We neared the entrance to the tune of some trumpet blasts, not very well played, and we peered from arch to inner court yard just in time to see a swarm of khaki-half-clad soldiers running out from barracks. By the time they reached the mess door they were khaki-clad. The officer who came to take us about explained that on Sunday mornings everybody slept late and dressed on the way to breakfast and that discipline was better on week days. Then he told us that of all the privates in that unit not one had ever been a soldier before. They had been picked for medical service first and military service at such time as the officers had learned enough to teach it to them. I remember later that one of the soldiers objected privately to being drilled by a dentist. Nine-tenths of the men were fresh out of college, the officer told us, and half the other tenth were freshmen or sophomores. Many of the enlisted men, we were told, had left incomes in the tens of thousands and a few in the hundreds of thousands. The enlisted personnel included one matinee idol, one young New York dramatic critic, two middling well known young authors, a composer of good but saleable music, and a golfer who gets two in the national rating. The wards were not very different from those of a New York hospital back home, except that they housed a strange mixture of patients. About half were American soldiers and the rest were civilians from the country round about. The French civilians were convinced that though the American doctors might cure them with their marvelous medicines and speckless cleanliness they would surely kill them with air. This particular base hospital was fulfilling two functions for the civilian population. It was seeking to take out adenoids and let in air. A great New York specialist was attending to the adenoids and making progress. It was not always possible to convince the patient that it would do him any good to have his adenoids removed, but if the operation gave the kind American doctor any pleasure he was willing to let him go ahead. The air campaign was making slower progress. Dislike of air is centuries old in France and it has become an instinct with the race. I rode in a railroad car with a French aviator on a balmy day of early autumn and his first act upon entering the compartment was to close both windows. Everybody in this part of France has his bed placed inside a closet and at night he closes the doors. Worst of all were the extra precautions against air which the French peasants took in case of illness. The young French doctors were at the front and the old men who remained always began the treatment of a case by advising the patient's relatives to close all the windows and start a fire.