As if that were not enough in the line of construction, over in a corner of the mammoth reservation is a gas plant, and buster, too. This plant is already in operation and other plants of like size are busy in repairing machinery and in other work. Everywhere about the place there is incessant activity--regular "Hurry up Yost" speed-upativeness--in road building, well driving (some deep ones have been plugged down, too), in track laying, in hundreds of other ways. Some plant, isn't it, to have been put up in the short time, comparatively, that we have been over here in France? It even puts into the shade the overnight growth of, say Hopewell, Va., the famous munitions city that, unlike Rome, seemed almost to have been built in a day. Of course it has taken a tremendous force of workers to do all this, and it is going to take more and more and more as time goes on, and as more and more and more troops from the States keep pouring into the French seaports. The size of the plant, with the provisions for making it larger, prove, for one thing, that our Uncle Sam expects to send a lot more troops--and, what is more, intends to keep them well supplied with everything they need as long as they are here. No Delay About Moving In. Our Uncle Samuel, be it remembered, is a cautious old gent, and looks well on both sides before getting into a scrap; but once he gets in--and the canny old customer always picks the right side--he's in to stay until the whole job is cleaned up, and he's in right up to his shoulderblades. No more convincing proof of America's determination to see the thing through could be had than a sight of Uncle Sam's big storage depot and all-around tool shop. And, to clinch the argument even further, as fast as the shops on the big reservation have been put up, the machinery has been shoved into them and the work in them started as soon as the machinery was in place and oiled up. No, Mr. Infantryman, Mr. Artilleryman, Mr. Machine-Gun-toter, Mr. Aviator, Mr. Wireless-buzzer, this has not been "the winter of our discontent"--as footless and no-use-at-all as your own work may have seemed to you sometimes. It has been the winter during which your old uncle has been laying a firm foundation for your comfort and safety and for that of the men who will follow you over--and believe us, he's done an almighty big, an almightily far-sighted, an all-around almightily creditable and thoroughly American, workmanlike job. ---- A NEWS STORY IN VERSE ---- (The incident this poem describes was told by a British sergeant in a dug-out to the author--an American serving at the time in the British Army, but now fighting under the Stars and Stripes.) ----