“Voilà,” said the old French general who sat opposite me in the Bordeaux express, “behold the prettiest sight in France.” He pointed through the open door of the compartment to two soldiers who were standing in the corridor smoking their after-luncheon cigarettes. One of the soldiers wore a horizon blue uniform, a little worn and stained with hard usage, although the boy was barely twenty-one. The other soldier’s uniform was brand new O. D. cloth, made in America. The two stood beside the window, their arms entwined, looking at the lovely valley of the Loire and teaching each other their respective languages. “Sammee,” said the French soldier, “how you say ‘_donnes moi une allumette_’?” “You say ‘gimme a match.’ But listen here, Gaston, cut out the Sammie. Forget it.” “What you mean ‘forget it,’ Sammee?” persisted the _poilu_, accepting the match. The lesson went on, and I agreed with the old general that the sight of French and American youths associating on affectionate terms and learning each other’s familiar argot was indeed agreeable. One of the stock arguments of the pacifists in trying to make war out an unmixed evil is that it sets back education. I am sure that many American mothers have had misgivings on this point, and have deplored the necessity of interrupting their sons’ college life. But I want to assure them that their sons are learning more in France than any college could have taught them. They are learning French, for one thing, at least all the enterprising ones are. Not the foolish, academic sort of thing they study in high school and college, the object being to read Molière and the classics, but the living language. A striking illustration of the difference in the two methods was afforded me during a trip into the war zone. In the party was one of our intelligence officers and a French woman writer of unusually broad education. The American officer spoke very little French, the woman writer spoke only a few broken sentences of English, and they had to be constantly interpreted to each other. One day, in the course of the conversation, it transpired that the officer before joining the colors had been a high-school professor of French, and that the woman had for five years drawn a good salary as a teacher of English. The American soldier in a few months can, if he wants to, gets a practical knowledge of the French language that will be a business asset to him all his life. Most of the soldiers appreciate this, and the free classes offered in all the Y. M. C. A. centers are well attended. They learn in the classes, and they learn even more by association with French soldiers and civilians. My soldier son knew not a word of the language when he enlisted, but when I saw him in France he was using it fairly well. I congratulated him on his new acquisition, and he laughed and said: “There’s an awfully pretty girl in a café the fellows up our way patronize, and she doesn’t know any English.”