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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 cafes 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 cafe 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 general. I had to take campaigning trips across country into isolated districts lying well off the old tourist lanes to learn the lesson. Having learned it, I profited by it.

No matter how small the hamlet or how dingy appearing the so-called hotel in it might be, we were sure of getting satisfying food, cooked agreeably and served to us by a friendly, smiling little French maiden, and charged for at a most reasonable figure, considering that generally the town was fairly close up to the fighting lines and the bringing in of supplies for civilians’ needs was frequently subordinated to the handling of military necessities.

Indeed, the place might be almost within range of the big guns and subjected to bombing outrages by enemy airmen, but somehow the local Boniface managed to produce food ample for our desires, and most appetising besides. His larder might be limited, but his good nature, like his willingness and his hospitality, was boundless.

I predict that there is going to be an era of better cooking in America before very long. Our soldiers, returning home, are going to demand a tastier and more diversified fare than many of them enjoyed before they put on khaki and went overseas; and they are going to get it, too. Remembering what they had to eat under French roofs, they will never again be satisfied with meats fried to death, with soggy vegetables, with underdone breads.

Sometimes as we went scouting about on our roving commission to see what we might see, at mealtime we would enter a community too small to harbour within it any establishment calling itself a hotel. In such a case this, then, would be our procedure: We would run down to the railroad crossing and halt at the door of the inevitable Cafe de la Station, or, as we should say in our language, the Last Chance Saloon; and of the proprietor we would inquire the name and whereabouts of some person in the community who might be induced, for a price, to feed a duet or a trio of hungry correspondents.