XXIV CONCLUSION 202 CHAPTER I THE GLORY ROAD TO FRANCE "You, over there in the crowd, and _you_ and _you_, why don't you get busy and help Uncle Sam? What are you hanging back for? Now's your chance to show that you're a real American, and ready to fight for your country. What's the use of waiting for the draft to get you? You're just wasting time! The sooner you enlist, the sooner you'll be ready to do your bit in France. It's up to good old Uncle Sam to jump into the big war and win it. But he can't do it alone. It needs a lot of brave, husky fellows to lick the Boches off the map. Are you going to be one of 'em? Every little bit helps, you know! "Now we're going to sing you one more song. While we're singing it, get on the job and think hard. We want to take a bunch of you back with us to the recruiting station. All right, boys. Give 'em 'The Glory Road to France!'" Standing in the middle of a big recruiting wagon, lavishly decorated in red, white and blue, the orator, a good-looking young soldier of perhaps twenty years, bawled out, "Let 'er go!" From one end of the wagon rose the strains of a lively air, enthusiastically hammered out on a small, portable piano by another khaki-clad youngster, seated on a stool before it. Gathered about him, half a dozen clean-cut soldier boys immediately took it up. The sheer catchiness of the melody, tunefully shouted out by the singers, had its effect on the crowd. The sturdy quality of the words, too, brought a flash of newly aroused patriotism to more than one pair of eyes belonging to the throng of persons closely packed about the big wagon. It appeared to deepen with the lustily given chorus: "Take the Glory Road for France, Hike along to join the fray, With the Sammies take a chance 'Neath the Stars and Stripes to-day. At the front brave men are falling, Now's your time to do and dare. Don't you hear your Uncle calling, 'Boys, I need you "Over There"!'" At the extreme edge of the crowd, a gaily painted roadster had come to a full stop, its progress temporarily checked by the mass of persons about the wagon. It was a four-cylinder car, built low, with one gasoline tank behind the seat and still another behind it, a small reserve. The body of the roadster, painted a bright green, stood out sharply by reason of the red wire wheels. The doorless entrance at one side formed a neat "U," while the extra tires, also mounted on red wire wheels, strapped on at the rear, gave it a last additional touch. Plainly it was built for speed and had a mischievous, runaway air about it that accorded curiously with its driver, a gray-eyed, sunny-haired young man of perhaps eighteen, whose clean-cut features bore an expression of reckless good humor that immediately stamped him as one of those wide-awake, restless lads in whom the love of mischief is ingrained.