And there is one other American institution for which the American soul thirsts in this barren land—the American newspaper. Behold us billeted for a day or two in the little town of Crapaudville-sur-Loire. Existence there is a series of _queues_. In the morning we arise right early and make a careful toilet. For this purpose we form a _queue_, or water-line, at the town pump. This is not a lengthy business, because it does not take long to fill a pannikin with water: the only interruptions which occur are due to natural gallantry, as when an attractive Ally arrives to fill her family kettle. After that comes breakfast-time, which entails standing in another _queue_, or chow-line. After that as many of us as can contrive to do so hurry off to stand in the most important _queue_ of the day—the news-line. A train from Paris, of arthritic tendencies and irregular habits, is due about noon, bearing newspapers, which are doled out at a price of twenty-five centimes. There are, of course, sharp degrees of comparison. The great Paris morning journals are nothing in our young lives. They are written in a language which we do not know, and their headlines are lacking in enterprise. The Paris issue of the _London Daily Mail_ is better. It reaches us in the form of a special American edition, which caters generously to our national predilection for type several inches high. But beyond that it does not go. _Blossom and blossom and blossom, but never the promise of fruit!_ The reading matter below the headlines is constrained, lacking in pep—dead stuff. At least, so Joe McCarthy says. The Paris editions of the _New York Herald_ and _Chicago Tribune_ furnish more nourishment, although in these days of paper famine they are sadly attenuated affairs—mere single sheets, sometimes. Then there is our own A.E.F. weekly—_The Stars and Stripes_. It is ably conducted and full of meat; but at the best it is only an official publication, mainly about the War. And it was not printed in America. What we crave for is home news—home gossip—home advertisements. A single copy of an American Sunday newspaper, with comic supplement complete, would fetch its weight in dollar bills over here. Our spirits yearn to participate once more in the Bringing up of Father, or the fratricidal rivalries of Mutt and Jeff; or to witness the perennial discomfitures of those two intensely human impostors, Percy and Ferdy. Even those nasty little Boche abortions, the Katzenjammer Kids, would be something. The happiest man is he who receives once in a while a copy of his local newspaper from home. These come rarely enough, for second-class mail matter is incurring mysterious casualties these days.