"We are not useful now," the Colonel in Command regretfully confided to me; "for almost all the supplies reach our armies by rail. But only wait till the advance begins. Then we shall show what we can do." This great encampment which covered some square miles of countryside had begun as a bivouac and ended as a town. One walked down avenues and side streets solidly flanked by the huts which this army had built itself. They were all more or less standardized in building materials--wattled walls covered with clay, and thatched straw roofs. But there the uniformity abruptly ended. For these little houses had not been merely constructed by builders as they would have been in nearly any other country. This was France and they had been conceived by architects. And each house expressed the original conception of the soldier-architect who had designed it. No one who has not walked through this mushroom town or the many others like it can imagine the infinite variety of architectural forms which can be wrought in one-story shacks of wattle, clay and straw. The pliable wattle and clay lent themselves to effects which could not have been possible in stone, brick or wood. Extraordinary bays and alcoves, never before dreamed of by the Ecole des Beaux Arts gave light and shadow to long walls. Bas-relief and high-relief were done with spirit and often with fine art in the clay which covered the wattled walls, the thatched straw of the roofs was erected into strange gables, dormer windows, turrets and machicolations. Eccentric, grotesque many of these experiments unquestionably were, but they meant on the part of the tired soldiers hours and days and weeks of extra and unnecessary work, lavished, not for their creature comfort, not for their physical safety, but solely for their artistic satisfaction. It was twilight when we took our leave and night had fallen long before we rolled into Château Thiery, whither Captain d'A----'s orderly had transported our bags, and where a very late dinner and comfortable beds were awaiting us. V A GRENADE-THROWING SCHOOL WITH THE 5TH FRENCH ARMY, _Aug. 9_. I have just returned from attending a soldiers' school of bomb-throwing. The military authorities permitted my presence as an exceptional favor, informing me that this is the first time such a privilege has been accorded a foreign civilian. This particular school holds its classes in a large green field in a peaceful little valley, within long artillery range of the firing lines. No German shells, however, have hitherto distracted the pupils from their rather gruesome lessons, and I will not endanger their continued studies by giving a more definite description of the locality.