I have been asked to come and talk to you about France and I want to begin by telling you how proud I am that I have been chosen to talk on such a subject to the soldiers and sailors of my country.

I never expected to speak in public. I consider it a man's job and not a woman's; and I never did speak in public till last February, when I was asked to try to explain to a French audience some of the reasons why America has come into this war.

That occasion was "positively my first appearance"; but it went off very well — the lecturer always knows how it's going after the first five minutes — and I wasn't in the least nervous, because I spoke in French, and was sustained by the thought that my audience probably didn't understand more than half of what I was saying.

Now, on the contrary, I am to talk in my own language to my own country-people, and if I don't interest you I can't say afterward that it was because you missed all my best things; so you must make allowances for my timidity, and encourage me by laughing at all my jokes.

But perhaps you will ask what I am doing here, if I don't know how to speak in public, and don't consider it a woman's job anyhow.

Well — I'll tell you; I've been asked to talk about France. And having lived in France continuously since the war began, having seen what she has been, and watched what she has done, during these four terrible years — well, I believe if I were dead, and anybody asked me to come back and witness for France, I should get up out of my grave to do it.

That is the way all we Americans feel who were here in those first days; who saw this great, busy, industrious, peace-loving

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people, hating war, and not for a moment believing it would come — you know they had withdrawn their troops 10 miles from the German frontier, in proof of their good faith and their sincere desire for peace — when, I say, we saw how the French behaved in face of Germany's sudden unwarrantable breach of faith, her abominable attack on defenceless and neutral Belgium; when we saw the whole youth of France leave the plough and the store and the office and the universities, and go forth gladly to the job of defending their own country, and the little countries who couldn't defend themselves; when we saw the unforgettable scenes in the streets, the young men marching along with roses on their rifles, and the fathers and mothers and wives bidding them goodbye at the stations without a tear, and without one word to weaken or dishearten them — when we saw that, all we Americans, we saw not only what France was in that first great day of challenge, but also what she was going to be in the long weary time to come; and more than one of us thought, as we watched: "If ever our country is forced into such a war, may she meet it just in that way!" — And she has.

Well — having watched those first scenes, I began to study France and the French more closely. I had always admired the country and the people, as we Americans usually do; I had admired the beauty of the cities, the wonderful pictures and sculpture in the great museums, the splendid roads all over the country, the perfection of the vegetable and fruit-culture (for I must tell you that I'm a gardener myself), the scientific care of the great forests, the wit and brilliancy of the French theatre, the eloquence and beauty of the magnificent French literature — I had admired and enjoyed these great national treasures of France as all thoughtful Americans do. But now I began to study the people more closely,

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If he omits all this, he will very likely meet glum faces, and get bad food; for there are many things that the French care for more than they care for making money or attracting customers; and one of these things is being treated with courtesy. They show courtesy to each other, and they expect it from strangers, and are so surprised when they don't get it that they often see a personal affront where none was intended.

You may regard this as making a lot of fuss about trifles; but our daily life is mostly made up of trifles, and I have always thought that politeness, though it sometimes takes a little longer, is in fact a short cut, since it carries us straight to the heart of the people to whom we show it... And it seems to me that politeness is most especially due when one is in a strange country — and most of all due when one has come to help that country in a terrible crisis, and when she is bound to bear with everything from the people who have come to her aid.

Please don't think, by the way, that I am suggesting you are not polite to the French; I am only reminding you that in foreign countries the truest courtesy is to be courteous in the way the foreigner is used to. To learn this takes a little patience and attention; but if you will remember "Bonjour" and "Merci" the other forms will come to you in time, and the smiles and friendliness you will get in return will make you feel much more at home than if you went on trying to din home habits into a foreign country.

It is not only in a shop or a restaurant that you are expected to lift your hat, or to salute the France every one uncovers before the dead. When you see one of those long funerals passing, with their sad procession of mourners on foot, lift your cap to the hearse as it goes by — a soldier's hearse, so often in these days — and you

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When I spoke just now of the grumpiness of some French shopkeepers, and said it might be due to your not knowing the French forms of politeness, I daresay you thought to yourselves: "That hasn't been our experience. The people we've dealt with have been polite enough, but they've cheated us in every way they could."

Well — mightn't that happen — just conceivably — in our American cities, if there were suddenly poured into them a few hundred thousand helpless foreigners with money in their pockets? Or has the millenium really come in America? I didn't know it had.

But you know better than I do the kind of people — the low international scum — that crops up in the wake of every army, ready to prey on ignorance and inexperience and good-nature. Such people exist in every country, they swarm wherever there is money to be made. Use all your wit to defend yourself against them, but don't judge France by what you see of them — or, if you do, don't be surprised if France judges you as unjustly.

I don't think either of these things will happen; for, as time passes, the force of circumstances will bring you in contact with the real French, the French worth knowing; and I may almost say that it depends on you how soon you get to know them.

Indeed, I may assert that it depends on you; for ever since our first troops landed, French people of all classes and all situations in life have come to tell me how eager they were to welcome American officers and soldiers into their homes. Many, many of these homes are darkened by mourning; many belong to people who have been almost ruined by the war; but in spite of grief, in spite of straitened circumstances, these people are all eager to return the welcome that America gave to Lafayette and his men.

I say it depends on you — on every one of you. If you

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will take the trouble — the trifling trouble — to notice French
rules of politeness, and to try to observe them, if you will show
these hospitable people that you appreciate their hospitality, and
want to be thought worthy of it, you will do something besides
making your own life here less dull and lonely — you will be helping
in the most lasting way to cement the old friendship between our two
great countries.

These two countries, after the war, are destined to have
very close commercial relations. Young men will be sent from France
to America to study our ways, and from America to France to study
French ways; and you can all help toward hastening this result —
a result so desirable for the future of peace and civilization —
if only you will try to understand the French, if you will try to
make friends with the best ones, the ones you would like your wives
and mothers ans sweethearts to know; and if you will go home after
the war, and tell your own people what the people here are really
like; not the sharpers, cheats and disreputable women, the
rapscallions and dregs and sweepings of the land, but the honest
decent self-respecting people, who haven't rushed to the dock to
pick your pockets when you landed, but who are waiting, with open
arms and grateful hearts, to give you back a hundredfold in kindness
what the others may have taken from you in dollars.

It all depends on you. I know two young Frenchmen, who
were in my employ before the war, and who have been at the front
since it began, one in the artillery and the other in the infantry.
Both of them, for the last months, have been with our troops; and
if you could read the letters they wrote me when America declared
war, and those they have written since they have been fighting side
by side with our men, you would feel how close the real French heart

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is to the American heart.

This is what one of them writes, speaking of the fact that I hadn't left Paris, which apparently he considers as much more exposed than the front lines. "I admire you for staying in Paris at this critical time, and I admire you more than I can say for wishing to be at our sides in the terrible struggle."

And here is another, written only a few days ago: "We all feel here at the front that great things are soon going to happen that will turn the battle to our advantage, and we are confident in our gallant English allies, and in your brave countrymen, who have come of their own accord to fight at our sides. There is one thing you may be sure of; and that is that the Boche will never set foot in Paris as a victor. Long live France, long live the glorious United States, and all our Allies!"

That is a spirit I know you all feel and respond to; and I beg you to believe that hundreds of letters of the same kind are being written every day by the French soldier about his American comrade. And it's no small thing to be praised by a French soldier.

I said just now that I wanted to help you all to understand and appreciate the French. I want you to understand and appreciate their country too, and realize what a great inheritance it is for any people to have such a country. Perhaps many of you, in Paris, have not looked about you much yet, or felt the beauty of the city as you would have if you had not had so many other things on your minds. But I beg of you, now and then, to spare a little time to look at it — at the great buildings, the beautiful squares and avenues and parks and fountains and bridges.

We all take a pride in our cities at home — but sometimes we're inclined to think they're beautiful enough because we live there.

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hers.

Therefore you must always remember, when you see things to
criticize or regret, first that France is under a strain such as
no other country has borne since the world began; and secondly, that
some things that surprise or disappoint you, you might find cause
to admire if you knew the language and the people better.

Anyhow, the safe thing is to say to yourselves, even when you
don't understand that nothing much can be wrong with a race of men
who worship their old mothers, and love their children, and are
always thinking how they can make the place they live in more
beautiful — and who fight as the French are fighting now to defend
all these things that are sacred to them.