"Brethren," said he, "in place of a sermon this morning, I shall read the annual exposition of our Christian faith" (exposition de la foi chrétienne). He began reading from a little book a historical account of the creation and the temptation, and so concise was the language and so certain his voice that I had the sensation of listening to a series of events that had actually taken place. He might have been reading the communiqué. "Le premier homme was called Adam, and la première femme, Eve. Certain angels began a revolt against God; they are called the bad angels or the demons." (Certains anges se sont mis en revolte contre Dieu; il sont appelles les mauvais anges ou les démons.) "And from this original sin arrives all the troubles, Death to which the human race is subjected." Such was the discourse I heard in the church by the trenches to the accompaniment of the distant chanting of The Wood. Going by again late in the afternoon, I saw the end of an officer's funeral. The body, in a wooden box covered with the tricolor, was being carried out between two files of muddy soldiers, who stood at attention, bayonets fixed. A peasant's cart, a tumbril, was waiting to take the body to the cemetery; the driver was having a hard time con-trolling a foolish and restive horse. The colonel, a fine-looking man in the sixties, came last from the church, and stood on the steps surrounded by his officers. The dusk was falling. "Officiers, sous-officiers, soldats. "Lieutenant de Blanchet, whose death we deplore, was a gallant officer, a true comrade, and a loyal Frenchman. In order that France might live, he was willing to close his eyes on her forever." The officer advanced to the tumbril and holding his hand high said:-- "Farewell--de Blanchet, we say unto thee the eternal adieu." The door of the church was wide open. The sacristan put out the candles, and the smoke from them rose like incense into the air. The tumbril rattled away in the dusk. My mind returned again to the phrases of the sermon,--original sin, death, life, of a sudden, seemed strangely grotesque. It would be hard to find any one more courteous and kind than the French officer. A good deal of the success of the American Ambulance Field Sections in France is due to the hospitality and bon acceuil of the French, and to the work of the French officers attached to the Sections. In Lieutenant Kuhlman, who commanded at Pont-à-Mousson, every American had a good friend and tactful, hard-working officer; in Lieutenant Maas, who commanded at Verdun, the qualities of administrative ability and perfect courtesy were most happily joined. The principal characteristic of the French soldier is his reasonableness. Chapter IX Preparing The Defense Of Verdun