The Bemidji daily pioneer. [volume] (Bemidji, Minn.) 1904-1971, 1921-02-02

new YORK, FeD. E.-Wnen, Dy gov
eminent edict, an engineer pressed a
button New Years Eve and flooded
Paris for the first time since the war
with her old pre-war electrical bril-
lance, the orchestras on the boule-
wards and the Montmartre fairly burst
themselves trying to do justice to the
occasion and champagne corks pop
ped as they had never popped since
1914.
Taxis honking on the streets out
side took up the refrain and students
in the Latin quarter went singing in
serpentines around the lamp posts
just as they did before the war.
At that moment Paris, from the
standpoint of surface appearance,
once more became the gay old city
of tradition.
But in the real sense, it was not
the same Paris. 1t was new Paris,
going through many of the habitual
gestures of the old. .
For the old Paris, as hundreds of
thousands of American tourists and
students knew it and loved it, is
gone-gone for = a generation, at
least: The war changed the people
who made Paris Paris, and not until
these people are gone and another
generation has taken their place can
the old pleasure capital be herself.
Physically. Paris has completed her
reversion to 1914. Menus are no
long er stinted. The wine caves are
full. The 'guides Of the night" are
back on the Place de lOpera with
their ''most interesting show around
the corner" The boulevards are
fragrant with femininity. 49, far as
the Cooks tourist knows, it's the same
old city revived.
But the "Old Timer" knows that
the people he sees are different from
his cronies of 1914, and frequently
even new type Of Frenchman alto
gether.
First, the H. C. of L. has lifted the
price scale between three and four
hundred per cent. Parisians, who, in
1914. could afford to dine with their
families in the cafe, no longer peo-
pie the boulevard restaurants. Their
prices have been taken by newly-rlch
and foreigners with high exchange
rates. -,
Longchamps, where Frances elite
used to display its finest gowns, has
been virtually boycotted by the real
aristocracy. The only fashion snow
there is at the races now IS kept up
by flashy "parvenues," or women OF
easy fortune.
The war worked a remarkable psy-
Geological change in the French peo-
pie. It made them a nation of stoics.
While the glamour of the crusade
on foreign soil unlocked the emotions
of the British and earned staid Lon
don into one of the most demonstra-
tive cities in the world, the long years
Of trench warfare, midst the mud OF
their own country, among the ruins
of their own homes, developed. in the
Frenchman logged self-restraint
that he had never been thought cap
able Of.
Hundreds of thousands wept in
White Hall on Armistice day. Paris
crowds looked on in almost express
sionless silence, as their unknown
Poilu was escorted to the Arc. Among
the multitudes who deposited wreaths
I do not remember seeing one she'd
This new mentality has seized the
entire nation. It il reflected in all
classes, for all were in the war.
Behind the bright. eyes that in
vite you so appealingly on the boule-
wards, often throbs broken heart
of a youthful widow or fiancee who
lost her lover out there. A surpris-
ing number of the merrymakers in
the really Latin rendezvous on Mont
martre wear mourning on their coat
sleovoS