What we Americans have to help us bear what is coming in the next few months is the knowledge that our losses are going to be as few as possible. Life is to be safeguarded as far as human agencies can devise. Our army is organized for that. Men are not to be sacrificed unnecessarily. The best science in the world is being mobilized to save suffering and to heal wounds. Sickness and accident are being guarded against. Drunkenness and immorality are under strictest ban. Some of this I was privileged to hear from the man who perhaps more than any other individual is responsible for the lives and the souls of our men in France, General Pershing. I saw him twice, once briefly in Paris, where he talked to me five minutes before leaving for an allied war council at Versailles, and once at length in his headquarters in a quaint old town which is the general headquarters of the staff of our army in France. General Pershing is the least formal of any great officer I have ever seen, with the notable exception of “Papa” Joffre, but generals are all very important personages and have to be addressed with circumspection. I wanted very much to say to General Pershing, but of course I didn’t, that after seeing him I felt a whole lot easier about my especial soldier. A more human commanding officer, one more concerned about the last detail of the life of the enlisted man, I am sure never lived. He spoke of the soldiers as a father speaks of his sons, with pride and passionate concern. _“They are the best in the world,” he said, and he added that although our talk was private and that he could not be quoted, I was at liberty to repeat those words: “Our soldiers are fine men, clean, strong, intelligent, and they will make magnificent fighters. Tell the people at home, especially the mothers, that they can be proud of their men. Tell them that almost without exception their behavior is beyond criticism. Tell them that for me.”_ Proud of their commander also may the American people be, and over and above all, proud of the cause for which the American soldiers fight and for which they are ready to die. Not in the whole history of the world has a more righteous war been fought. I do not think the majority of Americans yet dream of the depth of depravity contemplated by the men who brought about the war. We have heard of German atrocities and we have shuddered at the recital. But the plan and object of this war on the part of those Prussians who are responsible for it constitute the worst atrocity of all, for the plan was the murder of Christian civilization and the object was the enslavement of mankind.