The Way of All France

The water had stopped. There was no electricity. In the kitchen the gas burners were cold. Outside, on the sidewalks, last night’s potato peels, meat scraps and tomato cores rotted inside garbage cans. Today the postman would not ring even once. Beneath the street there was no rumble of the subway, and above it buses and trains stood motionless in their barns. No airplanes crossed the hazy November sky. But the city teemed with life. The populace moved by automobile, truck, scooter, bicycle, cart, and on foot.

Were the people fleeing from a doomed city? Had they been given a few hours to collect their families and belongings before the approach of a dreaded enemy? This was not a city stricken with panic or despair, but the acknowledged center of pleasure and luxury, Paris. This was Paris, the capital of France, a modern metropolis of three and a half million, placidly going about its business in the midst of a 48-hour strike, one of three similar national strikes within the year.

About the Author

Lee Edwards

Lee Edwards is founder and chairman emeritus of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

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The water had stopped. There was no electricity. In the kitchen the gas burners were cold. Outside, on the sidewalks, last night’s potato peels, meat scraps and tomato cores rotted inside garbage cans. Today the postman would not ring even once. Beneath the street there was no rumble of the subway, and above it buses and trains stood motionless in their barns. No airplanes crossed the hazy November sky. But the city teemed with life. The populace moved by automobile, truck, scooter, bicycle, cart, and on foot.

Were the people fleeing from a doomed city? Had they been given a few hours to collect their families and belongings before the approach of a dreaded enemy? This was not a city stricken with panic or despair, but the acknowledged center of pleasure and luxury, Paris. This was Paris, the capital of France, a modern metropolis of three and a half million, placidly going about its business in the midst of a 48-hour strike, one of three similar national strikes within the year.