Describing the flight from Paris, when the people feared the Germans were about to attack the capital, a correspondent says:

“This great army in retreat was made up of every type familiar in Paris.

“Here were women of the gay world, poor creatures whose painted faces had been washed with tears, and whose tight skirts and white stockings were never made for a long march down the highways of France.

“Here, also, were thousands of those poor old ladies who live on a few francs a week in the attics of the Paris streets, which Balzac knew; they had fled from their poor sanctuaries and some of them were still carrying cats and canaries, as dear to them as their own lives.

“There was one young woman who walked with a pet monkey on her shoulder while she carried a bird in a golden cage. Old men, who remembered 1870, gave their arms to old ladies to whom they had made love when the Prussians were at the gates of Paris then.

“It was pitiful to see these old people now hobbling along together. Pitiful, but beautiful, also, because of their lasting love.

“Young boy students, with ties as black as their hats and rat tail hair, marched in small companies of comrades, singing brave songs, as though they had no fear in their hearts, and very little food, I think, in their stomachs.

“Shopgirls and concierges, city clerks, old aristocrats, young boys and girls, who supported grandfathers and grandmothers, and carried newborn babies and gave pick-a-pack rides to little brothers and sisters, came along the way of retreat.

“Each human being in the vast torrent of life will have an unforgettable story of adventure to tell if life remains.”