My first trumpeter was a young French soldier who had played clarinet before the war. His arm had been shot off only a year before, and as soon as he left the hospital he studied the trumpet and with his one arm not only held but fingered it with remarkable facility. I do not think that in all my long career I have ever conducted concerts or rehearsals in which both conductor and players were enveloped in such an atmosphere of emotional excitement. Our young, handsome boys in khaki seemed like demigods to these tired and worn people who had fought with such incredible tenacity for four terrible years. The members of the orchestra received every criticism which I made during the rehearsals with a quick nod or an engaging smile, and every now and then some remark of mine regarding the proper interpretation would be followed by a murmur of approval, which would spread through the orchestra and sometimes even vent itself in applause. I hope that my criticisms, as well as my interpretations, pleased them, but I know that even if they had not, it would have made no difference. I was an American and that was enough. At the Saturday-night concert, which was more popular in character, I gave our American soldier audience Victor Herbert’s clever medley on American airs, and those Frenchmen played as if they had known them all their lives. The huge audience in khaki fairly seethed with patriotic excitement, which of course found its climax when we turned into “Dixie.” All jumped to their feet and cheered and cheered, so that for ten bars or so literally nothing of the music could be heard, and only by the waving of my stick and the motions of the players could one tell that the music was going on. The following afternoon the programme was one of real symphonic proportions, and included Saint-Saëns’s great “Symphony No. 3” for orchestra, organ, and piano, Debussy’s “L’Après-midi d’un Faune,” and the “Symphonic Variations” for piano with orchestra, by César Franck. The organ part in the symphony was played by Mlle. Nadia Boulanger, without doubt the greatest woman musician I have ever known, and the Franck “Variations” were superbly interpreted by Alfred Cortot. M. Casadesus played an exquisite concerto for the viola d’amour by Laurenziti.