mean exactly that these men
would choose to spend the rest of their existences in this waste, but
they are happy in the consciousness of a job well done. It was really
inspiring to encounter here the familiar conductors and brakemen,
engineers and firemen, who had voluntarily, and for an ideal, left their
homes in a remote and peaceful republic three thousand miles away, to
find contentment and a new vitality, a wider vision, in the difficult and
dangerous task they were performing. They were frequently under fire
--when they brought back the wounded or fetched car-loads of munitions to
the great guns on the ridiculous little trains of flat cars with
open-work wheels, which they named--with American humour--the Federal
Express and the Twentieth Century Limited. And their officers were
equally happy. Their colonel, of our regular Army Engineer Corps, was
one of those broad-shouldered six-footers who, when they walk the streets
of Paris, compel pedestrians to turn admiringly and give one a new pride
in the manhood of our nation. Hospitably he drew us out of the wind and
rain into his little hut, and sat us down beside the stove, cheerfully
informing us that, only the night before, the gale had blown his door in,
and his roof had started for the German lines. In a neighbouring hut,
reached by a duck board, we had lunch with him and his officers baked
beans and pickles, cakes and maple syrup. The American food, the
American jokes and voices in that environment seemed strange indeed! But
as we smoked and chatted about the friends we had in common, about
political events at home and the changes that were taking place there, it
seemed as if we were in America once more. The English officer listened
and smiled in sympathy, and he remarked, after our reluctant departure,
that America was an extraordinary land.

He directed our chauffeur to Bapaume, across that wilderness which the
Germans had so wantonly made in their retreat to the Hindenburg line.
Nothing could have been more dismal than our slow progress in the steady
rain, through the deserted streets of this town. Home after home had
been blasted--their intimate yet harrowing interiors were revealed. The
shops and cafes, which had been thoroughly looted, had their walls blown
out, but in many cases the signs of the vanished and homeless proprietors
still hung above the doors. I wondered how we should feel in New England
if such an outrage had been done to Boston,