Both London and Paris have a regal distinction, a distinction in common. They are the meeting-points for the going and coming armies of democracy. No double-track system is this. As they go, so they return. Here by the Seine and yonder by the Thames these knights of a new era salute each other as they pass. From Canada and Australia, from Scotland and Ireland, and from a dozen other places, some of them as far away as South Africa, the English-speaking soldiers are gathered into the welcoming arms of London and then thrust forth to be scattered along the lines of Flanders and France. And to London they come back--those who do not remain where they fell--to be welcomed tenderly and then dropped into the distant places that have never faded from their eyes in all the days of their bloody pilgrimage. And to Paris the world sends her best, the black and white and yellow children of the Old World and the New; and Paris smiles upon them through her resplendent tears, and passes them on. Later, by way of her vast treasures of the storied past, they march again to find the track to the open sea and their "own countries." Once I saw two armies in the selfsame street, one dirty and bedraggled and with thinned ranks, the other fresh and with the light of eager quest in its eyes. One was marching south while the other was marching north. One was from Yorkshire in old England and the other was from America. Ah, it was a sight to turn stone into tears when the tall, sinewy lads from the western hemisphere halted just where the avenue faces the Madeleine, and cheered those weary heroes marching back from hell. Paris is far behind me as I write, but the soldiers who shouted their admiration for the wounds of a thousand convalescent "Tommies" bound for "Blighty" are with me. God only knows how many of those far-called heroes will be marching down that glorious way of Paris when the battalion musters out for home. They are now where civilization has reared her altars, where democracy has found her Gethsemane. But this we all know: they will "carry on." CHAPTER III _DOWN IN FLAMES_ "The Boche is coming back," a man yelled into the entrance of the cellar. A second later I was above ground and with my head at the sky-scraper angle. There he was! Like a great homing pigeon he was streaking it for his own lines after an observation-flight far behind ours. He was high, but not high enough to hide the telltale crosses on the under side of his wings, and the churn of his engine was unmistakable. When my eyes brought him into focus, he was at least a mile away, but in half a minute he was directly overhead. The guns were roaring all about; shrapnel bursts surrounded the pirate bird. Ah! that one broke near! For just an instant he faltered, but on he came.