For me the New Year is starting well. I face it in higher spirits than any of its predecessors. And well I may, for I didn’t expect to be alive to greet 1918. I hope you are all just as much on the crest of the wave in your hopes and anticipations. Nothing can be worse than some of the experiences that lie behind—and that’s some comfort. Nothing can be more chivalrous than the opportunities which lie before us. So here’s good-bye to you from France once again. XXV Paris January 8, 1918 Here I am in Paris, starting on my new adventure of writing the story of what the Americans are doing in the war. I left England on 2nd January, which was a Wednesday, and arrived here Thursday evening. As you know, while I was in the Front line I had very little idea of what France at war was like. One crossed from England, clambered on a military train with all the windows smashed, had a cold night journey, and found himself at once among the shell-holes. I was very keen on seeing what Paris was like; now that I’ve seen it, it’s very difficult to describe. It’s very much the same as it always was—only while its atmosphere was once champagne, now it is a strong, still wine. As in England, only to a greater extent, women are doing the work of men. The streets are full of the wounded—not the wounded with well-fitted artificial limbs that you see in London, but with ordinary wooden stumps, etc. Our English wounded are always gay and laughing—determined to treat the war as a humorous episode to the end. The French wounded are grave, afflicted, and ordinary. I think the Frenchman, with an emotional honesty of which we are incapable, has from the first viewed the war as a colossal Calvary, and has seen it against the historic skyline of a travailing world. Never by speech or gesture has he disguised the fact that he, as an individual, is engaged in a fore-ordained and unparalleled adventure of sacrifice. The Englishman, self-conscious of his own heroic gallantry, cloaks his fineness with pretended indifference and has succeeded in deceiving the world. Our sportsmanship in the face of death impresses more complex nations as irreligion. So while London is outwardly gayer than ever, Paris has a stiff upper lip, a look of sternness in its eyes, and very little laughter on its mouth. By nine-thirty in the evening every restaurant is closed, and the streets are empty till the soldiers on leave troop out from the theatres. As for the food, I have seen no shortage in France as yet. You can get plenty of butter and sugar, whereas in London margarine is rare and sugar is doled out. The talk of France being ex hausted is all rubbish; you can feel the muscles of a great nation struggling the moment you land.