away city called New York where there is still peace on earth, good-will to men, when down the Rue de Rivoli passes a motor-lorry piled high with black crosses. There are fields in France that are planted with black crosses, acres and acres of them. After each new push on the front, more are required, black crosses by the cartload! I glanced at my calendar. Why, to-day is Christmas! I had quite forgotten. You see, over here all joy-making occasions seem to have been such a long while ago, like the stories of once upon a time.
I turn once more to the task of making ready my data for Maison de la Presse. Here a too colourful sentence must be rejected. There is a too flagrantly feministic document that will be safest in the waste basket. It is the martial mind that I must meet. A press bureau, you see, is prepared to pass promptly propaganda on the battles of the Somme. But dare one risk, say, a pamphlet on the breast feeding of infants? Propaganda about the rising value of a baby! Dear, dear, it might, for all a man could tell, be treason, seditious material calculated to give aid and comfort to the enemy! Already to my inquiries about maternity measures in Paris, have I not been answered suspiciously: "But why do you ask? This matter it is not of the war."
My emasculated data at last are ready for review by le chef du service de la presse. He stamps it all over with his signature in red ink. It is done up in packages and officially sealed in red wax with the seal of the state of France. At the Post Office in
