Lying open on my lap is the _Revue de Paris_ of June 1st, but I can’t read even the beautiful “_Lettres d’un Officier Italien_”—(Giosué Borsi[1]), breathing a deep spirit of conformity to the will of God and showing the evolution that many an _intellectuel catholique_ of his generation has gone through in Italy. In his dugout were Dante, Homer, Ariosto, the Gospels, St. Augustine, Pascal, and _Le Manuel du Parfait Caporal et les Secours d’Urgence_. And he loved his mother and let her know it. All along the route are villages and peaceful country houses, near the train, bowered in acacia and linden; elder-bushes are in full bloom, too, and we pass many green kitchen gardens. Women are shaking blankets out of windows, and looking at the train going to the front, thinking, who shall say what thoughts? _Later._ Big movement of troops is delaying us, and it has been a morning spent among emerald-green hills, pale, like Guatemalan or Bolivian emeralds, not like the deep-colored gems of the Rue de la Paix. Everywhere are patches of blue-clad men, marching down white roads between green fields melting into the blue sky at the point of the eyes’ vision. Still others are bathing in the pale, warm Marne or resting on its banks. Trains go past loaded with battered autos, _camions_ and guns coming from the front, or others with neatly covered, newly repaired machines of death, going out. All were silent in the train at first. “_Méfiez-vous, les oreilles ennemies vous écoutent_” is the device placarded everywhere. In my coupé some one feeling slightly, very slightly, facetious, had rubbed out the first two letters of _oreilles_, changed the first “_e_” into an “_f_,” so that it read, “_Méfiez-vous, les filles ennemies vous écoutent_.” The ruling passion strong in death! We pass Epernay, whose little vine-planted hills had run red, before the treading out of its 1914 wine, with the blood of English and French heroes. At last we began to talk, a dark-eyed colonel of infantry with the _Grand’ Croix de la Légion d’Honneur_ having reached down my bag for me. It is a historic date for France and for ourselves. The night before, General Pershing arrived in Paris, with his guerdon of help, mayhap salvation. All the newspapers had pictures of him and his staff, their reception at the station, the crowd before the Hôtel Crillon. One officer told the story of the woman in the crowd who was so little that there wasn’t the slightest chance of her seeing anything or anybody. When asked why she was there she answered, “_Mais j’aurai assisté_,” and that, it seems to me, is the epitome and epitaph of the generation whose fate it is to see with their eyes the world war. IN THE STATION, CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE, _2.30 p.m._