en I started to go. My greatest hit was
"When Yankee Doodle learns to parley-vous francais," and when I would
come to "Ulala! Sweet Papa!" they would smack their knees, and giggle
with delight. One evening they came down to our "Y" and one clogged,
while another played the piano, and another evening they came and sang
to us. On the whole the white boys were on good terms with the blacks,
though they had one little row while we were there. The whites were
playing the blacks at baseball. The game was a comic affair, and was
proceeding with the utmost good nature, when one boy thoughtlessly
called a darky a "nigger." Great outrage! The colored boys refused to
play, the game was called off, and the black team retreated in sulky
silence. However, they all made up the next day, and the game was
resumed.

Now I must skip over all the little human events that go to make our
days, and tell you about our trip to the front. I have seen it, the
strip of land on which the world's attention has been focused for so
long. I have been to No Man's Land, and the Argonne, and Verdun. For a
long time I had no desire to go. Something in me shrank from the
thought of hundreds of unimaginative tourists speeding over the ground
where men have so recently died by the thousands. It seemed like
flaunting our lives in the very faces of those who had laid down
theirs that we might live more happily. Also, from all we have heard,
and read, and felt, I thought I could picture the war and the front as
vividly as if I had been there. And so I could. Strange as it may
sound, nothing surprised me up there. I am not filled with any more
hatred or horror after seeing it than I was before. It is now a vast
desolation. I hope the world is going to be better for it. Perhaps the
flowers that are even now covering the raw wounds in the earth are the
flowers of hope, ready to sow the seeds of promise. I don't know
whether to describe to you just what I have seen or not. I'll try.

We were a party of eight Y.M.C.A. workers, four men and four girls. We
travelled in two ramshackle old Fords. Ours had come from a salvage
pile, but it still had plenty of life in it, and got over the ground
with a terrific amount of noise and jarring. The noise was indeed a
Godsend, for it made conversation impossible, and mercifully
obliterated even our most brilliant sallies of wit. I was able to
retreat behind the motor's unmuffled roaring far into the landscape
and into my own th