_8.30._—Read the masterly editorial of Jacques Bainville in _L’Action Française_, “Où est le piège?” (“Where is the snare?”) while going through the ugliest suburbs in the world, inclosing the most beautiful city in the world. And more beautiful than ever is Paris in uniform. Her delicate gray streets are mosaicked in horizon-blue, burnished with khaki, aglitter with decorations. (Oh, those men of the alert, expectant step, or those other broken ones dragging themselves along on canes and crutches!) Who has not seen Paris in uniform knows not her beauty, bright and terrible as an army in array; enchantment for the eye, bitter-sweet wine for the soul. And again, who has not seen her violet-nighted, black-girdled by the river, wearing for gems a rare emerald or ruby or sapphire light, and silent in her dark, enfolding beauty, knows her not. So lovers will remember her, and those whose sons are gone. _9.30._—Looking out of the window on fields and forests and groves. White-stemmed, yellow-leaved birches burn like torches in a pale, thin mist. The plowed fields are black with crows; it would seem to be a good year for them. We are due at Belfort at 3.35, but a large-paunched, very loquacious man blocking the corridor—his voice has not ceased since we started—tells a fellow-passenger that, with the delays caused by the shifting of troops and material, we’ll be lucky if we get there by seven. _10.30._—Rampillon with its beautiful old church, having two rows of Gothic windows and several medieval towers, seen from a foreground of smooth tilled fields. Over the green and yellow and brown world stretches a silver heaven, tarnished with yellowish-gray clouds. _Longueville._—Interminable trains of French and American troops cross one another. The French train has various barometrical indications of war-weather in chalk. _Guillaume, O là là, là là_; and the favorite and unrepeatable word —— mingles with _Le plaisir d’aller à Paris_, _O les belles filles_, _Adieu à jamais, Boches_. The cars containing American troops are inarticulate. They haven’t been at it long enough to express themselves. The handsome young officer next me opens conversation by asking me for my _L’Action Française_. Having previously torn out the article of Jacques Bainville, and wiped the windows with the rest, I pass it over to him with a smile. It wasn’t tempting. A group of Americans are standing in the corridor. I hear, “I’d like to burn the Rhine.” And the answer: “I don’t care what you burn, but I don’t ever want to see the Statue of Liberty from _this_ side again. Me for home. There’s more in it in one week in the clinic in little old Chicago than here in a month, in spite of the hunks of material. Leaving some to die or bandaging men in a hurry that you’ll never see again, and dead tired all the time. No, siree! No war thrills for me.” And then, all being devotees of Esculapius, they fall to talking about diseases, civil as well as military.