  Thursday evening, January 31, 1918. Dearest Family:— Last night was it—the biggest raid they’ve ever had on Paris. When I think that at nine o’clock I was sitting up in bed with a sniffling cold, bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t seem to write anything but the stupidest sort of letter when I had a whole week packed full of events to tell you about—when I think of that, I don’t know how I shall begin to tell you all to-night. Every one has been expecting an air raid on Paris for quite a time, and Sunday evening we were all set for it, for the moon was full, and it was the Kaiser’s birthday, and we worked our intuitions to the utmost. Last night, when I snuggled down in my warm bed, I had forgotten all such possibilities. Suddenly I heard that siren that means one thing and one thing only. It’s a dismal, foreboding sound. There’s also an “alerte,” a sort of horn that blows at the same time, that sounds as though a fiend were putting his whole lungs into it. I didn’t stir at first because I thought it might be a false alarm, but the siren and the alerte kept it up and kept it up, so that Marje and I, for curiosity’s sake, slipped into our fur coats and went out on the balcony. We saw a few aeroplanes and rocket signals and heard a distant booming of guns. The street lights went out one by one and the tramways rumbled ponderously home from their last nocturnal journey. It was an ideal night—the moon had waned only a little and the stars were bright; but never did “the luster of midday to objects below” give such a desperate feeling of defenselessness as when we looked out across the Place and saw each tree and building stand out distinctly. The guns grew much louder. We turned to each other and said, “This is something new—we’ve never heard anything half so near in any other raid.” We were thrilled. We went across to the other apartment to see if Hilda and Gay and Fiskey were taking it all in, and just as we stepped into Gay’s room, two terrific crashes came. We all rushed out on Fiskey’s balcony and stood there trembling with excitement. She and Hilda said that there had been two great flashes; Marje and I had been in Gay’s room just at that instant, and were as mad as anything to have missed something. The five of us took our posts on the same balcony, where we had a superb 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? 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. 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