The vessel was manned by French, who treated us splendidly for the first two days out. After that, however, they began to skimp on our food and to give us things of poor quality. For instance, we were given coffee without sugar or milk, cereals of poor quality without even salt in them, and no fruit, though it was understood that fruit was to be a part of our diet. The boys complained bitterly at this treatment, and finally our officers, knowing that we were not being properly fed, made an examination of the ship. They found several hundred boxes of apples that were supposed to be for us, stowed away in the hold. It had been the intention of the French in charge of this boat to steal that fruit, evidently to sell it, at the expense of the wounded American soldiers on this hospital ship, who had fought and saved their country from the Hunnish hordes. We had been cheated and overcharged for everything we purchased in France, and we knew it, but it surely did hurt when we were thus treated by men whose homes we had saved at the cost of our blood. I will say this: We did not hold this kind of treatment against the French people as a whole, but to individuals who are so unprincipled and so greedy that they are willing to sacrifice the fair name of their people for a paltry gain. I might add here that it was the smallness of some of the individual "Y" workers that brought the Y. M. C. A. into such disrepute among the American soldiers in France. This simply shows how important it is for an individual to sustain the reputation of his country, or his association, as the case may be, by honorable conduct. After our officers uncached the horde of stolen apples in the ship's hold, we were well fed and on the last two days of the journey had no complaint to make on this score. On December 24th at 10 a.m. some far sighted individual shouted "Land" and what a welcome word it was. Columbus, watching from the deck of the Santa Maria, was not more happy when he first set eyes upon the faint outline of the new world than we were as the dim blue shoreline began to rise upon the horizon. There was a mad rush to the deck and everybody who could get out was soon watching over the rail. It was not long before the Statue of Liberty came into full view and there was joy in our hearts for we knew that at last we were home. In a very few minutes our ship stopped and a pilot was taken aboard to guide the great vessel safely into the harbor. Next we were greeted by a yacht that steamed out beside us carrying a great sign, "Welcome Home." It was the 24th of December, and this boat carried a large Christmas tree, typical of the season.