So, while they heard the cannon roaring, they were happy to know that their friends in America thought of them and were helping them. No one will ever realize just how much it meant to the French people to know that America was their friend, or the great joy they felt when the American soldiers marched in to take their places in the fight for France and the freedom of the world. Odette Gastinel, a thirteen-year-old girl of the Lycée Victor Duruy, one of the schoolrooms near the front, has written of the coming of the Americans. Throughout the United States her little essay has been read, and great men and women have marveled at its beauty of thought and wording, and have called it a little masterpiece. In the first paragraph, she tells of the great distance between the millions of men (the Germans and the Allies) although separated only by a narrow stream; and in the second, she speaks of the closeness of sympathy between France and America,--though America lies three thousand miles over the sea. It was only a little river, almost a brook; it was called the Yser. One could talk from one side to the other without raising one's voice, and the birds could fly over it with one sweep of their wings. And on the two banks there were millions of men, the one turned toward the other, eye to eye. But the distance which separated them was greater than the spaces between the stars in the sky; it was the distance which separates right from injustice. The ocean is so vast that the sea gulls do not dare to cross it. During seven days and seven nights the great steamships of America, going at full speed, drive through the deep waters before the lighthouses of France come into view; but from one side to the other, hearts are touching. It is no wonder that the great American, General Pershing, stopped, in all the tumult and business of war, to write to people in America: [Illustration: (hand written letter from General Pershing) Headquarters, Am. Ex. Forces. France. In the veins of the fatherless children of France courses the blood of heroes. Theirs is a heritage worth cherishing--a heritage which appeals to the deepest sentiments of the soul. What France through their fathers has done for humanity, France through them will do again. Save the fatherless children of France! John J. Pershing. April 12, 1918 ] A PLACE IN THE SUN