The Living Present

Living Present, by Gertrude
Franklin Horn Atherton

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Title: The Living Present
Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14197]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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LIVING PRESENT ***

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THE LIVING PRESENT
BY

GERTRUDE ATHERTON
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS
[Illustration: THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ President Le Bien--Être
du Blessé]
TO
"ETERNAL FRANCE"

CONTENTS
BOOK I
FRENCH WOMEN IN WAR TIME
CHAPTER
I
MADAME BALLI AND THE "COMFORT PACKAGE"
II THE SILENT ARMY
III THE MUNITION MAKERS
IV MADEMOISELLE JAVAL AND THE ÉCLOPÉS
V THE WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY
VI MADAME PIERRE GOUJON
VII MADAME PIERRE GOUJON (Continued)
VIII VALENTINE THOMPSON
IX MADAME WADDINGTON

X THE COUNTESS D'HAUSSONVILLE
XI THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ
XII MADAME CAMILLE LYON
XIII BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK: THE DUCHESSE
D'UZÈS; THE DUCHESSE DE ROHAN; COUNTESS GREFFULHE;
MADAME PAQUIN; MADAME PAUL DUPUY
XIV ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS
XV THE MARRAINES
XVI PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE
BOOK II
FEMINISM IN PEACE AND WAR
CHAPTER
I
THE THREAT OF THE MATRIARCHATE
II THE TRIUMPH OF MIDDLE-AGE
III THE REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY"
IV ONE SOLUTION OF A GREAT PROBLEM
V FOUR OF THE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED: MARIA DE BARRIL;
ALICE BERTA JOSEPHINE KAUSER; BELLE DA COSTA
GREENE; HONORÉ WILLSIE
ADDENDUM
ILLUSTRATIONS

The Marquise d'Andigné, President Le Bien--Être du Blessé
Madame Balli, President Réconfort du Soldat
Delivering the Milk in Rheims
Making the Shells
Société L'Eclairage Electrique, Usine de Lyon
Where the Artists Dine for Fifty Centimes
A Railway Depot Cantine
Delivering the Post

BOOK I
FRENCHWOMEN IN WAR TIME
If this little book reads more like a memoir than a systematic study of
conditions, my excuse is that I remained too long in France and was too
much with the people whose work most interested me, to be capable,
for a long while, at any rate, of writing a detached statistical account of
their remarkable work.
In the first place, although it was my friend Owen Johnson who
suggested this visit to France and personal investigation of the work of
her women, I went with a certain enthusiasm, and the longer I remained
the more enthusiastic I became. My idea in going was not to gratify my
curiosity but to do what I could for the cause of France as well as for
my own country by studying specifically the war-time work of its
women and to make them better known to the women of America.
The average American woman who never has traveled in Europe, or
only as a flitting tourist, is firm in the belief that all Frenchwomen are
permanently occupied with fashions or intrigue. If it is impossible to

eradicate this impression, at least the new impression I hope to create
by a recital at first hand of what a number of Frenchwomen (who are
merely carefully selected types) are doing for their country in its
present ordeal, should be all the deeper.
American women were not in the least astonished at the daily accounts
which reached them through the medium of press and magazine of the
magnificent war services of the British women. That was no more than
was to have been expected. Were they not, then, Anglo-Saxons, of our
own blood, still closer to the fountain-source of a nation that has, with
whatever reluctance, risen to every crisis in her fate with a grim, stolid,
capable tenacity that means the inevitable defeat of any nation so
incredibly stupid as to defy her?
If word had come over that the British women were quite indifferent to
the war, were idle and frivolous and insensible to the clarion voice of
their indomitable country's needs, that, if you like, would have made a
sensation. But knowing the race as they did--and it is the only race of
which the genuine American does know anything--he, or she, accepted
the leaping bill of Britain's indebtedness to her brave and easily expert
women without comment, although, no doubt, with a glow of vicarious
pride.
But quite otherwise with the women of France. In the first place there
was little interest. They were, after all, foreigners. Your honest
dyed-in-the-wool American has about the same contemptuous tolerance
for foreigners that foreigners have for him. They are not Americans
(even after they immigrate and become naturalized), they do not speak
the same language in the same way, and all accents, save perhaps a
brogue, are offensive to