I arrived at the junction at eleven o’clock, but I did not take the two o’clock Paris express, as I had planned. I stayed in the station all day and all evening watching the breath-taking procession of trains tearing northward to the fight, and the equally amazing procession of trains rolling southward and bearing the flotsam and jetsam of battle--wounded and dying men, despairing refugees, damaged guns, broken airplanes. French trains, including our own over there, move methodically in blocks called _marches_. They never have any traffic tie-ups, because all the trains move at exactly the same speed, and every train has its prescribed place in the _marche_, just so far ahead or behind the next train. It is an excellent system. But it seemed to me that day that the trains would certainly telescope one another, they came on and on so unceasingly and so close together. The trains moving northward were laden with soldiers, horses, guns, airplanes, ammunition wagons, food, supplies of every conceivable description. Trainload after trainload of horses, eight to a car with four men, generally asleep on the hay in the middle space of the car. The horses, beautiful, tragic creatures, going to almost certain destruction wrung the heart to see. They gazed out at the flying landscape and the cheering station crowds with big, soft, uncomprehending eyes. How I wish we did not have to use horses in war. Of course the lives of men are far more valuable, but the men at least know why they fight and die. Trainloads of men, so many that within an hour I had ceased to count them, rolled through that junction. Men from England, Frenchmen hurriedly recalled from leave in their southern homes. All ages. I saw French boys who must have been eighteen, but who looked younger by two years, and I saw men who might have been grandfathers. These older men do not often fight. They serve meals in the trenches and perform other non-combatant services. All France--all--is mobilized for some kind of service. Sometimes these troop trains made brief stops at our station. Of course, there was a Red Cross canteen there, and I worked with the fine French women who were in charge of it, ladling hot coffee into mugs, and handing thick sandwiches to the crowding, hungry _poilus_. Some of the trains had their own kitchens, portable affairs on flat cars, and when the train stopped the men fairly boiled out of the carriages, pails and bowls in hand, to get the delicious soup prepared by the cooks. The Red Cross women supplemented the meal with sandwiches and coffee, at least when time permitted, which was not often. Those troop trains were on their way north with no unnecessary stops.