Irrepressible, curious of all things, awed by nothing, the doughboy cares not a snap of his fingers for the whole of French Officialdom. An officer told me how, when standing on a station platform the other day, an irate and husky doughboy sailed by him, headed for the baggage-room in search of somebody’s luggage. “If you hear a noise, Major,” he remarked in transit, “you’ll know that I’m stepping on a frog.” The French railway system affords him a never-failing topic for amusement. And truly it has its quaint points. On the trip down we passed over one line where the heating system for the cars consisted entirely of long flat metal cans filled with hot water which were shoved in under our feet, so that, no matter how chilly the rest of us might be, our toes at least could travel in comfort; while on the walls of each coach, we observed with glee, was an official notice requesting the passengers to refrain from throwing objects such as _empty bottles_ out the windows as numerous casualties among the employees had resulted from this practice! The doughboy passes everywhere by virtue of the magic words, “_no compree_.” Traveling he develops a stupidity that is absolute and unshakable. “I never understand anything they say,” chuckled one youngster joyously, “until they begin to talk about something to eat”. Wonderful tales are told of escapades and adventures; such as the story of the boy who started out to spend his leave at Aix-les-Bains and traveled half over Italy before he came back, all on the the strength of the pass-word “onion-stew” and an unidentified document that happened to have a red seal attached. Common rumour has it that the official report records sixty thousand A. W. O. L.s at the present date in the A. E. F. in France. I don’t know whether this is correct, but I rather hope it is. Now that the war is won I am glad that in spite of Provost Marshals and M. P.s some of the boys at least are on the way to discovering that there is something more to France than just “mud and kilometers.” Paris, February 7. I’m going to stay. If I went home now I would feel like a quitter all the rest of my life. I don’t know where I’m going. They asked me if I would like to go to Germany but I said no, I didn’t want to look at Germans. I shall have to stay here in Paris for a week or so anyway in order to get that wretched business of a broken tooth, which the Christmas caramel at Mauvages began, straightened out. In the meantime, I am doing what I can in a perfectly amateur and impromptu way to help young America see Paris.