I had a big day with Ruby Davis, our Chicago little violinist, out in the country, roaming, climbing, racing, conversing, but not talking. Talk we left behind us, in the city drawing-rooms. Between pranks and escapades we found rest in sitting side by side and reading Kreisler’s war impressions. I knew that Ruby worshipped Fritz, but his reflections on the book of the violinist have shown me that in addition to admiration he possesses critical perception. We delighted in the pages written with spontaneous beauty, without pose, without the banal superstructure of sentimental colors, but revealing a tense, vibrating, virile artistic heart, reservedly sensitive to bloody horrors as well as to imperceptible impressions of human emotions concealed beneath the dehumanizing military uniform. Ruby called my attention to the fact that only such an artist as Kreisler could have had a broad non-professional outlook on men and things, an artist of unusual versatility, of a wide education, of rich experiences in various fields of life. Yet, he added, only the keen, delicate ear of a musician could have perceived the symphonic sounds on the battle-field and in the trenches, as, for instance, in this passage: My ear, accustomed to differentiate sounds of all kinds, had some time ago, while we were still advancing, noted a remarkable discrepancy in the peculiar whine produced by the different shells in their rapid flight through the air as they passed over our heads, some sounding shrill, with a rising tendency, and the other rather dull, with a falling cadence. A short observation revealed the fact that the passing of a dull sounding shell was invariably preceded by a flash from one of our own cannon in the rear on the hill, which conclusively proved it to be an Austrian shell. It must be understood that as we were advancing between the positions of the Austrian and Russian artillery, both kinds of shells were passing over our heads. As we advanced the difference between shrill and dull shell grew less and less perceptible, until I could hardly tell them apart. Upon nearing the hill the difference increased again more and more until on the hill itself it was very marked. After our trench was finished I crawled to the top of the hill until I could make out the flash of the Russian guns on the opposite heights and by timing flash and actual passing of the shell, found to my astonishment that now the Russian missiles had become dull, while on the other hand, the shrill sound was invariably heralded by a flash from one of our guns, now far in the rear. What had happened was this: Every shell describes in its course a parabolic line, with the first half of the curve being ascending and the second one descending. Apparently in the first half of its curve, that is, its course while ascending, the shell produced a dull whine accompanied by a falling cadence, which changes to a rising