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Show Cold, Hungry, Paris Fights On City Opposes the Germans With Derision and Passive Resistance. PARIS. The winter that has struck Paris is the worst that the capita of France has known since the Middle ages. It is harder than the winter of 1789, when, told that the people had no bread, Queen Marie Ma-rie Antoinette said: "Why don't they eat cake?" It is harder than that of 1870 during the siege by the armies ar-mies of Bismarck, when the animals ani-mals in the Jardin des Plantes (the zoo) were eaten. Paris is freezing. Only the houses occupied by the Germans enjoy heating. And what heating! Rooms are overheated and stoves red to such a degree that several boilers in these privileged habitations have burst, while in neighboring quarters quar-ters the plumbing cracked because of the cold, says a New York Times correspondent. At these German-occupied apartments, apart-ments, generally the finest on the best streets, truckloads of coal are arriving continually, to the fury of the populace, whose hands and feet are cracked by chilblains. The children chil-dren pick up the pieces that occasionally occa-sionally fall, put them in their pock- ets or their school bags and carry them to their parents, who have merely a card for 12 kilograms (about 27 pounds) of coal a month, . and cannot get even this meager ration. Hospitals Besieged. Unemployed persons of the comfortable com-fortable classes have entered the service of the city of Paris to clean the ice from the streets. Their misery mis-ery is great, but they still show traces of their one-time comfort felt hats, elegant scarfs, gloves. Every morning when the hospitals open their doors, they are faced by a crowd of weeping parents bringing bring-ing their frozen children. The tortures of hunger are added to those of cold. At the beginning of the winter, the Germans did not fear, at the risk of provoking riots, to break through the ; lines of housewives waiting for hours before the doors of the shops and to carry off at one swoop and in a minute the thousand little bits destined for famished homes. The doctors shake their heads. New maladies appear; they are familiar fa-miliar to those who have helped save the starving people along the Volgator the victims of famine in India. News is spread by grapevine, because be-cause the real Parisian does not read the papers. What's the use? ' He does not go to the movies any more either because there are none but German films and German newsreels. Besides, the newsreels are shown with all the lights on to avoid demonstrations that it would be impossible to suppress in the dark. But the lights do not prevent the derisive laughter, the intangible, intangi-ble, unpunishable sneering that makes the occupying authority mad with rage. Loyal to Britain. Of course, one abstains from meeting Germans. One abstains from the slightest contact with them. One even abstains from appearing ap-pearing to see them when one encounters en-counters them. The population turns its collective back when the Germans Ger-mans march. If a stroller meets them he assumes a vague look and seems to be gazing beyond them. It is out of order to telephone be- tween 1:15 and 1:30 p. m. and between be-tween 9:15 and 9:30 p. m. because then the English radio is on the air. Everybody listens to London. The loyalty of Paris toward its English ex-ally is striking. One dreams of nothing but British victory. vic-tory. Only twice have the Germans cared to sound the alert, because on one occasion of the passage overhead over-head of English airplanes the Parisians Pari-sians displayed so much joy that the Germans have found it more prudent to keep them in Ignorance of the flight of British planes through the capital's skies. |