of a February thaw
in our Northern States--glistening on the snowy fields and slopes
among the forests and tree-clad hills of the mountainous country.
Faces ambushed in whiskers thought it was a good day for trimming
beards and washing clothes. The sentries along the roads had their
scarfs around their necks instead of over their ears. A French soldier
makes ear muffs, chest protector, nightcap, and a blanket out of the
scarf which wife or sister knits for him. If any woman who reads this
knits one to send to France she may be sure that the fellow who
received it will get every stitch's worth out of it.

To-day, then, it was war without mittens. You did not have to sound
the bugle to get soldiers out of their burrows or their houses. Our first
stop was at our own request, in a village where groups of soldiers
were taking a sun bath. More came out of the doors as we alighted.
They were all in the late twenties or early thirties, men of a reserve
regiment. Some had been clerks, some labourers, some farmers,
some employers, when the war began. Then they were piou-pious, in
French slang; then all France prayed godspeed to its beloved piou-
pious. Then you knew the clerk by his pallor; the labourer by his hard
hands; the employer by his manner of command. Now they were
poilus--bearded, hard-eyed veterans; you could not tell the clerk from
the labourer or the employer from the peasant.

Anyone who saw the tenderfoot pilgrimage to the Alaskan goldfield in
'97-8 and the same crowd six months later will understand what had
happened to these men. The puny had put on muscle; the city
dweller had blown his lungs; the fat man had lost some adipose;
social differences of habit had disappeared. The gentleman used to
his bath and linen sheets and the hard-living farmer or labourer--both
had had to eat the same kind of food, do the same work, run the
same risks in battle, and sleep side by side in the houses where they
were lodged and in the dug-outs of the trenches when it was their turn
to occupy them through the winter. Any "snob" had his edges
trimmed by the banter of his comrades. Their beards accentuated the
likeness of type. A cheery lot of faces and intelligent, these, which
greeted us with curious interest.

"Perhaps President Wilson will make peace," one said.

"When?"

A shrug of the shoulder, a gesture to the East, and the answer was:

"When we have Alsace-Lorraine back."

Under a shed their dejeuner was cooking. T