FRANCE: O, the Birds! O, the Birds!

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Prim spinsters of the U. S. were scandalized, last week, when languorous Miss Georges Lewys, a once branded* California poet-novelist was officially decorated by the French Government and notified that a volume of her poems will be placed in a crystal casket on a marble base at the entrance to the great Memorial Tower at Verdun.

When the spinsters heard further that hussy Poetess Lewys had received letters of congratulation from Marshal Pétain, War Minister Paul Painleve, Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, the Poet-Ambassador of France to the U. S. Paul Claudel, they were but confirmed in the spinsterly opinion that:

"Those Frenchmen are all alike!"

The Poetess showed reporters, last week, a letter dated last summer from Brule, Wis.

"Dear Miss Lewys: "The President and I are reading your Verdun and Ballads at Brule. He highly prizes this marvelous work. "Grace Coolidge"

Her poem "Verdun" reads in part: I know a place in Picardy Where the bois is rich with laughter With dead men's bones and live men's groans And bird sounds that come after! . . . O, the birds, O, the birds, Singing in the Bois de La Folie. . . .

Poetess Lewys has never been to France.