I jumped thither after a futile visit to our own headquarters. I said I would like to go to the French front. “Certainly,” replied the man in charge. “Whenever is convenient for you, we’ll see that you get a trip.” So I told him when it would be convenient and he’s going to see me through. I hear that the British are similarly peculiar. They are polite even to newspaper men and magazine writers. They might even speak to a cartoonist. Returning to our side of the Seine, I bumped into some Australians, here on leave. One had been in Germany before the war and could speak and understand the “schoenste language.” “They use me as an interpreter,” he said. “When they bring in a bloody boche prisoner, I talk to him. First we give him a real meal, maybe bacon and eggs and coffee, something he hasn’t seen for months. Then I ask him where he came from and how he got here. Most of them are glad to tell me the truth. Those that do, I mark them down as ‘Very intelligent.’ Those that volunteer information I record as ‘Extremely intelligent.’ Those that say ‘Nicht verstehe’ go down in the record as ‘Not intelligent.’ But the majority are so bloody well glad to be out of the war that they talk freely. “I asked one Heinie if he was going to try to escape. ‘Not me,’ he said, ‘I’m tickled to be here.’ They’re all fed up on the war. You’d be too with three years of it.” This young man admitted that he was one of the best football players in Australia. “Maybe I’ve forgotten how now,” he said. “I’ve been over here three years. Just think of it--I traveled twelve thousand miles, or maybe it’s kilos, to mix up in this.” Baseball, he told me, had taken a strong hold on Australia. “I don’t hit well,” he said, “but I can catch what you call flies! I can catch the widest flies that are knocked.” Which gift would probably be useless in America, where most of the flies knocked are bloody narrow. Before I left him I learned also that Les Darcy was all right at heart, but that the professional “sports” spoiled him, and that he could have “knocked Jack Johnson, Stanley Ketchel, Billy Papke or Jess Willard clean out of the ring.” He is going back to the trenches to-night, and I hope there are plenty of extremely intelligent Heinies there to keep him busy interpreting till his next leave. Interpreting, I should think, would be much pleasanter than going over the top. _Tuesday, August 21._ This time it was an American of the French Ambulance Service.