cent victory for the French
that the world does not fully realize. I think we are marching
to victory too, but whatever we are going to we are going triumphantly.

==

On October 23, he writes from "17 kil. south-east of Reims".

==

Dear Mother. . . . I am sitting on the curbstone of a street
at the edge of the town. The houses end abruptly and the yellow vineyards
begin here. The view is broad and uninterrupted to the crest
ten kilometers or so across the valley. Between this and ourselves are
the lines of the two armies. A fierce cannonading is going on continually,
and I lift my eyes from the sheet at each report, to see the puffs of smoke
two or three miles off. The Germans have been firing salvoes of four shots
over a little village where the French batteries are stationed,
shrapnel that burst in little puffs of white smoke; the French reply
with explosive shells that raise columns of dust over the German lines.
Half of our regiment have left already for the trenches. We may go tonight.
We have made a march of about 75 kilometers in four days, and are now
on the front, ready to be called on at any moment. I am feeling fine,
in my element, for I have always thirsted for this kind of thing,
to be present always where the pulsations are liveliest. Every minute here
is worth weeks of ordinary experience. How beautiful the view is here,
over the sunny vineyards! And what a curious anomaly.
On this slope the grape pickers are singing merrily at their work,
on the other the batteries are roaring. Boom! Boom!

This will spoil one for any other kind of life. The yellow afternoon sunlight
is sloping gloriously across this beautiful valley of Champagne.
Aeroplanes pass continually overhead on reconnaissance. I must mail this now.
There is too much to be said and too little time to say it.
So glad to get your letter. Love and lots of it to all.

Alan.

==

Alas! the hopes of swift, decisive action with which the Legion advanced
were destined to disappointment. They soon settled down for the winter into
the monotonous hardships of trench warfare. Alan described this experience
in admirably vivid letters published in the New York 'Sun',
from which a few extracts must suffice. He writes on December 8,
during his fourth period of service in the trenches:

==

We left our camp in the woods before daybreak this morning,
and marched up the h