air, growing larger each moment before our eyes, until it finally disappeared behind a hill. High over the lines, scorning burst after burst of German shrapnel, the tiny Nieuport sailed proudly back and forth, as if daring any Bosche pilot to rise and try his luck. These air duels are a common sight at the Front, particularly at night when the heavy batteries become active.

The American Ambulance Service has carried on its work along a distance of three hundred miles of front stretching from the southernly Vosges Mountains to the British front north of the Aisne. The work and hardships that the men have gone through is very great, and the French people are very grateful for it. But conditions in France have changed since the United States entered the war. A young, healthy American at the Front in these days is liable to a great deal of criticism on the part of the French soldier unless that young American is in the uniform of the soldier of the United States. Ambulance drivers are looked upon with much contempt by the soldiers, who feel that, if an American is capable of driving an ambulance, he, therefore, is capable of going into the trenches. France now has her crippled and old men driving ambulances, and the sight of healthy young Americans, who might be in the trenches, while the worn-out French soldier takes his place driving an ambulance, is exceedingly distasteful to the poilu. On our arrival in Paris last spring we soon learned of this condition of affairs. One day as I was walking into the Café de la Paix with a number of other ambulance drivers in uniform, a hiss greeted us and a few muffled cries of "ambuscade," meaning "slacker," arose from several little groups at the tables. We took a table next to some officers who were lounging about, and finally entered into conversation with them. They then informed us of the feeling against young men in the ambulance service, which sentiment we later found to be quite prevalent among men in the army. It is the policy of the French government to urge young Americans to enter their ambulance service, but the spirit of the man who is in the French army opposes it. The thing France now needs is soldiers. They can well take care of their ambulance service.

The esprit de corps of the French has been their greatest weapon of defense since the war was first thrust upon them. Cheerful, clever, and generous, they daily go into the fight hoping for an early and complete victory. Yet, they believe the war will last for at least three years more. Nearly everyone at the Front agrees that it will take as long as this to vanquish the Bosche. Deep down in their hearts, beneath the veneer of insouciance, the French people have but one great hope for victory, and that is, that America will carry on the struggle to a triumphal conclusion. Such a miraculous spirit of sacrifice as they exhibit has never before been shown by any single people as a nation. Imagine saying good-bye forever with a smile! Yet this is a common sight at the Gare de L'Est in Paris. One can see hundreds of wives and mothers daily, standing there to give a last brave farewell to their loved ones. Not one face in the crowd bears a single tear, not a word of sorrow is spoken, the same cheery smile is everywhere. The Bosche has an incredibly wonderful military system, complete equipment and perfect organization, but with all this he can never hope to overcome a people whose indomitable courage leaps up through desolate hearts to form a smile upon their lips.

R. F. Bryner.

SIGILL. COLL. YALEN.

"It's good to go," you say, and sit in thought;
"Good to do something, good to go with friends—
And after all, the excitement of it lends

An eagerness to life, and brings to nought

Musings of what it means.

And work, God wot,

Soberly Red bends

His hat in shape. The talk, the laughter ends,
And there is silence, half with sadness fraught.

The place,

"It's good to go, and yet, and yet...."
The room, the very chairs, seemed perfectly
To stand apart, just now, in time and space.
"How queer you look!

Will leave to-morrow!

Cheer up, old man-why we
Glad you ought to be-"

And through a haze I smile, and see his face.

R. E. McClure.

CAMP AZAN.

'AMP AZAN, where the Harvard R. O. T. C. spent its last

CAMP

three weeks of training, is a dusty little New England fair grounds, seven or eight hundred feet above sea level, but surrounded by higher altitudes, which cut off most of the breezes, and exposed throughout the day to the full glare of the sunan excellent site, I thought, for a winter camp. And we arrived at an inauspicious hour-early in the afternoon of a midsummer day. The various companies marched in the order of their captains' seniority, and the streets of pup tents.

were pitched in the same rotation. Then we were told that they should have been pitched in alphabetical order and that the companies out of this order would have to move their belongings to the new streets. There followed a babel of sounds— groans of disgust at the incompetence of the authorities, a quarrel over the ownership of a certain pair of breeches, laughter at not too polite jokes-and then a general exodus to the new streets, blankets trailing in the dust, bundles of clothes under arms and toilet articles sticking out of pockets. My tent-mate and I, of course, drew a tent whose original owners had misunderstood the order to leave the tents pitched, and had started to strike their tent and then left it (minus a few pins) for us to pitch again. The loss of the pins didn't make much difference, though, because the ground was either so rocky that they couldn't be driven in or so sandy that they wouldn't hold. I was very unhappy and just about ready to shuffle off this martial re-coil.

We all survived, however, and promptly the next morning we began work according to the appallingly long and complex schedule for the week, posted on the company bulletin board. In print, the schedule was appalling, but deceivingly so, for the hardest days were not those that took up most typographical space. One would tremble reading that on Thursday morning there was to be squad, platoon and company close order drill, practice in grenade throwing, bayonet drill, semaphoring and wigwagging, practice in the writing of reports, etc. But these days were not physically exhausting-only perhaps a little boring, for you would take out your watch, confident that dinner time was near, and find it to be seven-thirty A. M. In another part of the schedule you would see a few insignificant-looking words describing the work of one entire day (afterward one of my chief joys was the thought that only one day was devoted by our company to map-making) and, if inexperienced in the art, you would feel pleased. But my effort at making a map was a horrid experience, and for weeks after, my only nightmare was of flight from a tripod with a nasty smirch on its square face.

The majority of our days, however, were spent in the execution of "exercises." Four or five mornings a week (twice

we executed an exercise at night) we would march out to a supposed area of battle and, simulating actual conditions, perform our part of an attack, or a coup de main, or a pursuit. Ordinarily an exercise is an uninteresting affair except to the very imaginative. The regiment occupies a dismantled hayfield running alongside a hilly road and then deploys in the French formation with two waves. You sit down and talk to your neighbor in a low voice, complaining of the heat and food-usually in a jocular manner, but if your digestion is poor, with a superb gloom reminiscent of "The Nigger of the Narcissus." Or if you are lucky and near blue-berries, you eat and discuss the relative merits of this variety and those of the huckleberry. Soon a vague corporal comes up to you and confuses you as to the manner of execution and objective of the exercise, in an effort to make you participate intelligently. Generally he adds that there is to be no talking and goes back to his place in line; whereupon you resume your conversation in a slightly lower tone. Then the order comes to advance at double time through the wood in front, which the enemy is bombarding. You dash in recklessly and are surprised to find a steep-sided ravine in the center of the wood. You grab a sapling, find it to be of a yielding disposition, and sprawl full length in the soft, loose earth, swearing in a most soldierly manner. On the other side of the wood you wait again. From the edge, you can see rocky pastures with rolling hills that look easy until you climb them. Dried-up swamps make a pleasant filling for the hollows. your place in line and shut your eyes, to sleep if possible. Somebody playfully throws a stick at your face or pokes you in the stomach with a dead branch, and you retaliate. Other people begin to try their skill and a competition ensues. Then a non-com becomes severe, someone wigwags to cease firing and the mild but thoroughly unmilitary rough-house ceases. At length the order comes to charge and take hill 870. You rush. out and stumble over the rough ground, stepping on slippery hummocks from which you generally slide into the channels between, cursing the geological process that produced such terrain. Some one nearby falls noisily and another man yells cheerfully, "Give that man ten demerits for dropping his gun."

You lie down in