If that man, by the way, had asked me for a lift, as is usually the case when you are stopped like that on the road, my orders would have been to have refused him, to have said, "_C'est défendu_" and to have driven on. The Hague Conventions forbid carrying any soldiers in ambulances except those who are wounded and those in the _service sanitaire_. It is, putting it mildly, unpleasant to have to refuse a man a ride when he is wearily facing a long walk and you are spinning by in an empty ambulance. It is doubly unpleasant when you feel that this man would do anything for you from pushing your car out of a ditch to sharing a canteen. And yet, whenever we have to perform this disagreeable duty, the conversation usually ends with a "_Merci quand même_." Indeed, discipline in a French soldier seems to be able to maintain itself remarkably from within. Officers and men mingle probably more unrestrainedly than in any army in the world. A soldier when talking to an officer does not stand at attention after the first salute. Privates and officers are frequently seen in the same room of a hotel or café, and sometimes even have their meals in messes that are scarcely separated at all. But these encroachments upon military formalism seem to go no deeper than the frills of efficiency. Orders are obeyed without "reasoning why," and, as in all conscript armies, the machinery of punishment is evolved to uphold authority at all cost. Officers have wide and immediate powers of punishment, and the decisions of courts martial judging the graver offences are swift, severe, and highly dreaded. But, returning for the moment to Saint-Maurice, we park our cars in the public square, on a hillside, along the fence of the curé's yard and against the walls of an old church, where their bright red crosses flame out against the gray flaking stone, and, on a cold morning, it is always possible to save a lot of cranking by pushing them down the hill. About half the Section on any given day are to be found at the base and "in bounds," which means the square, the hotel where we have our mess, or the room where one is billeted. These men compose the reserve list, and are liable to be called at any minute when they must "roll," as we say, instantly. The rest of the Section are on duty in detachments of from one to eight cars and for periods of from twenty-four hours to a week at various dressing-stations, sorting-points, field hospitals, and so forth. The men on reserve are used to reinforce these places, to fill up quickly _trains sanitaires_, to rush to any one of a half-dozen villages which are sometimes shelled. [Illustration: AMERICAN DRIVERS IN ALSACE]