Egbert, he could be pushed just so far, and no farther.

   Before I left Paris the city was put upon bread cards. The country at large was supposed to be on bread rations too; but in most of the smaller towns I visited the hotel keepers either did not know about the new regulation or chose to disregard it. Certainly they generally disregarded it so far as we were concerned. For all I know to the contrary, though, they were restricting their ordinary patrons to the ordained quantities and making an exception in the case of our people. It may have been one of their ways of showing a special courtesy to representatives of an allied race. It would have been characteristic of these kindly provincial innkeepers to have done just that thing.

   Likewise, one could no longer obtain cheese in a first-grade Paris restaurant or aboard a French dining car, though cheese was to be had in unstinted quantity in the rural districts and in the Paris shops; and, I believe, it was also procurable in the cafés

   of the Parisian working classes, provided it formed a part of a meal costing not more than five francs, or some such sum. In a first-rate place it was, of course, impossible to get any sort of meal for five francs, or ten francs either; especially after the ten per cent luxury tax had been tacked on.

   In March prices at the smarter café eating places had already advanced, I should say, at least one hundred per cent above the customary pre-war rates; and by midsummer the tariffs showed a second hundred per cent increase in delicacies, and one of at least fifty per cent in staples, which brought them almost up to the New York standards. Outside of Paris prices continued to be moderate and fair.

   Just as I was about starting on my last trip to the Front before sailing for home, official announcement was made that dog biscuits would shortly be advanced in price to a well-nigh prohibitive figure. So I presume that very shortly thereafter the head waiters began offering dog biscuits to American guests. I knew they would do so,

   just as soon as a dog biscuit cost more than a lobster did.

   Until this trip I never appreciated what a race of perfect cooks the French are. I thought I did, but I didn't. One visiting the big cities or stopping at show places and resorts along the main lines of motor and rail travel in peacetime could never come to a real and due appreciation of the uniformly high culinary expertness of the populace in 

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