It appeals to the French people that so many Americans are standing by them in their tragic hours. The little that we in America have actually done seems small, indeed, compared with the size of the situation, but its main object and its main effect are to show to the people of France that we believe in them and in the justice of their cause; that we still remember what they did for us in the darkest hour of our own history; and that, as members of a great sister Republic, our hearts and hopes are with them in this most unnecessary war. All day long, wherever we have stopped, people have come out and offered us flowers and fruit and food and friendly greetings, very much as our ancestors of a hundred and forty years ago must have offered them to the compatriots of Lafayette.
AN INSPECTION TRIP IN ALSACE
Lieut. Duboin Mr. Andrew Mr. Bacon Dr. Gros Mr. Hill
Our trip has been full of touching and appealing impressions crowding one upon the other. As our picturesque convoy ran through the little villages, and we stopped here and there for some one to clean a spark-plug or mend a tire, children crowded around us, and asked questions about America, and we often got them to sing the "Marseillaise" or some of the topical songs of the moment about "Guillaume" and the "Boches" (people in France seldom speak of the Germans as such, they call them simply "Boches" which seems to mean "brutal, stupid people"). After a long, hard drive we reached Saint-Omer about eleven. The hotels were full, the restaurants were closed, and no provision had been made either for our food or our lodging. So we wheeled into the public square and slept on the stretchers in our ambulances—without other food than the chocolate and crackers we had in our pockets. All day yesterday, as we ran past the quaint towns and villages, we could hear the great cannon on the front booming like distant thunder. It is hard to realize that for five hundred and more miles these cannon are booming day after day all day long, and often throughout the night.
A. P. A.
First Impressions
After a few more short delays (inseparable from times and states of war), the Section at last found itself within a mile of one of the most stubbornly contested points of the line. In a little town not far from the front they came in swift progression into hard work, bombardment, and appreciation by the army.