', rubbed
elbows and exchanged views and played bridge together. There were
Y. M. C. A. people on their way to the various camps, reconstruction
workers intending to build temporary homes for the homeless French,
and youngsters in the uniform of the American Field Service, going over
to drive camions and ambulances; many of whom, without undue regret,
had left college after a freshman year. They invaded the 'fumoir',
undaunted, to practise atrocious French on the phlegmatic steward; they
took possession of a protesting piano in the banal little salon and sang:
"We'll not come back till it's over over there." And in the evening, on
the darkened decks, we listened and thrilled to the refrain:

"There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams."

We were Argonauts--even the Red Cross ladies on their way to establish
rest camps behind the lines and brave the mud and rains of a winter in
eastern France. None, indeed, were more imbued with the forthfaring
spirit than these women, who were leaving, without regret, sheltered,
comfortable lives to face hardships and brave dangers without a question.
And no sharper proof of the failure of the old social order to provide
for human instincts and needs could be found than the conviction they
gave of new and vitalizing forces released in them. The timidities with
which their sex is supposedly encumbered had disappeared, and even the
possibility of a disaster at sea held no terrors for them. When the sun
fell down into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and the cabins below
were sealed--and thus become insupportable--they settled themselves for
the night in their steamer-chairs and smiled at the remark of M. le
Commissaire that it was a good "season" for submarines. The moonlight
filtered through the chinks in the burlap shrouding the deck. About
3 a.m. the khaki-clad lawyer from Milwaukee became communicative, the Red
Cross ladies produced chocolate. It was the genial hour before the final
nap, from which one awoke abruptly at the sound of squeegees and brooms
to find the deck a river of sea water, on whose banks a wild scramble for
slippers and biscuit-boxes invariably ensued. No experience could have
been more socializing.

"Well, it's a relief," one of the ladies exclaimed, "not to be travelling
with half a dozen trunks and a hat-box! Oh, yes, I realize what I'm
doing. I'm going to live in one of those flimsy portable hous