Quite unexpectedly round a turn in the road we came on a great line of Canadian transports--American-built lorries with khaki canvas tops. Canadians were driving them, Canadians were guarding them. It gave me a homesick thrill at once to see these other Americans, of types so familiar to me, there in Northern France. Their faces were eager as they pushed ahead. Some of the tent-shaped wooden buildings were to be temporary barracks for them. In one place the transports had stopped and the men were cooking a meal beside the road. Some one had brought a newspaper and a crowd of men had gathered round it. I wondered if it was an American paper. I would like to have stood on the running board of the machine, as we went past, and called out that I, too, was an American, and God bless them! But I fancy the young officer with me would have been greatly disconcerted at such an action. The English are not given to such demonstrations. But the Canadians would have understood, I know. Since that time the reports have brought great news of these Canadian troops, of their courage, of the loss of almost all their officers in the fighting at Neuve Chapelle. But that sunny morning, when I saw them in the north of France, they were untouched by battle or sudden death. Their faces were eager, intent, earnest. They had come a long distance and now they had arrived. And what next? Into this scene of war unexpectedly obtruded itself a bit of peace. A great cart came down a side road, drawn by two white oxen with heavy wooden yokes. Piled high in the cart were sugar beets. Some thrifty peasant was salvaging what was left of his crop. The sight of the oxen reminded me that I had seen very few horses. "They are farther back," said the officer, "Of course, as you know, for the last two or three months it has been impossible to use the cavalry at all." Then he told me a curious thing. He said that during the long winter wait the cavalry horses got much out of condition. The side roads were thick with mud and the main roads were being reserved for transports. Adequate exercises for the cavalry seemed impossible. One detachment discovered what it considered a bright solution, and sent to England for beagle hounds. Morning after morning the men rode after the hounds over the flat fields of France. It was a welcome distraction and it kept the horses in working trim. But the French objected. They said their country was at war, was being devastated by an alien army. They considered riding to hounds, no matter for What purpose, an indecorous, almost an inhuman, thing to do under the circumstances. So the hounds were sent back to England, and the cavalry horses are now exercised in dejected strings along side roads. As we went north the firing increased in intensity. More English batteries were at work; the German response was insistent. We were approaching Ypres, this time from the English side, and the great artillery duel of late February was in progress.