There was some excessive drinking when the army first came to France but it has been checked. A number of influences have made for discretion. One of the most potent is the opportunity for promotion in an army in the field. Officers have been quick to point this out to their men. One captain called his company together in the early days and said, "Some of the men in this company are going out and getting pinko, stinko, sloppy drunk. Any man who gets drunk goes in the guard house of course and more than that he will get no promotion from me. I'm going to pick my sergeants from the fellows that have got sense. You may notice that some of the men who drink are old soldiers. Don't take an example from that. Remember that's why they're old soldiers. There isn't any sense in blowing all your money in for booze. Now if I took my pay in a lump at the end of a month I could buy every café in this town and I could stay drunk for a year. That would be fine business, wouldn't it?" "I guess maybe I exaggerated a little about the length of time I could stay drunk," the captain told me afterwards, "but do you know that talk seems to have done the trick." One factor which worked for temperance was the French fashion of making drinking deliberate and social. When an American can be induced to sit down to his potion he is comparatively safe. These little village cafés did no harm after the first brief period when the American soldier had his fling and they served the good purpose of encouraging fraternization between doughboy and poilu. The contact with French soldiers brought no great vocabulary to our men but if they learned few words they did get the hang of making their wants understood. In a week or two innkeepers or women in shops had no trouble at all in attending to the wants of Americans. Probably the French people made somewhat faster linguistic progress than the soldiers. The Americans were willing to be met at least halfway. When I asked one doughboy, "How do you get along with the French? Can you make them understand you?" he said, "Why, they're coming along pretty well. I think most of 'em will pick it up in time."