The service to France of Americans, whether ambulance drivers, surgeons, nurses, donors and distributors of relief, aviators, or foreign _légionnaires_, when measured by the prodigious tasks with which France has had to cope during the past two years, has indeed been infinitesimally small; but their service to America itself has been important. They have rendered this inestimable benefit to their country. They have helped to keep alive in France the old feeling of friendship and respect for us which has existed there since our earliest days and which, otherwise, would probably have ceased to exist. They have helped to demonstrate to the chivalrous people of France that Americans, without hesitating to balance the personal profit and loss, still respond to the great ideals that inspired the founders of our Republic. They have helped France to penetrate official reticence and re-discover America's surviving soul. When all is said and done, however, the _ambulanciers_ themselves have gained the most from the work in which they have taken part. It is a privilege even in ordinary times to live in this "_doux pays de France_," to move about among its gentle and finished landscapes, in the presence of its beautiful architectural heritages and in daily contact with its generous, sensitive, gifted, and highly intelligent people. Life in France, even in ordinary times, means to those of almost any other country daily suggestions of courtesy, refinement, and thoughtful consideration for others. It means continual suggestions of an intelligent perspective in the art of living and in the things that give life dignity and worth. The opportunity of living in France, as these Americans have lived during the past two years of war, has meant all this and more. It has meant memories of human nature exalted by love of country, shorn of self, singing amidst hardships, smiling at pain, unmindful of death. It has meant contact with the most gentle and the most intelligent of modern peoples facing mortal peril--facing it with silent and unshakable resolve, victoriously resisting it with modesty and with never a vaunting word. It has meant imperishable visions of intrepidity and of heroism as fine as any in the records of knight-errantry or in the annals of Homeric days. Nothing else, surely, can ever offer so much of noble inspiration as these glimpses of the moral grandeur of unconquerable France. A. PIATT ANDREW _Inspector General of the Field Service_ [Illustration] [Illustration: A la Françoise et Carrément] THE publication of this book presents an opportunity of showing our appreciation of the extraordinarily successful work of A. PIATT ANDREW in reorganizing and furthering the work of the Field Service of the American Ambulance.