-class cars, One day I found myself surrounded by about ten young soldiers, all smoking hard. Smoking is forbidden in the Metro, I stood it as long as I could. Then I addressed them in German: "Gentlemen, don't you know that smoking is forbidden in the Metro?" The whole ten dropped their cigarettes, stepped on them and saluted me,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.