I awake to the melody of the same reveille which brings ten million soldiers to action over the world each morning; the same bugle which sounds the end of the night’s bombardment, and the beginning of the day’s carnage on battle fronts from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. I yawn, stretch, lie in ten or fifteen minutes of delicious indecision and then dress sitting on the edge of my cot. My underwear in the daytime is my night clothes; socks are changed almost every week, dried of the dampness of the day by the warmth of the night in bed; my sweater and shirt also work twenty-four hours a day. The muffler mother knitted for my neck is a fine pillow; my great sheepskin coat—my greatest comfort and the envy of officers—plays the comforter; all these are the constant guardians of the warmth of my body. It is they, and not parade dress that should be allowed to wear war’s honors if they are worn for it is they who have served. Then I rush out and wash hands and face dutifully in cold water. Then I hasten to my breakfast—three slices of bread and butter. The bread is free, but the butter costs five cents, twenty-five centimes in French money, and is eaten while walking to the field. During the morning I fly perhaps an hour and a half. I return to lunch and an hour’s repose. Another hour or so of flying and a lecture occupy the afternoon. On the way home at four o’clock we stop in at a little shanty where three amiable and good-looking country girls serve us with oysters and jam and chocolate. The oysters are better than blue points, and cost ten cents a dozen. We talk and sing and walk home. At six I have dinner and after dinner write letters till weary. Then I go to bed. The war’s toll has been 3,000,000 lives or so. A fourth of the ships are sunk. The great nations will be bankrupted. Will we dare speak of God? Will architecture be a good profession after the war? What is one man in all this? I go to bed each night trying to get a perspective of life and the world and my place. DINSMORE ELY. _December 28, 1917._ DEAR FAMILY: