MY WAR DIARY.•
IN some ways the reader will be inclined to agree with the writer of the Preface to the present volume, that it is the comparative triviality of the events experienced which lends such a special interest to Mine. Waddington's Diary. She effected no hairbreadth escapes, was never in any particular bodily danger, saw no battle- field horrors. She tells us of the effects of the war upon Paris society, and especially upon the diplomatic circle in which she moved, and of how the changes which have come gradually in England came very suddenly in France. Within a week there were no men left to till the fields. The Paris streets were dark, air- raid warnings sounded nightly, the wounded began to come in, • My Ira. Diary. By Mmry KIN Waddington, Leaden; John Murray. Leo. EC1.1
food became scarce, and war-bread replaced petite pains. She and her party having gone to their country house, it was the thrilling and ominous rolling of a drum which first announced general and instant mobilization to them and to the village :- " The men came running in from the fields (we are in full harvest time), leaving their horses and placid white oxen anywhere. . . The whole village was in a turmoil. Some of the men were to start at once—at 9 that night.. . . You will remember that we are in the direct line to Germany, five hours' rail from the frontier."
Two days later the author left again for Paris, not to return till the wave of the German advance had swept over the village, driving the whole population before it, and leaving her house ransacked and filthy beyond belief. She returned when the wave had again receded, and was there to give what help she could to her neighbours as they straggled painfully back to their empty homes and ruined crops. The Germans had not spared them one petty link in the chain of discomfort and misery. Mme. Waddington tells us that they had, for instance, not left a saucepan or a mattress or a whole garment in the entire village. They had even out to ribbons a stock of warm jerseys in the village shop. The flight had been in hot weather. The return was in November. The author speaks of fog and frost :-
" Some of the boys . . . had nothing on but the linen jacket they went away in . . . over their bare skins. . . . The women sleep on straw and club together to make their soup in a marmite like the soldiers. When a woman washes her chemise she lies in bed (an the straw) till it dries. . . . Thanks to my friends and my workroom, I can supply the first necessaries, but to clothe a wimple village requires time and money."
The village is close to La Pert& and one fears that Mme. Wad- dington's neighbours are among those who have, as it were, gained a bar to their medal by enduring a second time the tedious wretched- ness of an evacuation. The greater part of the book, however, concerns life in Paris, and those who have had similar experiences in England will be able to catch amusing glimpses of the familiar problems which faced the amateur war-worker. The author has given us an extremely readable and often interesting little footnote to the history of the war.
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