vainly trying to talk with each other. The
Frenchman was waving his arms and pointing in various directions and the
American appeared to be trying to ask questions. With the purpose of
offering my limited knowledge of French to straighten out the
difficulty, I approached the pair and asked the American soldier what he
wanted. He told me but I don't know what it was to this day. He spoke
only Polish.

* * * * *

It was not alone amidst the gaiety of Paris that our soldiers spread the
fame of America. In the peaceful countrysides far behind the flaming
fronts, the Yankee fighting men won their way into the hearts of the
French people. Let me tell you the story of a Christmas celebration in a
little French village in the Vosges.

Before dawn there were sounds of movement in the murky half-light of the
village street. A long line of soldiers wound their way past flaming
stoves of the mess shacks, where the steaming coffee took the chill out
of the cold morning stomachs.

Later the sun broke bright and clear. It glistened on the snow-clad
furrows of the rolling hills, in which, for centuries, the village of
Saint Thiebault has drowsed more or less happily beside its ancient
canal and in the shadow of the steeple of the church of the good Saint
Thiebault.

Now a thousand men or more, brown-clad and metal-helmeted, know the huts
and stables of Saint Thiebault as their billets, and the seventy little
boys and girls of the parish know those same thousand men as their new
big brothers--_les bons Americains_.

The real daddies and big brothers and uncles of those seventy youngsters
have been away from Saint Thiebault for a long time now--yes, this is
the fourth Christmas that the urgent business in northern France has
kept them from home. They may never return but that is unknown to the
seventy young hopefuls.

[Illustration: MARINES MARCHING DOWN THE AVENUE PRESIDENT WILSON ON THE
FOURTH OF JULY IN PARIS]

[Illustration: BRIDGE CROSSING MARNE RIVER IN CHATEAU-THIERRY DESTROYED
BY GERMANS IN THEIR RETREAT FROM TOWN]

There was great activity in the colonel's quarters during the morning,
and it is said that a sleuthing seventy were intent on unveiling the
mystery of these unusual American preparations. They stooped to get a peep
through the windows of the room, and Private Larson, walking his post in
front of the sacred precincts, had to shoo them away frequently with
threatening gestures