The whole town is pervaded by a warm glow of geniality. Boys that used to nod shyly in answer to your “Good morning” now lean from their loft windows as you pass to call a greeting. Last night, my friend the M. P. tells me, he heard a racket in one of the sheepfolds up on our street. Going to investigate he met a “bunch o’ drunken wops” coming out of the door, every man of them carrying a struggling sheep under each arm. He shouted at them; they dropped the sheep and fled. The French find it all vastly amusing. “_Beaucoup zig zag_,” they cry. It means, I suppose, riches for them. And yet in all this orgy I have not yet encountered a single word of disrespect, nor heard one objectionable expression uttered. Last night I caught an angry splutter from the crowd in front of the counter. One boy, evidently a shade less tipsy, had admonished another boy apparently a shade more so, to be careful of his language out of respect for me. “Whu’d ’you think? D’you think I ain’t got sense enough to know how to talk when there’s an American lady present?” For a moment it looked as if there might be a fight. Meanwhile the guard-house, the real guard-house, is so crowded that they have had to put duck-boards across the rafters for the prisoners to sleep on. From a nearby town where part of another regiment is stationed come even more startling stories. Certain officers there went so wild that they started to blow up the town with hand grenades. And one of them coming into the Y. held up the secretary at the point of his pistol until he sold him—instead of the ordinary allowance of one or two packages—several cartons of his favorite brand of cigarettes. The new colonel is said to be horrified. But what could he expect? Take an odd lot of twenty-five hundred boys, remove them from every decent restraining influence, hike them all day through the interminable mud and rain until they drop by the roadside, bring them back at night to dark, cold, damp, filthy, vermin-ridden lofts and stables, add the nerve strain of the imminent prospect of their first time at the front, close every door to them except the door of the café, give them money;—what could anyone expect? Goncourt, February 27. My friend Pat is in the hospital; not the local hospital, but Base 18 situated at Bazoilles, some six miles to the north of Goncourt. This afternoon, having our time free between one and four, Mr. K. and I decided to go to call on him. “Are we going to walk?” I asked. “Oh we’ll get a lift; one always does.” But the lift didn’t heave in sight until we were half way there; then it was an ambulance that slowed down in answer to our signals. “Give us a ride?” “Sure, if you aren’t afraid of the mumps.” I was, dreadfully afraid. But Mr. K. wasn’t, he had already had them, on both sides. I hesitated, then decided to take a chance. We rode into Bazoilles in an ambulance full of mumps.