roll calling for the day. It was altogether
too depressing. For a while they talked of lighter, commonplace things
and then fell into that understanding silence that is possible only with
those whose friendship is so firmly fixed that words add little to their
communion.

Watching the swans that moved around the central fountain in stately
procession, McGee fell to thinking how little those lovely creatures
knew of tragedy and sorrow. Theirs was a world secure in beauty,
unmarred by the things which man brings upon himself, and this was true
because they knew nothing of avarice or grasping greed. Could it be that
man, in all his pride, was one of the least sensible of God's creatures?

3

The day following, Major Cowan called, and in his elation over the
success of American arms at the recent battle of Chateau-Thierry, told
McGee more in a short half hour than Red had been able to worm from all
others with whom he talked.

The Germans, Cowan told him, had been stopped at Chateau-Thierry in an
epic stand made by the 2nd and 3rd Divisions, A.E.F., and a few days
later the Marines had crowned themselves with a new glory when, in
liaison with the French, they had stormed the edges of Belleau Wood,
gained a foothold, and then tenaciously pushed slowly forward in the
bloodiest and bitterest battle yet waged by the untried American forces.
Counter-attack after counter-attack had been met and repulsed, with the
net result that the Germans had been definitely stopped in the Marne
salient. Their hope of breaking through to Paris was shattered, and
though they were still pounding hard, their sacrifices were vain.

It was, Cowan declared, the real turning point of the war, and even now
men were joyously declaring that the war would be won by Christmas.

As for the air forces, they had delivered beyond the fondest hopes of
the high command. The casualties had been high, Cowan admitted, but not
higher than might be expected and not without giving even heavier losses
to the enemy. The squadron losses could have been held down had the
members been less keen about scoring a personal victory over von
Herzmann. Every pursuit pilot along the entire front was willing to take
the most desperate chances in the hope of plucking the crest feathers of
this German war eagle.

"I guess there's one member not particularly anxious to pluck any of the
eagle's feathers," McGee put in at this point.

"No?" Cowan's voice was quizzical. "Who's