The tables are flecked with all varieties of French uniforms, from scarlet pants with solitary black stripes down the leg, to tunics of horizon blue. In one corner there are two turbaned Algerians with heads bent close over their black coffee, and one horn of the hall rack shows a red fez with a gold crescent on the crown. Consider the company. That freckle-faced youth with the fluffed reddish hair of a bandmaster is a French aviator, and among the row of decorations on his dark blue coat is one that he received by reason of a well known adventure over the German lines, which cannot be mentioned here. That American colonel whose short grey hair blends into the white wall behind him is a former member of the United States war college and one of the most important factors in the legislation that shaped the present military status of his country. That other Frenchman with the unusual gold shoulder straps is not a member of the French army. He is a naval officer, and the daring with which he carried his mapping chart along exposed portions of the line at Verdun and evolved the mathematical data on which the French fired their guns against the German waves has been the pride of both the navy and the army. Over there is a young captain who this time last year was a "shavetail" second in command at a small post along the line of communications in Chihuahua. Next to him sits a tall dark youngster wearing with pride his first Sam Browne belt and "U. S. R." on his collar. He carted human wreckage to the hospitals on the French front for two years before Uncle Sam decided to end the war. There's another one not long from the "Point," booted and spurred and moulded to his uniform. He speaks with a twang of old Virginia on every syllable and they say his family--but that has nothing to do with the fact that he is aid to a major general and is in these parts on a mission. There are three American women in the room. One who is interested in Y. M. C. A. work and a number of newspapers, wears a feminine adaptation of the uniform and holds court at the head of a table of five officers. Another, Mrs. Robert R. McCormick, who is engaged in the extension of the canteen work of a Paris organisation, is sitting at our table and she is willing to wager her husband anything from half a dozen gloves to a big donation check that Germany will be ready for any kind of peace before an American offensive in the spring. The interests of the other American woman are negative. She professes no concern in the fact that war correspondents' life insurances are cancelled, but she repeats to me that a dead correspondent is of no use to his paper, and I reply that if madame puts yet another one of her courses on the board, one correspondent will die with a fork in his hand instead of a pencil.