view. Way to the left was the Eiffel Tower, invisible at that distance,
but certainly one of the goals of any air attack on account of being the
greatest wireless station. To the north lay the Place de la Concorde,
with the heads of the Inter-Allied Conference resting, perhaps uneasily,
in the Hôtel Crillon. All the way to the Place d'Italie, in the extreme
east, we had the panorama of the sky, and you may believe there were
five pairs of eyes that never missed a flash or a light.
We counted as many as fifteen aeroplanes at once, flying in groups of
threes or fours or widely separated. How thrilling to think that every
little light meant a warm living, thinking, human being straining to the
utmost--some for defense--some for destruction. We made wild
speculations--were they French or Boche? Why should any have lights? The
Boches must certainly want to come unobserved, and the French must
certainly want to chase them without being seen. How can either side
tell which is friend and which is enemy, lights or no lights? How can
even an anti-aircraft gun hope to hit a tiny moving plane way up in the
air? How can a moving plane hit another in the dark? Which of the deep
booms were guns and which bombs?
[Illustration: The Air Raid on Paris on the Night of January 30, 1918]
This thought was dreadful. Bombs actually being dropped in the suburbs
of Paris on buildings, on our friends, on the refugees, on anybody.
Suddenly a flash lit up the Place--the trees stood silhouetted against a
red glare and an explosion thundered out. It seemed just across the
Place. I never shall forget it. We thought of the garage with the three
Fords sleeping peacefully in it--but the flash was certainly farther to
the left than Boulevard Saint-Jacques. We were speculating as to how far
away in feet and inches it had hit, when bang! bang!--more bombs:
funniest thing--we all took a backward step into Hannah's room. We saw a
plane with a red light on it--certainly a Boche--fire his mitrailleuse
and then down fell another bomb. It was fascinating to see him so
plainly, but as the sound of his engine became louder and we could see
him flying towards us, one charge of fear went through me. To feel that
an enemy is flying right over you, ready any second to drop a bomb that
will blow you and Marje and people you love and the house and the street
and everything to flinders; to know that you can't do anything--that not
even pulling the bedclothes up over your head is sure protection; to
have to wait, wait, wait while you hear that throbbing motor, and then
wait again to see whether he'll let go that instant or not--well, as
Marje says, "It may be all right for the soldiers, but I feel distinctly
like 'women and children.'"
It lasted two hours, and we stood there in our catch-as-catch-can
costumes, trying not to feel the cold stone of the balcony through our
kid night slippers. We were sure we smelled gunpowder, and some one
suggested gas bombs--not exactly pleasant. The hum of aeroplanes was
continual and the explosion of guns frequent. When one would be
especially loud, some one would call out, "Attitudes of defense,
girls--turn up your coat collars--here comes the Crown Prince!" "Have
you on your Boston grips, Marje?--if so, no metal can touch you!" "Here,
here, you great bonehead Boche, you came to get Lloyd George and
Pershing and General Foch and that crowd--don't break up our happy
little home life!"
I got too tired and cold to stand out there any longer, so I took a nap
on Hannah's bed until the bugle of "All danger's past" blew. You can't
imagine how that sounds until once you've seen the Germans come toward
you and have felt yourself an insignificant, but a very much concerned,
target. You never heard anything so full of joy!
We adjourned to Hilda's room and the practical spirits of the crowd soon
had some solid alcohol burning and some Whitman's instantaneous
chocolate in the saucepan. It certainly went to the spot with
toasterettes as an accompaniment--and still another accompaniment of the
bugle call growing fainter in the distance.
We went to bed, and oh, how we slept! We have wanted to experience a
real raid and now we have, and we've had one and that's enough.
This morning the maids brought in wild tales with our breakfast. The
École des Mines had been hit, on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. The morning
papers said nothing. As the workers came strolling in to the Vestiaire,
heavy-eyed from lack of sleep, but bursting with questions, we could get
little definite news.
Mlle. Herzog and I started out hot-foot for the École des Mines, hoping
that the work would not grudge us half an hour for satisfying our
curiosity. We found a big crowd, managed by a policeman standing in
front of the École, in which every window was broken. So was every
window on both sides of the Boulevard for several hundred feet, and a
big ragged hole beside the asphalt showed where the bomb had fallen.
Things seem so different in the daytime--there were all the commonplace
buildings, the tram, the policeman, the landmarks that we know so well,
and yet the sidewalks were covered with broken glass and limbs of trees,
and that big hole had been made by a real live Boche!
It seemed fairly near home too--the spot is about as far from us as
three New York short blocks, perhaps a little farther; but it doesn't
seem so far away to drop a bomb when some one has come all the way from
Germany.
During the day we heard of more places hit--a hospital near Place
d'Italie; a house where one child was buried alive; a cabman was killed
somewhere, but not his horse. The worst damage was on the Avenue de la
Grande Armée, where a three-story house was ruined. We hope to go over
to-morrow at lunch-time and see. Thank Heaven, they missed the Arc de
Triomphe.
Doris Nevin, who had supper here with us to-night, went over to the
Concorde at the end of the raid last night and saw the wreckage of a
French machine which was burned up.
The papers have headlines and long blank columns, so that we know
nothing. They acknowledge twenty victims, though. The Germans mans
always attack two or three nights running, and the strain to-day has
been the knowledge that they would come again to-night. But now one
thing I know: that to-night Paris is deep in a fog that nothing can
penetrate; that a mist which seems hardly more than air is protecting us
as neither iron nor steel can do; and that no German can follow the
shining rivers and lakes to attack us. Oh, to feel so safe! It makes me
think of the Great Peace we shall have at the end of the war. If we can
only all give our strength to have that come soon.
With much love,
ESTHER.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A