“We have a school here for our motorcycle cops. These men become inspectors of police. They have an added responsibility. They speed directly to the scene of any great or small disaster, and they assist the French gendarmes and military police. When the long-distance gun hit that church on Good Friday, killing seventy-six people, our men were the first on the spot. They rescued the wounded and brought out the dead. They also did excellent service in that great fire near Paris when the powder works blew up. “As quickly as an air raid is over our men are out on their cycles looking up the damage inflicted by the bombs. They report back here where every bomb fell. Often they are able to put out small fires caused by the bombs. “They are a fine bunch,” ended the lieutenant. “Not one of my men has ever been in trouble, and the fact that our cooler here in Paris often has as many as a hundred and fifty people in it shows not only that their work is essential, but that it is performed to the king’s taste.” With that kind of a police force and that kind of officers commanding it, you can be sure that your sons haven’t very much opportunity to go astray. Once in a while a man may evade the military police. Occasionally I have seen it done. But it happens rarely, and the chances are a hundred to one against it happening twice to any one man. CHAPTER XII INTO THE TRENCHES There comes a day when our sons cease to be soldiers in training and become fighting men. It is a day looked forward to with dread by those at home, with eager enthusiasm by the soldiers. I have seldom met a soldier who had not something uncomplimentary to say of the powers for not sending him more promptly to the front. The weeks spent in rest billets, that is, the training camps, seem endless to the men. Every move forward is hailed with joy. But progress from one village to the next is exasperatingly slow, especially after they reach a point where the rumble of guns, like distant thunder, is heard. I can answer for it that those distant guns do not terrify anybody. I have listened to them, and I had the same impulse to push on, on, nearer, which besets the men. There is a real intoxication in the sound. It intrigues you, fills you with a kind of savage curiosity, a desire to send back to that challenge a Gargantuan defiance. At this stage of the soldier’s career I know that he thoroughly enjoys himself. I have been that far with the American army myself and I can testify that everybody had a good time.