And we continue through that flat yellow and green and brown world to Dannemarie, one of the “territories” of the reconquered triangle, drawing up before some sort of government building, known to German and to French administrators, in and out of which American soldiers are now passing. I ask one of them where their officers are quartered, thinking to pay my respects after lunch. There is a vagueness as he asks of a passing comrade, “Say, ’ain’t we got a major somewhere here?” The flooding Americanism of my soul is for a moment stemmed; then we go over to the _popote_, where we are to lunch with Lieutenant Ditandy, in charge at Dannemarie. Laferrière, always ready to praise his comrades, tells me that he is possessed of much energy, good sense, and decision (rather in our American way, I found later) and the “territory” has flourished under him. Pleasant lunch, enlivened by some last German salvos, which shook the windows and caused the glasses on the table to ring. Much and easy conversation—as we ate the classic Alsatian dish of sauerkraut, boiled potatoes, and pork, and the equally classic pancakes—mostly about the irrealizable and irreconcilable dreams of small and penniless nations, springing up like poor and unthrifty relations at the day of inheritance. And how amusing, even, the adjustments might become, once the blood-letting had ceased, though everybody felt more or less of a pricking in the thumbs at the thought of _l’après-guerre_. One could not then foresee that the movement of the Peace Conference would be about as rapid as that of the notoriously timeless glacier. Nor was it given to prophets to foretell the exceeding glitter of its generalities, nor how those same small nations, without a cent in their pockets, some even without pockets, like the Zulus and Hottentots, would multiply a hundredfold in its dewy shade. The metaphors are mixed, though not more so than the theme, and unfortunately it _won’t_ “be all the same in a hundred years,” everything having been taken into account except the future. After lunch we start out in the motor driven by the swift yet careful chauffeur, accompanied by a doctor _à deux galons_, who speaks English very well, but doesn’t understand a word I say—and my English is generally intelligible, though perhaps one wouldn’t know right away if I came from England or the United States. We passed the high, broken, pink viaduct of the railway, looking, against the near Swiss hills, like a bit of aqueduct in the Roman Campagna, though without any beauty of light. It had been destroyed the first days of the war, rebuilt, again destroyed, and then abandoned.