This book is a record of my observations in France, where I made a deliberate choice between seeing the American, French, and British fronts casually, or studying the army of the United States carefully; I decided to spend all of my time with the American soldier. I lived with him from the port of entry to the front line, and saw him under every condition of modern warfare. Since I left him in the trenches of northern France every day has added glorious testimony to the evidence that moved me to

The great liner had reached the danger zone. She drove ahead through the night with ports closed and not a signal showing. Under the stars, both fore and aft, marines watched in silence by the guns. Each man wore or had by him a life-preserver, and there was silence on the deck. Quietly I stood by the rail, and watched the waves break into spray against the mighty vessel's bow. The phosphorescent glow bathed the sea in wondrous light all about; only the stars and the weird illumination of the wa

The war capitals of the Allies, Paris and London, have much in common. Soldiers in many-colored uniforms, from the brilliant red and black and blue of the French headquarters to the faded, mud-caked khaki of the helmeted "Tommy" just back from the trenches; Y. M. C. A. secretaries and nurses; wounded—streets filled with battle-marked and cheerful men; women in black, who turn neither to the right nor to the left as they hurry along with eyes that search for that which they will never see again;

"The Boche is coming back," a man yelled into the entrance of the cellar. A second later I was above ground and with my head at the sky-scraper angle. There he was! Like a great homing pigeon he was streaking it for his own lines after an observation-flight far behind ours. He was high, but not high enough to hide the telltale crosses on the under side of his wings, and the churn of his engine was unmistakable. When my eyes brought him into focus, he was at least a mile away, but in half a minut

Persons about to be received by the great are invariably amusing; I know, for I have had the "funny feeling" of the man who waits without. A reception-room is a "first-aid station" in practical psychology. The nonchalance, perfectly transparent and that deceives no one, not even the man who feigns it; the effort to convince the other fellow of your own importance or the importance of your mission; the anxiety and nervousness that you hide behind venerable magazines—these are a few of the symptom

The head-lines that told the story of the battle of Seicheprey brought me a sensation entirely apart from the thrill of anxiety and pride with which we all read of the heavy attack, the loss of ground, the desperate fighting, the recapture of the village, and the gallantry of American troops in the most extensive assault yet directed against our lines on the western front. It was the name of the village that gripped me; gripped me with the memory of things that I shall never forget, of kaleidosc

On Monday morning, February 25, I opened my eyes in the great bedchamber of the Archbishop's house in Toul, hard by the cathedral. Rather, it had been the Archbishop's house, and even now the underground entrance leading to the cathedral was in use. It was no longer an entrance, however, but an "abri" or anti-aircraft shelter for the secretaries and guests of the Y. M. C. A. officers' hotel which, following the removal of a French general, occupied the fine old building. I opened my eyes slowly,

"Gas! Gas! Gas!" and the hand-siren rang through the dugout in accompaniment to the cry of the sentinel. The first shout sounded far away; I was sleeping deeply. The second brought me to my elbow, and the third sent my hands down through the inky darkness to the mask on my chest. I was wide-awake and in absolute command of every faculty. I remember the surprise with which I noted my calmness. I had feared that in just such circumstances I should go to pieces, or at least bungle things and fail i

We were seated together at a Liberty-Loan dinner in Buffalo. He was in the British uniform and "wore" a cane, not a dress cane, but a heavy stick that took the place of a crutch. A naturalized American citizen, he enlisted first in an Irish regiment. After recovering from a serious wound he was discharged, but a few weeks in New York left him a restless man with eyes turning ever toward the sea. On the thirtieth of November, 1916, he re-enlisted, this time with a Canadian regiment in Toronto. Ag

I saw her first in a great base hospital in the north of England. Her ward was filled with wounded British soldiers. In writing of her one hesitates to use the only word in the language of our race that expresses the adoration of those young heroes as their eyes companioned her from cot to cot. One hesitates to use the word because it has been associated with so many small and trifling things, because it has become such a commonplace. But it is the only word: they worshipped her. What I saw in t

A sentinel barred our way. "Can't take the 'bus' in for half an hour yet." Barnes turned to me, and said, "Shall we walk or wait?" We left the car for the driver to bring up when the failing light would make his journey safer, and hiked up the road. We had been stopped at the edge of the woods between the third and second lines, half a mile from a little village that marked the point within the second line which was our immediate destination. Machines were not allowed beyond the cover of the tre

"Saw a Dutchman to-day, saw him from here up." The speaker indicated with his hands that part of a man's body between hips and head. "You know I'm a pretty good shot. Didn't see him again." Pause. "Do you know what I've been thinking ever since? I've been hoping he isn't in my fix; I hope he doesn't have a wife and kid." The red-headed sergeant from Boston was the spokesman—a sharpshooter and a fluent user of Sunday-school language—in his own lurid way. It was night, and he had been hanging arou

It was sunrise in Brittany. From the windows of the lazy train I watched the morning come across the rugged hills. The thatched stone houses set in formal fields took shape out of the gray dawn. The unsightly, close-trimmed tree-trunks, which were like the gnarled and twisted fingers of a heavy hand, became clearly defined against the sky. Cattle appeared in the meadows, and presently people were moving in the roads. Villages were more frequent, and before the world was fully awake we stopped at

"Did you mean what you said about the—preacher just now? Do your thinking quick, and be prompt about speaking. If you meant it, I'm going to punch your nose." The speaker was "Angel Face," or as he was called, following the militant speech recorded above, "Gyp the Blood." His parishioners in S——, California, might not have recognized his language and his style of delivery on the occasion which introduces him to my readers; but they could not have made a mistake in the speaker himself; the figure

Out of a blue and sea-cooled sky the sun looked down upon an ancient city of France. Great ships fantastically camouflaged lay in the harbor; darting to and fro were smaller vessels; the streets of the city were crowded with curious soldiers in khaki stretching their cramped limbs after two weeks in the restricted quarters of a transport. From a military hospital three army hearses, accompanied by their formal escorts and preceded by officers, slowly climbed a central hill toward a cemetery. Thr

He was called the "Count." How he came by the name, and who christened him, I do not know. At home he is a travelling salesman. I saw him first with an odoriferous pipe between his teeth and a week's growth of beard on his face, standing in the doorway of a Y. M. C. A. secretaries' mess at the headquarters city for the First American Division—the first division permanently in the line on the western front. He was short and stocky, with the face of an Irish fishing-smack captain and a cough that

I stepped out of the taxi, and found myself in front of three old-fashioned houses. The vicinity was one of distinction; but the houses before me, dwarfed by the Privy Council Building and the Foreign Office, and hard by the Parliament Buildings, were the strays of another century. Westminster Abbey, not far away, gives them an excuse for staying. Looking up, I read, "The First Lord of the Treasury, No. 10," and knew that I was before the portals of historic "10 Downing Street," for a century an

These are times when it means much to know where some things are whose roots run far back and deep down. Before me as I write is a cathedral-shaped block of age-bevelled and worm-eaten English heart of oak. Its miniature spires rise not at all unlike those of a Gothic cathedral. It came from one of the original roof-beams of Holy Trinity in Hull, the largest parish church in England. As the warden placed it in my hands, his arm swept the high and vaulted nave and he said, "Six hundred and thirty

"I served at Gallipoli; I was wounded on the western front. It is my earnest opinion that the rum ration is utterly bad." The speaker turned now so that he faced the larger portion of the audience that crowded the hall to its utmost capacity, and with which he had been seated. He then continued, " I believe that there are thousands of glorious British lads who would be alive to-day, recovered from wounds and disease, restored to their country, their loved ones, and their friends, had this rum ra

"I must keep clean for them, and I'm going to do it." A captain of the American Expeditionary Force spoke the words. We were standing together in front of a mantel in an old-fashioned room in an ancient seacoast city of France. On the mantel were the pictures of a woman and four beautiful children. The captain was not a saint; he was entirely too profane to be really good company; but, as he looked into the faces of his wife and babies, he was very intense and determined. There is a question of

It was the tenth of May, 1917, in New York. The great city was alive—riotously, gloriously alive. Save for the narrow lane kept for the progress of the hero of the day her main artery flowed from building-line to building-line with a vibrant throng. It was a supreme demonstration of Democracy's melting-pot, a confusion of tongues, a medley of peoples, a human flood fed by every racial fountain of the earth. I stood that day where the multitude was densest, and at the very edge of the throng, dir