Our motor-car was no longer alone on the long highroad leading northward. We traveled now in company with many olive drab motor-trucks and ambulances, all with U. S. A. and a string of identity numbers painted in white letters on the sides. We passed many mule teams, the melancholy mules wearing around their necks the grotesque gas mask which is a part of their harness over there. Groups of foot soldiers, some French but mostly American, hailed us as we passed. Others we saw alongside of the road digging and draining. The road, built high above the surrounding fields, was hard and dry, but the country was a bog of mud and water. Our objective was a village, too small to deserve a name on any but a war map. It is important because it was the distributing point along this particular sector, for American troops and army supplies. It is about the last village up the line where one may safely venture without a gas mask. The road leading to the village, and the main street when we turned into it, were choked with motor-trucks, cars, ambulances, mules and men, thousands of men, in brown uniforms and steel helmets. As we wormed our way through this maze of heavy traffic, and as I stepped out of the car into mud a foot deep, I had a remarkable mental experience. My imagination suddenly switched back to a warm November day in New York. I stood on a corner of Fifth Avenue and watched, with half a million others, a regiment of drafted men starting for training camp on Long Island. New York was giving the men a great farewell, bands, flags, cheers, and from the marble balcony of the Union Club a reviewing party of distinguished men, some of them veterans of the Civil War. The marching men were a pretty weedy and ill-conditioned lot, city bred, most of them, indoor workers looking less than their average of twenty-three years. They struggled and panted under their burden of suit-cases, canvas kit bags, bundles and other receptacles. Their faces wore expressions of anxiety and fatigue, and a few looked actually terror stricken. In the crowds that lined the avenue were many women, mothers, wives and sweethearts of the men, and their suffering was often pitiful to see and to hear. Above the blare of the bands their voices floated shrilly: “There he is--there’s Henry. Oh, my God!” “Abie! Ach mein sohn!” “Oh! Oh! Isn’t it too horrible? All those boys going to their death!”