The officer, especially when on the staff, saw things in relation, but the soldier had to work in the dark. He never did understand the rules of the great game he was playing. Tactics were nothing to him. He knew only what it meant to march with a heavy pack all night, to rest in the damp cold of dawn when he was too weary to rest at all, to advance under fire and to dig in again and yet again. Much as he might later on revel in the raw heroism of it all, this arduous labor, blindfolded, left him a prey to doubt and rumor at the time. Rumors were one of the few foes of morale which persisted at both front and rear, because they were the product of ignorance and in both places ignorance persisted. No man can be quite steady in his duty when his mind is distracted by the countless rumors of army life. So far as we had information to dispense, we were building up morale, even when the facts were not reassuring. Rumors about going home, being the most desirable, were the greatest menace of all. Men would come back from the hospital with half-healed wounds because the rumor said we were going home at once, and they wanted to go along. Men would take unofficial leave to see Paris before they died, just because the latest rumor had it that we were not to leave for another month. Every such disappointment or lapse of duty made the next rumor more dangerous and wider spread. The morale of the overseas forces described a slow downward curve from the high point at the armistice until the news that the particular unit was going home, when it took an immediate upward bound. During the downward trend of the curve, the men grew to hate the army. The definite elements which they naturally resented were emphasized and exaggerated, although that was hardly necessary. At the same time, they felt immense pride in their own achievements, and a thorough contempt for "joy-riders," as they termed the civilian travelers through France, the official investigators or representatives of civilian organizations, who witnessed the trenches as if on a sight-seeing party. This pride in their actual accomplishments, combined with resentment at the military subversion of ordinary civilian standards of life and manhood, was characteristic of the best minds in the ranks.