Strange tatters of conversation rose from the deck. "Poor child, she lost her husband at the beginning of the war"--"Third shipment of hosses"--"I was talking with a feller from the Atlas Steel Company"--"Edouard is somewhere near Arras"; there were disputes about the outcome of the war, and arguments over profits. A voluble French woman, whose husband was a pastry cook in a New York hotel before he joined the forces, told me how she had wandered from one war movie to another hoping to catch a glimpse of her husband, and had finally seen "some one who resembled him strongly" on the screen in Harlem. She had a picture of him, a thin, moody fellow with great, saber whiskers like Rostand's and a high, narrow forehead curving in on the sides between the eyebrows and the hair. "He is a Chasseur alpin," she said with a good deal of pride, "and they are holding his place for him at the hotel. He was wounded last month in the shoulder. I am going to the hospital at Lyons to see him." The day's sunset was at its end, and a great mass of black clouds surged over the eastern horizon, turning the seas ahead to a leaden somberness that lowered in menacing contrast to the golden streaks of dying day. The air freshened, salvos of rain fell hissing into the dark waters, and violet cords of lightning leaped between sea and sky. Echoing thunder rolled long through unseen abysses. In the deserted salon I found the young Frenchman with the star-shaped scar reading an old copy of "La Revue." He had been an officer in the Chasseurs-à-pied until a fearful wound had incapacitated him for further service, and had then joined the staff of a great, conservative Parisian weekly. The man was a disciple of Ernest Psichari, the soldier mystic who died so superbly at Charleroi in the dreadful days before the Marne. From him I learned something of the French conception of the idea of war. It was not uninteresting to compare the French point of view with the German, and we talked late into the night while the ship was plunging through the storm. An article in the review, "La Psychologie des Barbares," was the starting-point of our conversation. "You must remember that the word 'barbarian' which we apply to the Germans, is understood by the French intellectually," said he. "Not only do German atrocities seem barbarous, but their thought also. Consider the respective national conceptions of the idea of war. To the Germans, war is an end in itself, and in itself and in all its effects perfect and good. To the French mind, this conception of war is barbaric, for war is not good in itself and may be fatal to both victor and vanquished." (He spoke a beautiful, lucid French with a sort of military preciseness.)