In five weeks all necessary arrangements for the school were completed and notices were sent by the General Staff to the bandmasters of the entire A. E. F. who had not come up to the necessary qualifications during the examination which I had given them, to report to the Chaumont School in batches of fifty every eight weeks, beginning on October 1, and to start their studies. Students for oboe, bassoon, French horn, and flügelhorn were also selected from the hundreds of applicants. At first we had great difficulty in finding the necessary instruments for them. France is famous for its wood-wind instruments, but the various factories had long since ceased operations, as all the workmen were in the army. The ever-ready and ingenious Lieutenant Weill, however, succeeded in scraping together enough oboes and bassoons to start the classes, and I cannot say enough for the willing assistance which was accorded me by every United States army officer with whom I came in contact. From the commander-in-chief down to Lieutenant Kelley, who sat in the anteroom of General Dawes’s office in the Champs-Élysées, and whose principal duty seemed to be to ward off disagreeable or tiresome callers who wished to rob General Dawes of his valuable time, all made me feel as if the improvement of the army bands was the one thing necessary to win the war. It was high time for me to leave France and “get back to earth,” as I no longer walked on anything but air and with my head projecting far above the clouds. During my last visit to Chaumont I motored down to Domrémy, the birthplace of Jeanne d’Arc, and found the little village in just about the same state it must have been when she was born in the little house next to the church, both of which have been carefully preserved for the worshippers of to-day. The open space in front of her house, the trees surrounding it, and the monument in the centre seemed to me to form a natural stage on which a peace pageant could well be enacted, and as I sat there and the bell began to toll from the little church in which Jeanne had whispered her prayers, I began to dream of a possible peace celebration in which a company of American soldiers, a company of French soldiers, an American and a French military band, singers from the Opéra Comique, and a children’s chorus should take part; the climax to be the joyous meeting of the military forces around the monument and the awakening of Jeanne from her sleep of centuries, opening the door of her little house and standing there looking with astonishment at the unwonted sight of American soldiers in khaki as brothers of her beloved countrymen.