Now I must skip over all the little human events that go to make our days, and tell you about our trip to the front. I have seen it, the strip of land on which the world's attention has been focused for so long. I have been to No Man's Land, and the Argonne, and Verdun. For a long time I had no desire to go. Something in me shrank from the thought of hundreds of unimaginative tourists speeding over the ground where men have so recently died by the thousands. It seemed like flaunting our lives in the very faces of those who had laid down theirs that we might live more happily. Also, from all we have heard, and read, and felt, I thought I could picture the war and the front as vividly as if I had been there. And so I could. Strange as it may sound, nothing surprised me up there. I am not filled with any more hatred or horror after seeing it than I was before. It is now a vast desolation. I hope the world is going to be better for it. Perhaps the flowers that are even now covering the raw wounds in the earth are the flowers of hope, ready to sow the seeds of promise. I don't know whether to describe to you just what I have seen or not. I'll try. We were a party of eight Y.M.C.A. workers, four men and four girls. We travelled in two ramshackle old Fords. Ours had come from a salvage pile, but it still had plenty of life in it, and got over the ground with a terrific amount of noise and jarring. The noise was indeed a Godsend, for it made conversation impossible, and mercifully obliterated even our most brilliant sallies of wit. I was able to retreat behind the motor's unmuffled roaring far into the landscape and into my own thoughts, and there I stayed most of the time. We left Gondrecourt on Thursday afternoon, June 5th. It was one of those soft days, delicious humid air, that brought out all the fragrance of the country, a gray sky and a soft light that gave us the true essence of the colors in the fields because there were no shadows. A tapestry day, when all shades were subdued, woven through a warp of mist. This part of France, gently undulating, with fields of grain and carefully tended wood, is very lovely. There is a luxuriant grace about it. It is a land of carved stone crosses. We kept passing them by the roadside, beautiful in form and varied in design. It is the land of Jeanne d'Arc, and often we passed her image with a vase of fresh flowers beneath it.