Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1914-09-20
French Women Are
Busy Making Supplies
for the War Hospitals.
Effects of European
Struggle on the Fash
ions-Styles From the
Army Camps Little
Touches of New
Styles.

PARIS, August so.
HE change in attitude of the
fashionable world in Paris to-
ward fashions is the most
striking minor event of this
summer For centuries one
has looked to this city as the one of
all others that never ceased to be in
terested in what tic wear. Today the
only clothes that are spoken of among
the rich. the Fashionable. the lux
urious. are hospital shirts. Whether
OF not they open down the back, ex-
actly how long they should be. how the
hem should be turned, these are of
more Importance in d moment than
the width of a skirt. the length Of
coat or the formation of a sleeve.
Once in while they listlessly listen
her showing of vanished evening
gown as the latest idea in clothes So
they did the other afternoon at Nine.
Waddington's sewing class, and to
further divert our minds from the
ceaseIess subject of the war we per-
suaded the famous hostess to tell us
something of her life and the way in
which her books were written. Think
that she never sat down to write with
out thinking of q dozen other things
to do, and how bitterly she had to
fight down the impulse to do them;
how. she covered her fingers with ink
and constantly rebelled against the
task she set herself yet was always
driven on by the irresistible need of
expression, how, the moment she dip
ped the pen in ink. she saw the most
entertaining thing happen under the
window to distract her mind.
It was most encouraging to find that
the author of those memoirs found no
royal road to writing. either; that the
desire not to write, battling against
the desire to express ones self. did not
make for literary failure. Her talk
reminded me of what the celebrated
DR.. Horace Howard Furness of Phila-
delphia used to impress on US: That
even the most facile pen and brain
needs the grinding stone of hard work
to give it light touch When some
one congratulated him on a brilliant
speech made in the Academy of Music,
when he received a degree from the
University of Pennsylvania, he con-
fessed to the astonishing fact that he
before making it.
1t was thus we talked as we sat
around Nine. Washington as she rolled
bandages, and the women out of en-
ployment ran the sewing machines,
and a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess
d'Orleans and the Princess Rusioli cut
out shirts for the wounded These
women are working for the most i'm
portant charity in France today, the
giving of employment to the women
out of work and those whose men have
gone to war. All the money given
goes for supplies for hospital clothes
that poor women can make at SO much
per day. getting a hot meal while do
ing it. Otherwise the starvation
among women and children here will
rank next to the list of the wounded.
American women who are going to
stay here through whatever comes are
working valiantly along these lines.
Cantines for soup are being opened in
each ACCOMPLISHMENT, where children
can get nourishment. Mrs. Laurence
Benet, Mrs. Charles Carroll of Carroll
ton. Mrs. Edith Wharton, the novelist;
Mrs. Watson, wife CT the American
rector: Miss Hanet Scudder, the sculp-
tress: Mrs. Herman Jarjes, wife of the
banker, are among the leading spirits
who are giving thought and money to
this vast work of nourishment 1t is
another proof of tine thoroughness
with which France is handling this
war. that all charity must be under the
general direction of the constituted
French societies, with the exception of
the American ambulance. which works
with the American Hospital and to
which has been given over the great
Pasteur Institute, DIR. Joseph Blake.
DR.. Turner. as well as many other well
known American surgeons and physi-
clans and trained nurses from Johns
Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore are en-
rolled here.
Nine. Wagner. the wife of the head
of the house of Drecoll, which was
once Viennese and is now Belgian, as
president of one branch of the Croix-
Rouge, went Immediately to this work
soon mobilization was ordered