All soldiers were afraid, but in the performance of their duty practically all soldiers learned to overcome fear and attend to their jobs in the face of every obstacle and every danger. We felt that travel, with its attendant contact with other customs, language and people, would broaden our soldiers mentally and tend to break down the provincialism which has been often noticed in America, as well as in many other countries. Only a small minority of our men were equipped, either in knowledge or in attitude, to take advantage of the opportunities offered. Museums meant comparatively little to them, mediaeval cathedrals not much more, Roman walls or ruins nothing at all. Scenery did not mean as much as some of us thought it should, forgetting that scenery looks entirely different to a man who rides past it and another who walks through it. Altogether, knowledge of France, England and Germany made, on the whole, not for a greater appreciation of foreign lands, but instead for a great appreciation of America. The fact is that the boys grew homesick. Most of them were only boys in years, and practically all of them were reduced to the boyish level of thought by the general irresponsibility, thoughtlessness, and dependency of army life. They were like boys in a military school, very often, rather than men engaged in the grim business of modern war. To these boys absence from home brought a higher appreciation of home. This was often a true evaluation, in the face of previous neglect and underestimation; sometimes it may have been a sentimentalizing of a home that had never really meant very much. But in the danger, the monotony, and the distance, the soldiers grew to higher appreciation of their own homes and their home-land as well.