gh sun and storm, the officers whose duty it was to catch
the spy before he could harm America worked steadily on.

That is why America won at home just as she won abroad. Had not the
silent army in the United States fought so unceasingly and so
skillfully, the army in France would have been paralyzed. When you
think of the Great Victory, remember those quiet, unknown men and women
at home who did so much to help win it, and give full credit to the
Secret Service.

ROGER WILLIAM RIIS.

AT THE FRONT

_What one soldier writes, millions have experienced._

At first the waiting for orders; the wonder of how to adapt one's
nature to the conditions that lay ahead. The fear of being afraid.
Many times in that last week in London, which now seems so far away, I
did aimless, meaningless things that I had done before; wondering if I
should ever do them again. Visiting old scenes of happy days, trying,
as it were, to conjure up old associations, for fear the chance might
not come again. Strange, perhaps, but many of the things I do are
strange, and only those who know me best would understand. My good-by
to you--and the curtain rose on the first act of the drama that I have
been privileged to watch, with every now and then a "walking on" part.
The first act was one of absorbing interest, learning the characters of
the play, and my mind was filled with wonder at the plot as day by day
it unfolded before me. I have tried to write of all the wonders of the
Base; its organization and the mastery of an Empire to serve its ideal
in its hour of need. The second curtain rose on the trenches, and it
is my impressions of this life, rather than of its details, that I
would now write. The first and greatest is the way the average man has
surmounted the impossible, has brought, as it were, a power to strike
that word from his vocabulary. Living in conditions which in previous
years would have caused his death, he has maintained his vitality of
mind and body. Healthy amid the pestilence of decaying death, of chill
from nights spent sometimes waist deep in water; or chattering with
cold as misty morning finds him saturated with its clammy cold. Facing
death from bullet, shell, and gas, and all the ingenuity that devilish
manhood can devise, yet remaining the same cheery, lively animal,
wondering when it all will cease. A new spirit of unselfishness has
entered the race, or perchance the old selfishness bred by years of