saw every officer in my company killed. First
it was my first lieutenant. They got him in the head. Then about ten
o'clock I saw my second lieutenant fall. Then early in the afternoon
my top-sergeant got a bayonet, and a hand-grenade got a group of my
non-commissioned officers. Half of my boys are gone."

Then he sat down and we got him some hot chocolate. This seemed to
revive his spirits, and he said: "But, thank God, we licked them! We
licked them at their own game! We got them six to one, and drove them
back! No Man's Land is thick with their beastly bodies. They are
hanging on the wires out there like trapped rabbits!"

Then the thoughts of his own officers came back.

"My God! Now we know what war means. We've been playing at war up to
this time. Now we've got to suffer! Then we'll know what it all
means." He was half-delirious, we could see, and sent for an ambulance.

As I drove home that night I passed the crossroads crucifix. This time
I needed no lights to guide me. The whole horizon was alight with
bursting shells and Very lights. Long before I got to it I could see
the gaunt form of the cross reaching its black but comforting arms up
against the background of lurid light along the front where I knew that
American men were dying for me. The picture of that wayside cross,
looming against the lurid light of battle, shall never die in my memory.

It was the silhouette of France and America suffering together, a
silhouette standing out against a livid horizon of fire.

I needed no tiny pocket search-light to read the words on the cross.
They had already burned their way into my heart and into the hearts of
that whole division of American soldiers, that division which has since
so distinguished itself at Belleau Woods! But now America has a new
understanding of the meaning of that sentence, for America, too, is
suffering, and she is sacrificing.

"Traveller, hast thou ever seen so great a grief as mine?"

"Yes, France; we understand now."

IV

SILHOUETTES SPIRITUAL

It was the gas ward. I had held a vesper service that evening and had
had a strange experience. Just before the service I had been
introduced to a lad who said to the chaplain who introduced me that he
was a member of my denomination.

The boy could not speak above a whisper. He was gassed horribly, and
in addition to his lungs being burned out and his throat, his face and
neck were scarred.

"I have as man