Women in Mourning

The war was a "phony war." Everyone was bored with it. Rumors, hysteria, gloom, mockery emanated from the general boredom like marsh gas from a swamp. In the streets of Paris, strange, melancholy figures appeared; many were dressed as widows, though France then had few casualties. Mourners were seen in uncommon numbers. Presently the French police realized that these widows' weeds, this ostentatious grief were deliberate weapons in the Nazi war of nerves. Finally, nervously, the police arrested some, found, sure enough, they were professional mourners, not going to any funeral. Said Edmond Taylor, in The Strategy of Terror: they had been hired "to travel around in public conveyances wearing deep mourning and giving an exaggerated exhibition of seemingly uncontrollable grief for the purpose of depressing public morale."

One night last week, as Congress was about to begin debating the arming of U.S. merchant ships, six veiled, mourning-clad women appeared before the Washington house of Chairman Sol Bloom of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

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