But all this time, not one word from Paul! Bunny received agonized letters from Ruth, “Oh, what do you think can have happened to him? I write him every week to the address he gave, and I _know_ he would answer if he was alive.” Bunny explained that it took six weeks for mail to go to Vladivostok and return; how much longer it took on the railroad no one could guess; and besides, there was a censorship, and many things might happen to letters in war-time. If Paul had been killed or wounded, the army would surely notify his parents; so no news was good news. There had been practically no fighting, as Ruth could see from the newspaper clippings which Bunny faithfully sent to her. The reports were scanty, but that was just because nothing much had happened; if there were any real fighting, or losses to the troops, the papers would get it, you might be sure. In the month of July of this year of 1918, the American and Japanese troops had made a landing in Vladivostok, practically unopposed; they had spread along the Trans-Siberian railway, and were policing it, and in fact running it, all the way to Lake Baikal where they had met the Czecho-Slovaks. With the help of these intelligent men, the allies now controlled the country clean across to the Volga; the Bolsheviks had to keep back in the interior. Now and then the newspapers would report that admiral this or general that was setting up a stable Russian government, of course with the help of allied money and supplies. At the west end of the line it would be a Cossack ataman and at the east end a Chinese mandarin or Mongolian tuchun or other strange beast; thus new stretches of the earth’s surface were being delivered from the wickedness of Bolshevism. Somewhere amid these picturesque and exciting events Paul Watkins of Paradise, California, was building army barracks and “Y” huts; and some day he would come back with a wonderful story to tell! So Bunny wrote, bidding Ruth keep cheerful, and have faith in the benevolence of her old Uncle Sam. IX The nights were growing cold in Bunny’s cantonment, and from Europe the thrilling news continued to pour in, and spread across the front pages of the newspapers, six or eight editions every day. The allied advance was turning into a march, that long talked of march to Berlin! A march also to Vienna and to Sofia and to Constantinople—for everywhere the central powers were weakening, collapsing, surrendering. President Wilson issued his “fourteen points,” on the basis of which the Germans were invited to quit. There were rumors of negotiations—the German leaders were suggesting a truce! There were two or three days of suspense, and then the answer, there would be no truce, only a surrender; the march to Berlin was on!