I obtained the position after much searching for an opportunity to be of service. Going across from New York to London I had been refused a position by the British unless I could enlist, which personal reasons prevented at the time. Then, after two days interviewing, taxicabbing, viséing, pleading, and explaining, I obtained a permit to go to France. At Boulogne the authorities of the British Red Cross and St. Johns Ambulance Association told me they were oversupplied with surgeons and I decided to go to Amiens, where I had a surgical friend. I could not get away till the following morning, so I spent the afternoon wandering about. The streets were filled with a cosmopolitan throng of soldiers of all shades of color--white, black, and brown--and of various nationalities, British and Canadian Tommies in their khaki, French poilus in their blue-gray uniforms, Ghurkas from India in their picturesque dress, and French Soudanese with strange accouterments. The better hotels were all occupied by the military authorities as headquarters, and the harbor was filled with hospital ships and transports. Walking about the streets one had to look sharp to avoid being run down by hurrying Red Cross ambulances or lumbering motor lorries. I strolled to the beach, where on the sands Tommies were lounging, gazing longingly across at the shores of England, dimly visible in the distance. One of the soldiers turned to me with a smile and said: "I was just taking a last look at the old 'ome, sir. Of course, I 'opes to see it again sometime if I don't 'appen to stop somethink." And it was all said most cheerfully. I added my wishes for his luck to his own. On the slow train from Boulogne to Amiens we passed many military camps with their white tents in orderly rows. Here and there oxen were being used by old men and women on their farms, and in one little brook some boys were fishing. I could hardly believe that forty miles or less away two armies of millions of men were contending for the mastery, with civilization depending on the outcome. When, later, I was much nearer to the front I was struck again and again by the matter-of-fact manner in which the French peasant accepts his or her military surroundings. He works coolly in fields into which at times enemy shells are dropping, or over which long range guns are firing into some semi-ruined town of Northern France. Something which is always a cause of wonder and admiration to the observer is that, despite the fact that all the young and able Frenchmen are in the trenches, the women, old men and children who remain succeed in cultivating the farmlands of France right up to the lines.