Our pleasurable anticipations of a view of Liverpool and perhaps a glimpse of London were rudely disappointed. We disembarked about noon, marched through side streets, which looked like side streets in any of the dirtiest of American cities, lined up at a freight station, and were loaded at once on waiting trains and started off for Southampton. All that afternoon we absorbed eagerly the dainty beauty of the English countryside which most of us knew only through literary references. We were sorry when the late twilight shut off the view and we had to take our first lesson at sleeping while sitting up in a train, a custom which afterward became a habit to all officers in France. Daybreak found us at Southampton in the rest camp; evening on the _Maid of Orleans_, bound across the channel. We had not seen England, we had no place to sleep and not too much to eat, even sitting room on the decks was at a premium, but we were hastening on our way to the war. At Le Havre we were again assigned to a British rest camp, where we appreciated the contrast between the excellent meals of the officers' canteen and the primitive bunks in double tiers where we had to sleep. After two days of this sort of rest and a hasty visit to the city in between, I received orders to report to the G. H. Q. Chaplains' Office at Chaumont. My first train journey across France impressed me at once with the unique character of the landscape. The English landscape is distinguished by meadows, the French by trees. The most realistic picture of the English landscape is the fantastic description of a checker-board in "Alice in Wonderland." In France, however, one is struck chiefly by the profusion and arrangement of trees. They are everywhere, alone or in clumps, and of all kinds, with often a formal row of poplars or a little wood of beeches to make the sky-line more impressive. In northern France the houses and barns are all of stone, peaked and windowless, with gardens that seem bent on contrasting as strongly as possible with the grayness of the walls. It seems as though tiny villages are every few feet, and always with a church steeple in the middle.