What you say about the feeling in America, that France at the end of the war will be safe from the encroachment of other nations for generations, sounds encouraging, but does that imply that the end of the war is a long way off? I have been astonished ever since coming to France to find the general expectation is for an early termination of hostilities--very early, this spring or next fall at the latest. My opinion was formed almost entirely by the "New Republic" and the Frank H. Simonds articles in the "Atlantic" and in the "Tribune," so that I considered the fall of 1918 to be the most logical time to hope for the end. What the Allies have to do seems still well-nigh insurmountable, but to my surprise, young and old, rich or poor, wise or foolish, seem sure that 1917 is, indeed, l'année de la victoire et de la paix. I can't tell whether it is because they wish it so hard or because to people who have seen and are living among the results of such tremendous desolation, it seems impossible for it to go on longer. Please send more "New York Tribunes." You have no idea how they are appreciated by all of us. I took the ones Mother sent over to the Shurtleffs, then over to Mrs. Houpt's, then up to Miss Dorr's when I went to tea one afternoon, and when I asked some people in they were the features of my party. The W. E. Hill drawing of "scenes in the hat department" brought down the house. We haven't seen such good war pictures over here at all, and the pictures of the stage and society and art exhibitions, etc., are fascinating. It is wonderful to know that such things are going on. Then for news, the regular "Tribune" was gobbled up. We have only these punk French papers and the punker "New York Paris Herald," which costs three cents and consists of one sheet of four pages--of nothing. We read, "Quiet night on the front"; "Wilson presses investigation of ----, may write note to Germany"; and accounts of the London dog shows morning after morning. Take pity. And especially the magazine sections of the "Sunday Tribune," and more stuff by Hill! Now for my Hymn of Hate which is in this case a Hymn of Heat. I am cold. This is a theme which has been elaborated in every degree of variation, and amplification since December 23, 1916, I think. I wrote you about that time that our steam heating had died suddenly and ingloriously, so it was with relief that I read in your letters of this morning no trace of worry about how I was managing to exist. All the old wiseacres that I meet, and this includes Mrs. Shurtleff, shake their heads and say, "If your father and mother knew how you were living, what would they say?" and I think to myself, "They would probably think it was jolly well good for me--and that it was a terrific joke."