Of old, one knew the wants of soldiers. One needed no hint of what was welcome at the front. Never at any front were there enough newspapers or tobacco. Men smoke twice as much as usual in the strain of waiting for action, men who do not use tobacco at all get the habit. Ask the G. A. R. men who fought in our great war if this is not true. Then, too, when your country is at war, when back at home hands stretch for every fresh edition and you at the front know only what happens in your alley, think what a newspaper from Paris means out on the battle-line seventy miles from Paris. So I brought a bundle of newspapers. Monsieur, the sensation is beyond even the French language to express-- the sensation of sitting down by the roadside with this morning’s edition and the first cigarette for twenty-four hours. “_C’est épatant! C’est chic, ça! C’est magnifique! Alors, nom de Dieu! Tiens! Hélas! Voilà! Merci, mille remerciements!_”--it was an army of Frenchmen with ready words, quick, telling gestures, pouring out their volume of thanks as the car sped by, and we tossed out our newspapers at intervals, so that all should have a look. An _Écho de Paris_ that fell into the road was the centre of a flag-rush, which included an officer. Most unmilitary--an officer scrambling at the same time as his men! In the name of the Kaiser, what discipline! Then the car stopped long enough for me to see a private give the paper to his officer, who was plainly sensible of a loss of dignity, with the courtesy which said, “A thousand pardons, _mon capitaine_!” and the _capitaine_ began reading the newspaper aloud to his men. Scores of human touches which were French, republican, democratic! With half our cigarettes gone, we fell in with some brown-skinned, native African troops, the Mohammedan Turcos. Their white teeth gleaming, their black eyes devilishly eager, they began climbing onto the car. We gave them all the cigarettes in sight; but fortunately our reserve supply was not visible, and an officer’s sharp command saved us from being invested by storm. As we came into Soissons we left the reserves behind. They were kept back out of range of the German shells, making the town a dead space between them and the firing-line which was beyond. When the Germans retreated through the streets the French had taken care, as it was their town, to keep their fire away from the cathedral and the main square to the outskirts and along the river. Not so the German guns when the French infantry passed through. Soissons was not a German town. We alighted from the car in a deserted street, with all the shutters of shops that had not been torn down by shell-fire closed. Soissons was as silent as the grave, within easy range of many enemy guns. War seemed only for the time being in this valley bottom shut in from the roar of artillery a few miles away, except for a French battery which was firing methodically and slowly, its shells whizzing toward the ridge back of the town.