A small torrent of khaki swept on to the ferryboat that was taking troops to the special train for Camp Merritt. They stood all over her deck, in uncomfortably small areas; there seemed to be no room for the pack, which perhaps you were expected to swallow. Faces were a little pale from seasickness, but carried a uniformly radiant expression, which proceeded from a lively anticipation of civilian happiness. The conversation was ejaculatory, and included slapping and digging and squeezing your neighbor. Men were saying over and over again: "This is about the last li'l war they'll ketch me for." I succeeded in getting beside the civilian pilot. "What's happening in America?" I asked. "Oh," he said, "it's a mess over here. There ain't any jobs, and labor is raisin' hell. Everybody that hez a job strikes." He looked out over the water at a tug hurrying past. "I don't know what we're comin' out at. Russia, mebbe." In the spring of the year Camp Eustis was an island of concrete roads and wooden barracks salvaged from an encroaching sea of mud. Its site had been selected at an immense distance from any village, or even any collection of human dwellings, for particular reasons. It was to contain the longest artillery range in the United States. After wallowing in bog road through Virginian forest, one came with a shock of relief to a wide, raised, concrete roadbed, which passed newly built warehouses and, after an eighth of a mile, curved into the centre of the camp. It was like any one of the score of mushroom military centres that grew up on American soil in the years from 1917 to 1919, except that there was an unusual abundance of heavy guns. They covered field upon field, opposite the ordnance warehouses, and their yellow and green camouflage looked absurdly showy in the spring sunshine. Mornings, there was apt to be a captive balloon or two afloat from the balloon school, against blue sky and white clouds; and the landscape held several gaunt observation towers, constructed of steel girders and rising from the forest to a height of seventy-five or eighty feet. The camp was crowded with returning overseas units, awaiting demobilization and praying earnestly for it day by day, as men pray for pardon. In a few weeks I should be out of this, going to work somewhere, wearing cits. What a variety of moods the world had split into, from the enormous tension that relaxed on the eleventh of November. Geographically the training-camp was two thousand miles from the devastations of Europe; and from the new forces that were destroying or renewing civilization, how many more? It seemed like the aftermath of an exciting play that had just been acted; waiting here was like staying to put away properties, and dismiss the actors. It occurred to me that the camp was at least ten thousand miles from America.